... Not being a great fan of "The Dark Tower", it was with great anticipation I awaited the publication of "Cell", which promised to be a return to King's strengths and, hopefully, the kind of invention and story telling that first made me a fan twenty years ago and has turned me into one of ... Read review
This review already contains more than 120 words. As a Ciao member you could earn up to £5 with this review.
A review by Soho_Black on Cell - Stephen King March 5th, 2006
Author's product rating:
Would you read it again?
Maybe
Story
Satisfactory
Characters
Satisfactory
Readability
Average
How does it compare to other works by the same author?
Quite good
Advantages:
A standard, non "Dark Tower" novel from Stephen King
Disadvantages:
Very little that is truly original
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Ever since the publication of 2002's "From a Buick 8", Stephen King's focus has been on finishing his "Dark Tower" series. There has been the odd side trip, into non fiction for "Faithful", his review of the 2004 Boston Red Sox season and the more recent "The Colorado Kid", which was really little more than a short story and not being in King's usual horror style. Not being a great fan of "The Dark Tower", it was with great anticipation I awaited the publication of "Cell", which promised to be a return to King's strengths and, hopefully, the kind of invention and story telling that first made me a fan twenty years ago and has turned me into one of the people he frequently refers to as "Constant Reader" in the years since.
Like many other King fans, I was intrigued to know what he could come up with now. His recent publications have certainly not been amongst his best, almost as if he was writing on auto pilot. Part of this could have been caused by his pre-occupation with "The Dark Tower", so it would be very interesting to see what he could come up with once that was out of the way.
Clay Riddell is on a short stay in Boston, trying to sell a number of his drawings for publication and secure his financial and employment future, as well as provide as best he can for his young son, currently living with his ex-wife. It is during this trip that disaster strikes, not just Boston, but seemingly the whole human race. Someone has managed to send a strange signal to all mobile phones, which has the effect of sending everyone who hears it insane. In an instant, less time than it takes to say "leave a message after the tone", everyone in Boston who had a mobile phone has gone mad and is either trying to kill themselves or trying to kill the person standing closest to them.
Clay is OK, though. For the time being, these people strike randomly and he's lucky. But even more than that, he is blessed by not having a mobile phone. Not everyone does, but this puts Clay in a very small minority. On his way back to his hotel he runs into Tom, whose cat had broken his mobile phone that very morning and Alice, a young girl traumatised by seeing her mother going the same way as everyone else.
Clay has had an even more unpleasant thought, however. A few hundred miles North of Boston, his young son is waiting for him to come home. And his young son has a mobile phone which he sometimes uses, sometimes forgets. Clay has to get to him, to find out if young Johnny is dead, insane, or has gotten as lucky as he has.
The three of them start their journey, having to travel on foot as most of the roads were blocked by people crashing their cars, either due to insanity or intentionally. On the way, they see people exhibiting many strange behaviours as the "phoners", as they start calling them, start to get organised and then start to get powers no-one expected them to have. Clay's purpose becomes two fold - how to stop them, and how to stop them stopping him from reaching his son.
King is not treading new ground here. After all, this is essentially a zombie story. This is a genre he has not really had too much dealing with previously, to be fair, but it's a well trodden path. Admittedly, his method of turning so many people into zombies is pretty unique and the way they develop and adapt afterwards is fairly new in the genre, as far as I know. The major difference here between any standard zombie tale is that the people who are up against them are less concerned with killing them than they are with getting around them and getting to where they want to be.
There are also elements of King's own "The Stand" in here, in that what happens with the phones is pretty much an apocalypse, leaving very few standing. Those who are left seem to fall into one of two groups, although more sane and insane than good and evil, as was the case with "The Stand". Again similarly to that novel, there is a place that they must reach and they are called onwards by signs, although these ones are painted on the road, rather than appearing in dreams. That said, there is some use of dreams to try and influence the future, again mirroring "The Stand".
I enjoyed "Cell", I must admit although I suspect a large part of that enjoyment was due to there being not a single mention of the Crimson King or the Dark Tower, references to which has littered King's writing for the last decade or more. As someone who was never a fan of the epic, this comes as something of a relief and possibly makes me look on "Cell" more kindly than it merits on its own.
