Genius! (Dreamcatcher - Stephen King)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Dreamcatcher - Stephen King
Date:	20/02/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent story, interesting throughout, good characters

Disadvantages: -----------

Stephen King has never been an author I have sought out, but if I happen to come across a book of his which appeals from the blurb on the back then I'll take a look. Some of his books I have enjoyed immensely and others I've hated, he is my Marmite.

I bought Dreamcatcher from the charity shop some time ago and decided to start reading it last week, I can honestly say this is the best Stephen King book I've ever read; from the first I cared about the characters and empathised with all they went through. While I found the novel gory in places it's certainly from a more humane angle than his earlier works such as Pet Sematary or Salem's Lot, it has a psychological slant and dwells on people's reactions to events more than actual bloodshed.

Jonesy, Henry, Beaver and Pete have been friends since childhood. Every year they go on a hunting trip in a huge woodland in Maine, staying at a hunters cabin owned by one of them. Jonesy has recently been in a car accident in which he almost died so for this reason this years trip is even more of an important event, Jonesy and Beaver go off shooting deer while Henry and Pete head to Gosselin's Store for food supplies and beer to see them through the approaching storm.

In the woods Jonesy comes across a man who is lost and has become ill in the woods, he takes him back to the cabin to get warm when the man suddenly becomes more and more poorly. Just when Jonesy and Beaver, who has returned from his own hunting position, decide it's time to get the man help the army helicopters arrive to quarantine the area.for unknown reasons. Henry and Pete are having a similar experience with a woman they almost run down in the road, she is obviously suffering the same illness as the man Jonesy is nursing.

The story progresses into a struggle for survival for all four of them, they don't all make it and this becomes apparent early on in the story but the strength of each of their characters enables the others to carry on not only saving their own life but eventually the lives of every person in the state. Did I mention the book is about aliens and the four men all have a form of ESP? There is so much going on in this novel that it's exciting throughout, the storyline is interesting and it's told in such a way that however preposterous you find the idea of aliens there's always a little part of you asking 'what if?'.

There's another important character I must tell you a little about, Duddits. He is a boy they saved from bullies when they were all children, Duddits has Downs Syndrome but the boys are drawn to him and they all become firm friends. Over the years they have grown out of touch with Duddits but each of them are increasingly having thoughts of him, which eventually they link to the alien invasion and seek this gifted mans help. I cannot really say more about Duddits, he's an integral part of the story but there are so many twists and turns surrounding him that anything I say could spoil the surprises learned about this character. Needless to say, King has produced an extremely recognisable Downs character without ever being cruel or generalising too much about his illness.

All of the characters are very strong in Dreamcatcher, I particularly like the story behind Henry Devlin who is a tormented soul. A psychiatrist who recently lost one of his obese patients to a heart attack after belittling him during his counselling session, although King doesn't dwell on the guilty emotions Henry must be feeling he brings it across by giving him suicidal thoughts. I enjoyed this characters development because as the threat from the aliens grew worse so his self preservation instinct kicked in and he became a driven and slightly deranged man on a mission.

Jonesy was also a very interesting character in lots of ways, he is ultimately the most expressive role in the novel as it is he who becomes intimately involved with the aliens. King has given him a little-boy-lost personality but he is a thinker and it's through Jonesy's thoughts and solutions that the novel is able to progress at such break neck speed.

The 'baddie' in Dreamcatcher, Abraham Kurtz, is a high ranking officer in the military and it's his job to contain the aliens and keep the news of the invasion out of the public domain. He has his own harsh ways of dealing with the situation and is portrayed as a mildly mad but extremely malevolent character. Definitely madman rather than supernatural being, but King has made this character as scary as any monster in his previous novels.

Most of the action takes place within the woods, but this area is so huge that the characters are able to be separated and as the reader we can see each of them going their own way but at the same time drifting towards one another. I particularly enjoyed the thread of the story which recounted the hunt for Jonesy by Henry, there were other reasons for Henry's pursuit but the love between these two men was refreshing and really made me believe that a friendship this deep would surely make everything alright again.

There are lots of flashbacks in Dreamcatcher as the friends' remember their shared childhood, as the present crisis deepens they rely more and more on snatched memories of simpler and happier times. The flashbacks are done in a way that they add to the story rather than distract from it, I never felt they intruded in the pace of the novel and helped me to better understand why certain people acted in different ways. They also introduce Duddits into the story, which is great as he doesn't physically appear until much later on but the build up to his arrival is so good that I couldn't wait to meet this sweet and special man.

I thought this was a wonderful novel; interesting and exciting with a good level of tension throughout. While the story is fairly slow to begin with it soon picks up speed and within a few short chapters it's become fast paced and continuously shifting between the perspectives of the main characters. There are a few stories told within this one novel and they all overlap and wind around each other, amazingly all coming together in the final couple of chapters to leave no loose ends whatsoever. I was so disappointed when I finished this book that I immediately went to the library for another Stephen King novel that I've heard good things about, Duma Key.

Dreamcatcher help my attention throughout and kept me awake late several nights running as I read 'just one more chapter' or 'I'll just find out what happens to Henry next' before putting out the light. The main thing is that I cared about the characters, they were written in as ordinary men who happen to have strange gifts and at no point did I grow weary of their chatter or reading about how they acted when odd events began to occur around them. Indeed I found their naivety rather endearing because as the reader I could see how events were being mapped out, but they were insulated from the outside world and were initially confused before eventually grasping their fate and working together to form an alliance against both the aliens and human bad guys.

You can buy a copy of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher for £5.99 from Amazon which I think is a bargain price for such an exciting and entertaining read.

As a very brief aside, I got so hooked on the adventures of Jonesy and his friends that I popped along to Ebay and against my better judgement bought the 2003 movie adaption of the book. The review is to follow, but to sum up my thoughts on the film: DON'T BOTHER.

Summary: One of the best Stephen King novels I've read.