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Loading... Dreamcatcherby Stephen King
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This novel was okay. It could've been better, or worse. Not a bad read, though. (  ) Anagarika | Nov 3, 2009 |  King wrote this long novel while recuperating from the pedestrian-car accident that nearly killed him and, unfortunately, it does show. The story of an alien fungus invading our minds is not as well plotted and suspenseful as most of King’s books, nor is it as fun. But all of us fans are grateful that the master of the modern horror novel is still churning out entertaining reads, even if they are not up to the standards of his earlier works. ( ) sturlington | Sep 15, 2009 | This is really a buddy book, with some gore thrown in for kicks. King is the king of character development, his creations seem to walk off the page. Dreamcatcher is an entertaining read about four men who befriend another with Down's Syndrome-- and then the wild, extra telestrial adventures begin forthwith, culminating with the group saving the world from invasion. (  ) blockbuster1994 | Aug 18, 2009 | I have always been a huge fan of Stephen King's from the very beginning but this book just couldn't hold it together for me. I got about halfway through and, although I tried, I just found it very wanting. It hit the wall! Back Cover Blurb: In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand. A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time is different. This time a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky. Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives as they struggle with a terrible creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past - and in the Dreamcatcher. (  ) mazda502001 | Aug 15, 2009 | King mines his previous work to come up with elements of this story: imagine a cross between The Tommyknockers and IT, throw in the requisite bad language and gross-out scenes and the result is Dreamcatcher. To be fair, the novel isn't as derivative as all that, but King covers some familiar territory here. Four men, friends since they were in grade school, share a past and an unusual friend which tie them together in an unexpected manner. While on their annual hunting expedition in northern Maine, they run into trouble of the alien kind. The military (or a rogue outfit thereof: the distinction is never quite clear) rolls in to clean up and cover up the incident, but the soldiers didn't catch everyone in their net...and the future of the world is at stake. Since the four men are from Derry and the novel jumps back and forth between past and present, we are treated to a reference or three to IT, but nothing so crucial to the storyline that the reader need have previously read that book. And the story is reminiscent of The Tommyknockers in the sense of how the aliens incubate, and that the majority of the story takes place in the deep woods. One of the best things about King's writing, in this and other works, is how he takes the reader inside his characters, especially the boys. He's very good at giving us the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the very thinking processes of his creations. Although there must be others, right now I can't think of another popular writer who depicts the adolescent American male in all his sweetness and vulgarity with such clarity and truth. Alternately, one of the worst things about King's writing is his penchant for over-the-top gross-outs. Be prepared to grimace in disgust from time to time. Some scenes are just plain gruesome. Still, if you have the stomach for it, Dreamcatcher is well worth reading. (  ) avanta7 | Apr 25, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 074343627X, Mass Market Paperback)Stephen King fans, rejoice! The bodysnatching-aliens tale Dreamcatcher is his first book in years that slakes our hunger for horror the way he used to. A throwback to It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher is also an interesting new wrinkle in his fiction.Four boyhood pals in Derry, Maine, get together for a pilgrimage to their favorite deep-woods cabin, Hole in the Wall. The four have been telepathically linked since childhood, thanks to a searing experience involving a Down syndrome neighbor--a human dreamcatcher. They've all got midlife crises: clownish Beav has love problems; the intellectual shrink, Henry, is slowly succumbing to the siren song of suicide; Pete is losing a war with beer; Jonesy has had weird premonitions ever since he got hit by a car. Then comes worse trouble: an old man named McCarthy (a nod to the star of the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers) turns up at Hole in the Wall. His body is erupting with space aliens resembling furry moray eels: their mouths open to reveal nests of hatpin-like teeth. Poor Pete tries to remove one that just bit his ankle: "Blood flew in splattery fans as Pete tried to shake it off, stippling the snow and the sawdusty tarp and the dead woman's parka. Droplets flew into the fire and hissed like fat in a hot skillet." For all its nicely described mayhem, Dreamcatcher is mostly a psychological drama. Typically, body snatchers turn humans into zombies, but these aliens must share their host's mind, fighting for control. Jonesy is especially vulnerable to invasion, thanks to his hospital bed near-death transformation, but he's also great at messing with the alien's head. While his invading alien, Mr. Gray, is distracted by puppeteering Jonesy's body as he's driving an Arctic Cat through a Maine snowstorm, Jonesy constructs a mental warehouse along the lines of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Jonesy physically feels as if he's inside a warehouse, locked behind a door with the alien rattling the doorknob and trying to trick him into letting him in. It's creepy from the alien's view, too. As he infiltrates Jonesy, experiencing sugar buzz, endorphins, and emotions for the first time, Jonesy's influence is seeping into the alien: "A terrible thought occurred to Mr. Gray: what if it was his concepts that had no meaning?" King renders the mental fight marvelously, and telepathy is a handy way to make cutting back and forth between the campers' various alien battlefronts crisp and cinematic. The physical naturalism of the Maine setting is matched by the psychological realism of the interior struggle. Deftly, King incorporates the real-life mental horrors of his own near-fatal accident and dramatizes the way drugs tug at your consciousness. Like the Tommyknockers, the aliens are partly symbols of King's (vanquished) cocaine and alcohol addiction. Mainly, though, they're just plain scary. Dreamcatcher is a comeback and an infusion of rich new blood into King's body of work. --Tim Appelo (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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