The Tommyknockers are coming... (The Tommyknockers - Stephen King)

Member Name: nakmeister

Product:	The Tommyknockers - Stephen King
Date:	15/03/09 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great characters, suspenseful build up

Disadvantages: Overly long

Bobby had been out walking with her faithful dog one day in the woods behind her home in Haven, Maine, when she found (well, tripped over actually), a piece of shiny metal sticking out of the ground. Her dog doesn't like it, as he whimpers and cowers away, but she is intrigued and starts to dig, completely losing track of time as she does so. It's much, much bigger than she had at first thought, huge in fact. The work of excavating it consumes most of her time. When her best friend and occasionally lover, a drunk poet named Gard, returns to Haven, he finds Bobby thin as a rake, and acting very strangely. What's more, her dogs eyes glow with an alien green light. Soon the whole town seems to have become entranced in some sort of spell, they say they are 'becoming'. Everyone except Gard.

This book got me gripped from the start, and hooked me all the way through. King's writing style is excellent, his imagination vast, and the characters are very believable. I loved the references to one of his other books, 'The Dead Zone' which I read last year. Apparently there are numerous references to characters and plot from other books in many of his stories, almost all set in Maine, New England, but having only read three books so far I couldn't say. My only criticism is that at 800 or so pages it was overly long and probably could have been shortened by a couple of hundred pages without distracting anything from the story. I'd read some advice from Stephen King once that you should always cut at least 10% of everything you write - if he follows his own advice, I dread to think how long winded this book was originally! Still, very good read which I would recommend.

This review has previously appeared on librarything.com

Summary: A classic horror novel