It's not a bad story, really. But apart from the parts I've already mentioned, namely how King gets everyone to be a zombie, there is nothing terribly new and original here. In much the same way that "From a Buick 8" touched on themes already explored in "Christine", so King has done the same again, taking "The Stand" and producing a watered down version of it.
It is quite readable, in King's own way. He has seemingly got over the problems he has experienced with over writing and using too much back story, meaning this is a fairly decently paced book, even though the pace at which his characters are moving is necessarily slow due to their mode of travel. Even accounting for this, there is very little sense of stopping for back story, with everything seemingly meaning something, whether immediately or building up to later on.
This isn't a book that will win King, or the horror genre in general, any new fans as anyone who has hated him or it before will find nothing new or different enough to change their minds here. However, I can't see it losing him too many fans, either. Those of us who have been waiting for so long for this book could well be so relieved that it finally exists that the quality may be of lesser consideration. And, after all, it's not too bad. It's a decent enough story, fairly well told and although it will never be my favourite King novel, there are others that I will always consider to be worse.
I find myself with a feeling of ambivalence over this book. Which isn't really surprising, as many of his recent novels, pretty much ever since 1998's "Bag of Bones", have left me feeling much the same way. It's as if King has been writing on auto pilot for the last few years, waiting for an idea to kick him into life long enough to get it written down, but without there being enough there to really get him involved in the project. King writes almost as if he's getting tired of it and as if it's become a job to him, rather than a vocation or a calling.
If you're a mad King fan like myself, I'm not about to tell you to not buy this book, as you probably already did. Indeed, with the "new book" offers that are around, if you're going to buy this book anyway, now is the time to buy. Amazon has it for £8.10, BOL for £6.19 and copies are already starting to appear on eBay from 99p. If you can't wait for delivery, as I wasn't, the best high street offer I have seen was £8.99 in Waterstones.
If you're not a mad King fan, you'll probably be able to live without this book until the paperback arrives and if you're not a fan at all, you won't be missing anything by missing it completely. I suspect that "Cell", like many of King's recent works, will go on my shelf for a little while and only get read again once I've forgotten that it wasn't really all that good, even if it does while away the daily commute quite happily. In the meantime, if I want something a bit like this, only a lot better, I'll probably just read "The Stand" again and if you've not read that, King fan or not, that's a book I can and would recommend.
Advantages: Unique take on the zombie genre, has a fear factor. Disadvantages: Poor logic to plot, suspect characters, no passion in writing.
...seem to be those without cell phones. A dawning realization strikes terror into Clay's heart. His son has a cell phone, it is rarely charged but what if it was at the time of "The Pulse"? Clay and his new found friends Tom and Alice escape across a burning Boston in a race against time to get to his son before he switches on his phone.
"Cell" is the long awaited novel for Stephen King fans as it is the first in many years to have no obvious association ... ...King. The premise of Cell phones being responsible for a mass madness that turns the population into zombies (known as "phoners") is certainly an original take in a much travelled genre. However, King's tenuous explanations rely a bit too much on leaps of faith in terms of logic. The presumption that human brains and computers are very similar is a handy plot device but leaves the reader a little bemused and non-believing. Something rare in a King ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Decent idea, it's written by King Disadvantages: Not his best work
...needed to be explained - Cell didn't do that. The mysterious signal sent to the phones was never explained satisfactorily beyond the terrorist attack - no clever theorizing here which I would expect from King (call me fussy) - to me, this meant that King has just had the great idea for the book and then got lazy and not tried to expand, just fallen back on the apocalypse theme which worked so well in the Stand.
As a stand alone novel, it is enjoyable ... ...and how much explanation he requires - perhaps I just expect too much from King these days and a virgin reader may really enjoy this and find the plot entirely plausible? Other things that bothered me were the solution to curing phoners who hadn't been infected on the 'initial' bout - it just didn't ring true to me - the solution was computer related and as a bit of a techie, it just sounded like he hadn't bothered too much with research, a bit like ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Exciting, gripping, a welcome return to mainstream horror from King Disadvantages: None, except for the ending. Frustrating as hell.
