A Royal Disappointment (From a Buick 8 - Stephen King)

Member Name: xBorgx

Product:	From a Buick 8 - Stephen King
Date:	30/07/09 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: As always... Great Prose

Disadvantages: Not a very good story...

Stephen King has featured in my reading habits a lot over the years. His very style is enjoyable and eye opening at times. I think I will always consider 'The Stand' as my favourite book, but he has written many good ones of late too, such as 'Bag of Bones' and 'Dreamcatcher' (albeit a disappointing film). I await each new book with an air akin to that of a child waiting for Christmas morning, as I was with 'From a Buick 8.'

So, Imagine my disappointment when reading it!

Firstly, I will give you details of the story: Ned Wilcox's father has died and he starts working for the police force his father worked for, generally cleaning up the place at weekends - he is still at school - and learning how to use dispatch. Everyone there loves the kid.

Troop D (a division of the Pennsylvania police department) has a secret, and that secret is hiding in Shed B of the barracks where they are based. This secret might look pretty harmless, for it is a Buick 8 Roadmaster. But the car has a lot of history about it, which Ned Wilcox is about to find out. The sergeant of Troop D - Sandy Dearborn - has decided it is about time Ned knows the secret of the Buick 8, along with how and why Ned's father was so horrifically killed in a road accident a year ago - he was crushed by a lorry.

The car came to them after it was left at a gas station and the driver (a very odd looking guy) seemingly did a runner. When they received the car, they found many odd things about the Buick, most importantly the fact that it could not possibly be of this world. Whilst the car is being inspected one of the member of Troop D disappear never to be seen again. Everyone feels that it was the car, that the car opened up its trunk and ate him whole. Troop D decide to keep quiet about their Buick 8, not wanting it to become a Roswell type of thing. They learn more about it as a result.

The car performs strange lightshows within the shed it is kept and after these light shows have finished, things disappear, like Hamsters But things... arrive also, such as bat-like creatures that cannot possibly be of this earth. Ned's father is one of those people who belong to Troop D who have a big interest in the car and what it is. They perform experiments and such just to try and figure out what the car is, why it is here and what it wants...

Questions are asked such as where it came from, where things go to when they disappear and where the things - such as the bat things - come from. Ned Wilcox and Sandy perform autopsies on the things that come out of the Buick, but still they have no answers.


Buick 8 is quite horrific at times and there are visual scenes of gore that might well make you want to hurl. It is well written and I guess it is one you feel you have to finish once you have begun. However, I was not impressed. I expected much more. I did not care much for the characters, and I felt it was too overly padded out. Mr King does pad out his books and I usually find this fine, for I like his writing style. However, the Buick 8 style of padding is not interesting or entertaining. The worse thing about this book is that it promises much but does not deliver - it really does not seem to go anywhere at all, leaving the reader with many questions left unanswered.

Perhaps I have read too much Stephen King of late (Black House, Everything's Eventual, Dreamcatcher...) I might well have OD'd on this best-selling writing from Maine, USA. Still, I suppose you cannot be perfect all of the time, you can sometimes miss the mark - and Stephen King certainly has done so this time, as he has done in past (Pet Semetery), but not for a long time!


Also written by me (slightly altered) as 'Borg' for Ciao UK...

Summary: If you have never read him before, choose something else...