I read this a long time ago, so forgive me if the details are distorted.

In a lot of ways, The Tommyknockers was a pretty cool book. There’s the mystery of the artefact buried in the woods. It’s causing lots of strange, miraculous, and often creep behaviour in the residents of the town alongside. It’s also turning them into mechanical geniuses somehow and slowly causing physical alterations in them too. It won’t let the inhabitants leave the town. There’s the excitement of encountering a potential hero who is immune to the artefact’s evil power and could save the town from the horrors engulfing it. But every potential hero is thwarted, and eventually, when the next one appears, you’ve had just about enough of this bloody repetitive plot. The Tommyknockers is way, way too long, although that’s hardly surprising, since it is a Stephen King novel. There were things I really liked about the end, and a great deal of the novel was truly disturbing, but it’s so long it desensitises you to its own horrors until the only thing that’s bugging you is how many more pages are left. ( )

King has written a lot better, but he's written a lot worse too. Average. ( )

Stephen King claims not remembering writing this book and blames his coke habit. Per his own description: "They get inside your head and kinda … tommyknock around, I guess." ( )

One of King's sillier books, but still lots of fun and very readable. I think the flying Coke machine saves the book, actually. ( )

Grotesque for grotesque's sake.

I've never read a piece of fiction that frightened me or gave me nightmares; perhaps I lack imagination. I read this two decades ago however and still remember the line "(so-and-so) is on Altair IV" startling me. I'll give it an extra half star for that. But it's easier to shock 15 year olds, and easier to titillate them with sex and gory violence, which is probably why I liked this book back then. I read an interview with King years later where he recalled being high on cocaine throughout the writing of The Tommyknockers. That explains the book's general craziness.

I read this book at a time of my life when I thought anything NOT assigned by my English teacher was a masterpiece. And even back then I remember being subtly disappointed, excepting the well executed final scene. ( )