...soon as I could pre-order Cell I did, the synopsis on the inside jacket cover gripping - - "Civilisation slipped into its second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood, but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. It was as if it had been waiting to go. On October 1, God was in His heaven, the stock market stood at 10'140, and most of the planes were on time (except for those landing and taking off ... ...- I was hooked.
Cell is little more than a modern-day Zombie story but King's flair and imagination have brought the archaic category slap-bang into the twenty-first century with style and panache. The story revolves around Clayton Riddell, a struggling artist who - at the beginning of the book - is in a bouncingly good mood thanks to having finally struck a golden contract with his latest cartoon. Clay barely has any time to enjoy his new-found ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Has a 'What If' feel about it Disadvantages: Nothing new
...that above, I didn't dislike Cell and actually found it an enjoying read at times, even going as far as being happy I shelled out the extra couple of quid to get the Hardback edition - but it does have a lot of similarities to The Stand, the 'Pulse' wiping out a lot of the world, A 'Good Vs Evil' storyline, The central characters first hearing from the leader of the evil via dreams, and a climatic ending - it was all done 28 years ago in The Stand, ... ...used in Cell weren't even common knowledge back then and the use of them in this tale makes it even more chilling.
So if you've got a few quid to spare and want something different then give it a go, but if you're choosing between this and another one, then wait for the paperback release. ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: a new stephen king book! Disadvantages: seems slightly rushed
This is my first book review so please bear with me and let me know how to improve it!
Cell, Stephen King's latest venture - out now in hard back copy, immediately tells us the central theme of the book by its title and the images on the front cover - cellphones. This is slightly unusual for King to choose such a short, descriptive title, but this is about the only break from King's normal style that we see. The plot of this story is (as outlined ... ...no plot spoilers here!) an apocalyptic one. In less than a month, civilisation as we know it (or more accurately, the americans know it, as there are no global references in this book) is over. This apocalypse has been caused by what has been termed the Pulse - a signal transmitted that is picked up by every mobile phone in usage, and causes the listener to go berserk. The story follows a handful of survivors who either eschewed the use of mobile ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
...childrens guardians at Crickley hall.
Seraphina Blaney.
School bully.
Frank Mulley.
Bus driver.
And many more lugubrious characters.
More Opinions -
I am by no means a fan of Horror, I am more a Frank Herbert reader than James Herbert.
But this book is simply a Cracker!
The hardback book has 600 paqes, its a Big read and every page is a delight.
You won't be disappointed.
I Couldn't put it down !!!
Last year my surprise read was 'CELL' by StephenKing, a fantastic book but this year, up til now, it's Crickley Hall.
Greg....
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: A likeable main character Disadvantages: In a story that doesn't grip the reader
....
The major problem I had with “Blaze” Is that any synopsis makes it sound better than it actually is. Like StephenKing’s own “Cell” and Dean Koontz’s “Velocity”, there is a great idea in here, but it doesn’t get fully explored and the novel just seems to stop abruptly, rather than ending, as if there was a specific word count Bachman/King was working to and he reached it.
It is a bit of a shame, as Blaze is someone you can’t help but like. Admittedly, he’s a habitual criminal in the midst of committing the most serious crime of his life, but he comes across as a decent enough chap. The way he relates to both the kidnap victim and the way simple things surprise or please him are both very touching and the whole thing is almost a case of Stockholm Syndrome in reverse. The problem is that no matter how much I found myself liking Blaze, the story...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: It has James Herbert's name on the cover Disadvantages: Repetition, ponderous prose, obstructive footnotes
...on about time, and this time he's had to take it out of the main text into a footnote in an attempt to get his point across. The first footnote occurs on page 8 of the paperback release; the last occurs on page 471 of a 503-page novel. Honestly, it made the whole story drag.
The sex is in the book too. This time Herbert turns his hand to necrophilia, the erotic attraction to - or sexual contact with - corpses. Enough already. It is ultimately the necrophilia that helps lead our narrator to a solution to his problem, so Herbert has kept in context with his story, but I just think he could have found another way to do it.
Whilst StephenKing's recent novel The Cell is a modern day take on his earlier novel The Stand it is still an excellent novel in its own right; Herbert's retake on Fluke in Nobody True falls flat on its face...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
very helpful 13.08.2006
Compare Cell - Stephen King to other similar Horror Books
30.04.2008
