Cell

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On October 1st, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He's just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He's already picked up a gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay's feeling good about the future.

That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature...and then begins to evolve.

There are one hundred and ninety-three million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance.

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Clay and his fellow travelers reach a fairground in Kashwak, Maine where they are imprisoned by the communal intelligence and await execution. These fears are justified in Stephen King's tale of a world driven mad through cell phones. But it also comes across as a simplified version of The Stand. The resulting bloodbath reduces the population considerably.Clay Riddle picks his way through the destruction, trying to find his way from Boston back to Maine, where his wife and son may or may not still be alive.

But it lacks the complex and interesting characters, intertwining subplots, and engaging drama of its lengthier shelfmate. Along the way he scavenges for supplies, battles and befriends various other survivors, and begins to deal with the communal intelligence that possesses and directs the "cell phone crazies." This intelligence drives Clay and his fellow travelers toward an area in Maine that has no cell reception. Clay goes, still determined to escape and find his family. Remember when we were afraid that holding our cell phones next to our heads was cooking our brains. Read it before The Stand if you can. If you see it that way, you will like it.

That's what made it less enjoyable for me--the unavoidable comparison. Like The Stand, it has an initial global catastrophe, separation of the survivors into "good guys" and "bad guys," and is driven by a journey through the wreckage of our civilization.

Then go away somewhere for the weekend and read The Stand. Strange tones emanating from cell phones turn their users into mindless, frenzied killers who immediately turn on the normal humans around them.

I was happy when Stephen King released the longer, "editorial cuts restored" edition of The Stand. The reader is left to discover if Clay escapes or finds his wife and son.This book could be turned into a great zombie movie.

It is fast-paced, bloody and isn't weighed down with a lot of complexity or exposition. I don't want any more of Cell.Read this book if you are a diehard fan of Stephen King, zombie movies, or of dying hard.

I'm still impressed that anybody could write something that good.

CellBy Stephen KingThe phone is ringing, but you'd better not pick it up. If you expect to fall in love with your characters or get an in-depth back story as King gives us in other recent novels Lisey's Story or Duma Key, you may come away disappointed. We follow Clay as he has to fight through zombies, learning their patterns as they continue to evolve, in order to find his son.Along the way Clay meets several colorful characters including Tom McCourt, a confirmed bachelor whose cell phone was broken by his cat, and Alice Maxwell, a high school freshman who witnesses her mother's zombification.

The author shows us just how quickly our technology-dependant nation can be driven into chaos.Cell follows Clay Riddell, an emerging artist who finds himself in the thick of madness after making a successful business deal in Boston. The characters continually move from one danger zone to another and King provided just enough character development to make me care if they live or die. In Cell, Stephen King takes us to a world where cell phone technology has been turned against its users, turning anyone who uses a cell phone into a flesh-hungry zombie.

However, don't come to Cell expecting deep characters as, in the tradition of classic zombie flicks, this is very much a plot-driven novel. Clay (like King, incidentally) does not use cell phone technology. However, his son back home in Maine does have a phone.

Still, the action (immediate and constant) along with King's imagining of this what-if scenario was enough to keep me turning the pages in the wee hours of the night. However, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys their science fiction or horror novels light on suspense and heavy on action.

Thought the book was really suspenseful. I enjoyed it thoroughly since you have to wonder if indeed could something happen to those who use their cell phones too much. Made me think, definintely a read for someone who is concerned about possible permanent affects from cell phones.

It would be unfriendly this far down the line to do anything but listen. I'm giving this one a 5 star rating because reading Stephen King after all these years is more like having an interesting conversation with a good old friend. Doesn't matter what we talk about anymore, just so long as we are together and the words are flowing. King is the preferred storyteller among my greater group of literary friends. And CELL is as good as anything else we've ever talked about.

The novel's ending leaves the reader wondering what happened. It's as if King just got tired of writing and just stopped -- there's no real resolution of the conflict. Too many important questions are left unanwered.