Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Cell

I'm not much of a Stephen King fan anymore. I loved his early stuff, Carrie, 'Salem's Lot and of course The Stand. The Stand is in fact on my top 10 books of all time. Occasionally however I will still pick up a King book. Even more occasionally he'll still entertain me.

Cell starts the action right away. Our hero Clay just got a great offer from a large comic house to publish his comic. He is ecstatic and can't wait to get back home to Maine to share the news with his son and estranged wife. He decides to stop at a truck for some ice cream and all hell breaks loose. Basically some kind of pulse is sent through all cell phones so anyone who is talking on one immediately becomes a violent savage creature. I'll spare you the gory details but it's pretty nasty. The book then becomes a survival story with Clay picking up traveling buddies as he makes his way home. Even though he has no idea if there is a home to go to.

Initially I was put off by this book. It seemed so much of a Stand retread but the one thing I have always said is that King may not be a great writer but he is a master storyteller. This book proves that. At some point this weekend I realized I didn't want to put it down. I was dying to see what happens next. In true King style there are no real explanations for what happened, only theories bandied about by the survivors. This is not a flaw however, it's frankly farely realistic. In this type of scenerio the chances of ever knowing what caused the change would be slim at best. The ending was left somewhat up in the air but I didn't find it unsatisfying. It just left me to decide how I wanted things to turn out.

All in all a very good read.

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