Stinger

Residents of a Texas backwater town find themselves beset by an evil alien from outer space and they must learn to overcome their own prejudices if they are going to survive the night. Reads like an old '80s sci-fi monster flick along the lines of "The Thing"...and it's a testament to McCammon's writing skill that he is able to use almost 600 pages to describe just 24 hours worth of action yet still keep thing interesting.

A thoroughly-engaging piece of pulpy sci-fi elevated well beyond its somewhat prosaic plot by McCammon's masterful storytelling skills. Fast-paced, lightly-plotted, and abundant with tropes, "Stinger" still comes through as a shining example of just how much fun light, well-written fiction can be. The characters are well-realized and interestingly developed, the pacing is tight and brisk, lending itself to a flurry of page-turning joy that had me brewing a second pot of coffee just so I could stay up and read way past my bedtime.

Two alien entities play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse against the backdrop of a crumbling Texas border town already ravaged by a dying economy, racial tension, and other misfortunes. The story is rich with show more pathos, heroism, redemption, and hope...very much in the way of a well-designed 'made for tv' movie from the mid-1980's. But for all the cheese, McCammon never loses sight of the pulpy sci-fi roots that inspired the tale and he writes with great heart and gusto about aliens with a penchant for baseball and Ray Harryhausen monsters come to terrifying life.

Probably a 4-star book in a fairer review, but reader bias (I really LOVED this book in spite of its unsophisticated limitations) kicks it firmly up to a 5-star masterpiece of well-crafted, thoroughly-enjoyable candy-coated neo-pulp science fiction with a strong soul behind it. show less

I have no idea what to rate this one. Overall, I enjoyed it, so I'm going with four stars.

In the first fifty pages of this book, I actually thought, This one's going to be his best book. It started strong, but then immediately applied the brakes and slowed right down until about the halfway mark. When the titular villain finally...finally showed up, things got better again. Not fantastic, but better.

Up to this point, seven books in, McCammon hasn't seemed to have cracked the secret recipe of characterization vs action yet. He seems to lean too far in one direction or the other. The first half of this novel was spent introducing the unnecessarily large cast, then the second half was spent beating the shit out of them.

And then there was show more the story. At its base, this is a SF story. Two aliens land on Earth, one running from the other. Layered over that is a horror novel of possession and monsters. I'm going to stop right here and say that, with the possible exception of the first two Alien movies, SF Horror usually doesn't work well for me.

But this story was similar to about 80% of the Stan Lee stories at the dawn of the Marvel Superhero age. Stan, for all his fame and personality, really had a limited range when it came to storytelling, and his favourite story usually involved an alien coming to earth, wreaking havoc, either intentionally or not, then being defeated, typically with a parting comment along the lines of, "These Earthlings are surprisingly ______ (fill in the blank: intelligent, powerful, resourceful, resilient). I'll never come back!"

This novel cribs from that stereotypical Stan Lee plot. It also steals liberally from John Carpenter's The Thing which came out six years before this novel. Finally, just for shits and giggles, I think, McCammon also decided to toss in some Romeo and Juliet. Because, Shakespeare!

Anyway, for all of that, it mostly works. My biggest issues around a novel that involves aliens interacting with us is how human the aliens often are. Or how earth-like. Basically, the big bad is a walking scorpion. Which is silly, because the true alien is more of a centipede/slug. And when it takes over a human body, it speaks with the same Texan accent, uses the same colloquialisms, thinks in the same terms (taking hostages, revenge, etc).

I was actually quite happy when McCammon showed us the true forms of both aliens. Because for a few pages, we actually got aliens.

So, in the end, the book that I thought had the opportunity to be his best, stands right now as #2 on my least favourite, not quite as dreadful as Baal and tied with Night Boat. show less

*Partial spoilers ahead*

Appealing horror/sci-fi potboiler set in a small Texas town, with a hostile alien bounty hunter (headquartered in a sort of living mothership covered with scaly armor) pursuing a more benign extraterrestrial entity and terrorizing a cast of likable, sympathetic Earthlings in the process. McCammon's most entertaining novel, Stinger is a beach book from another age: a time when horror writers could still give free rein to their imaginations and didn't have to churn out stacks of generic zombie crapola to make ends meet. Not the stuff of classics, but a whole lot of fun to read.

Stinger is the story of a little Texas town named Inferno. Inferno is dying, slowly and painfully. Since the mine closed down, there is little work and a lot of rusting dreams. The people that are left behind to witness Inferno's gasping death are a hardy lot. They need to be tough, because something terrible is about to happen that will change the people of Inferno forever.

It unfolds like one of those cheesy 1950's Sci-Fi movies, and that is why it sparkles. This is not a heavy handed, fantasy driven novel. It is not deep, or soul searching, it's just a fun adventure complete with space ships and aliens...some friendly, so not so much. it's about a rag-tag group of people that are forced to ban together against a foe like they have show more never seen before.

My only criticism of the book is the slow pace of the first 125 pages. If the reader can stay with the novel beyond that point, they will be rewarded with a great story! show less

The last hurrah of the great epic small-town-horror genre of the eighties, a well oiled perfectly constructed machine for delivering thrills and nightmares to a dying Texas border town riven by poverty and with rival gangs about to explode into open warfare when an alien bounty hunter arrives to track down its prey and make all those tensions and divisions seem small potatoes by comparison.

This book is pure nostalgia. It's '80s slang, cliches and backdrops. Probably because that's when it was written.

The main themes of Stinger left me feeling a little weird. There are huge streaks of '80s hopefulness. Normalizing race relations, protecting the environment, a healing of the generation gap that was such a big part of the '70s, friendly aliens, the idea that moving on sometimes meant moving up in the world, and an "as luck would have it" financial recovery after the recession disasters that plagued small towns the 1970s. Here's to hoping that the youth of the 2020s/2030s generation can experience what we did in the '80s.

Some of the cliches were tiresome though. I'd forgotten how many slang terms there were for women with show more big boobs.

I understand even less why McCammon didn't reach my bookshelf until now. He's full of the same writing styles as Stephen King. And I loved King back in the day.

I'll keep reading McCammon. He's so much fun. show less