Cell

This is the first Stephen King book I've managed to finish in a long time. Of course, my all time favorite is The Dark Tower series. Intrigued by the idea of cell phones turing people into zombies, I had to get this one. However, what I thought this was going to be about and what it ended up being are two different things. Yes, this book is about how a single call changed the way people look at communications over a cell phone. But in my head I wanted to see how the world coped in this new zombified world. And King didn't deliver that story. Instead, he turned it into one man's journey to find his son and understand what may or may not have taken hold of him. Even at the end, I found the book a bit open ended for my tastes and didn't leave me with answers to the questions I wanted. I even read this one in a few hours, so it's a quick read too. This book helps boost my goal of reading more fiction than non-fiction.

Is it possible to enjoy the way a person writes but not the stories they write? This became interesting to me a little over half-way through with thr mutations, but didn't keep my interest. Well written, but not an interesting story to me. Perhaps I'm not a fan of zombie-type apocolypse stories though as I wasn't a fan of the last few I read either.

This may be my least favorite SK book I've read. Where to start? OK, the premise is decent. Although the Japanese horror film Pulse had already been out for some time and the American adaptation came out the same year, this one expands on the idea of technology and humanity warring with one another but swaps computers for cell phones. The key difference in Cell is that King comes off as a bitter technophobe. The book begins with a guy who just absolutely hates cell phones. In proper King fashion, a bunch of horrible stuff happens to those connected to the cell grid. I won't spoil anything, but he does a great job of setting the scenery for the rest of the book. From there, the story becomes flimsy nonsense and we're treated to one of the most head-scratching endings in the King-verse.

Quick rundown of the plot:
- Everybody is on their cell phone all the time
- Are zombies still cool?
- Antagonist named The __ Man (quite the SK trope there)
- ?
- Botched ending

One final thought: As with most any book about technology, the reader is treated with an outside-looking-in view of obsolescence 2 years after publishing. It's funny looking back knowing that King was writing about brick phones and not the smart phones of today. It makes me wonder what would happen in the story if everyone was on iPhones and Galaxys. Does the cell network include the Internet, too, or has the signal in Cell become obsolete as well?

Hello, guys, the plot of this book is The Stand. Just about exactly. This is why this book did not get five stars from me. It's another of Stephen King's “I've run out of new ideas so I will recycle old ones” books.

However, that aside? It's still a pretty damned good book. Again King's incredible skill for character-building shines brightly; the main character was definitely relatable and his driving need to find his son above all else was heartrending at times.

The idea behind the plot – that cellphones can be used to wipe out the “hard drives” of our brains – is definitely something to put you in a nervous mood around your own phone!

My one qualm with this is that it doesn't actually end – King leaves it up to the reader to decide if good things happen or if bad things happen. I'm such a pessimist that my own choice at the end makes it a depressing book! Haha. Kudos to King for another entertaining read.