How to Become Psychic in 2 Easy Steps (The Dead Zone - Stephen King)

Name: markhobbs

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	The Dead Zone - Stephen King
Date:	06/08/01 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great storeyline

Disadvantages: Not executed as well as it could have been

In the last few months I've gotten in to Bob Dylan, bought The Pearl by Brian Eno, read my way through the Hitchiker trilogy, not to mention experiencing what us mere mortals call 1984 by George Orwell. In retrospect it was a bad time to come back to The Dead Zone.

When I read it two years ago it was thrilling and well crafted, and while it's still a great book, this time it just seemed a bit too Bestsellerish.

There's a fantastic storey to be told, but sometimes it seems a bit corny. The dialogue is too often melodramatic, and ends up sounding like something from Sunset Beach.

Perhaps what I wanted was the Stephen King who wrote The Shining. The Stephen King who created something so wonderfully impossible that I just had to believe it. The Stephen King who wrote something that you had to make an effort to read, not something that you can just scan read on an airplane.

The Dead Zone is less of a challenge, I don't really have to think too hard or see things from anybody's angle. But anyway, as I said, the actual storey is good, if a little far fetched.

Prologue

Our leading man is John Smith. As a six year old he takes a fall while skating and gets a knock to his head. While dazed he mutters to a man called Chuck who's helping him up, 'Don't jump it no more. The explosion.The acid'. A few month later Chuck's battery in his car explodes in his face while he was trying to jump start it. He loses an eye. Nobody, not even John, remembers saying this, and so the whole accident is forgotten in a few weeks. As he's growing up he sometimes gets hunches about where lost items are or what record is going to be played next on the radio, but he never makes a connection between these and the accident.

It then cuts to a travelling Bible salesman called Greg Stillson. He calls to a farmhouse, where it turns out there's nobody home. This lea
ds to a horrific scene where Greg beats to death a dog that approaches him. It's obvious he has problems controlling his temper, but he feels he's destined for something great.

Main Storey

John, now all grown up, is a high school teacher. His lovely lady, Sarah, is also a teacher in the same school. They go to a county fair where they inevitably act all lovey dovey, and realise they are infatuated with each other.

Sarah eats a bad hot dog and becomes ill. On their way to the car they stop at a Wheel of Fortune. Here John gets some strong hunches and wins five hundred and forty dollars.

He calls a cab from Sarah's apartment. On the journey back to his house the cab crashes into a car thats been racing another car in the street. John is sent through the windcscreen.

He's in a coma. The shock sends his already deeply religous mother into increasingly more crazy beliefs, which crushes her husband to see her so unlike the woman he once knew.

After two years Sarah remarries in the belief that Johnny will never wakev uphis belief is held by everybody except his mother, who believes that God has a plan for him.

Four and a half years later he wakes up, and while dazed tells a nurse that her sons upcoming operation will be succesful, and this turns out to be true. He later tells a doctor after holding his wallet, that his mother wasn't killed by the Nazis in Poland, but is living in Poland. which is also true. It appears that he can sometimes see things in peoples lives after touching them or an item belonging to them. The press hear of his talent.

I think I'll leave it there, but I will say that Greg and Johnny's paths do cross, in an attempt to prevent some terrible things that will happen if Greg is able to continue as he does. It's a wonderful storey, but it's not King at his full capabilities

Summary: