Firestarter

‘Firestarter'(1980), is the second of the twelve Stephen King novels that I’m planning to read for my Stephen King 2026 Reading Challenge. I enjoyed it much more than ‘’Salem’s Lot‘, the first book in the Challenge.

I’ve always thought Stephen King would have been a force in any genre he chose to write in. Some of my favourite Stephen King stories are the ones that have only the smallest measure of woo-woo factor. With ‘Firestarter’, Stephen King showed that he can write a first-rate Speculative Fiction Thriller.

The writing is taut, focused and vivid. The story is both unrushed and tense. Stephen King moves us fluidly between the present and the past, using the events in each to amplify the emotional impact of the show more other.

The story stands on three pillars: the possibllity that a drug could unlock mental powers in a subject, which could then be inherited by their children; the willingness to accept the existence of a powerful, ruthless, covert government agency that will lie, coerce and even kill to get its way; the sadness and innocence of Charlie Magee, a young girl born with enormoous destructive potential who is desperately afraid that one day she will use it and who has had everything and everyone taken from.

For the first two pillars, Stephen King extrapolates from CIA and Defence Department programs investigating and trying to weaponise ESP and Psychokinesis, by creating The Shop, a well-funded, covert Federal agency that operates outside the law, with negligible government oversight. The Shop and its operatives are scarily plausible, perhaps even more so today, in these times of ICE, than when ‘Firestarter’ was published in 1980, but Stephen King increases the sense of threat and malice by creating John Rainbird, The Shop’s top assassin and intergoator. I think Rianbird is one of King’s scariest characters. His combination of high insight, low empathy and mystical obsession with the moment of death is a powerful cocktail. Seeing him work with precision and dispassionate skill to manipulate a little girl that he admires and intends to kill is much more horrifying than the vampire rising from its coffin in ‘Salem’s Lot’.

For me, what made this book exceptional was the third pillar: the character of Charlie Magee. Stephen King took the time to make the reader care about Charlie and her father rather than rushing on to the spectacular scenes of destruction. The pacing is impressive, it starts relatively low-key with Charlie and her father on the run, builds to a spectacular confrontation and escape and then is followed by an almost unbearably tense period when Charlie and her father are prisoners of The Shop, and John Rainbird is abusing Charlie’s trust. When the moment of destruction finally arrived, it was biblical, graphic and emotionally satisfying.

The story could have ended there, but I’m glad that it didn’t. Stephen King took the time to consider consequences and to factor in Charlie's personality and personal ethics. The ending he came up with made me smile.

I recommend the audiobook of ‘Firestarter’,narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

https://youtu.be/FIDh1q30u_0?si=I_rPYt0mYUL3Y5qH show less

I love reading reviews of Uncle Stevie's books from other readers here because there's always a qualification to their praise - "I love him but he's too long" "He's the best but this is the same book as Carrie" blah, blah, blah.

Look, a lot of King's work is a take on something that has gone before, like [Salem's Lot] or [The Shining]. He likes to try to imagine some of the classic horror and sci-fi tropes from a different angle. So, when I re-read [Firestarter] I realized that this is basically a reimagining of [Frankenstein], with a little girl as the monster. Sure, there's a little Koontzian mix with The Shop and the testing, but she's the monster trying to deal with being the monster. And, sure, there's a lot of narrative trapped in show more Charlie's brain or her dad's brain, but we are talking about a story in which the brain is the thing, after all.

This is not horror-King but more thriller-King. I think a lot of people would be hard pressed to identify this one as a King book at all if they didn't know it going into the read from the movie or cultural knowledge. Ultimately, I think too many readers just want to find a way to criticize Uncle Stevie, like all the critics have done for years.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended - don't pay attention to the other low rating, it's sour grapes show less

There is a lot to like in this story. The concept has always fascinated me, especially given the veneer of plausibility as the US government does have a well-documented history of unethical human experimentation and has had programs investigating psychic phenomena. So the setup, and the description of Charlie and Andy McGee’s wild talents, the psychological manipulations, and the action scenes are wonderfully entertaining. The characters who people The Shop are fantastic.

But the book is not without its problems. The pacing is awful, dragging endlessly in spots until the final third of the book. This is also very much a book of its time, with now cringe-inducing stereotypes toward race, gender, and sex. Charlie, who is only 7 years show more old, behaves with a maturity and critical thinking ability far beyond her years, even for a child who has spent all her life having to conceal her essential self and years on the run from deadly government agents.

Audiobook, via Audible. The performance by Dennis Boutsikaris is excellent.

I read this for The 24 Tasks of the Festive Season, for the Guy Fawkes Night door; the book task: Set in the UK, political thrillers, involving any monarchy or revolution; books about arson or related to burning. show less

Having always been a big fan of the film, I was anxious to experience the fire starting abilities of Charlie in book form. Did the book end up leaving a burned imprint in my mind as much as the movie did?

Stephen King's Firestarter, written in his older school style, begins with Charlie and Andy McGee on the run from a company called “The Shop”. The first few chapters are riddled with intriguing flashbacks to fill the reader in on current day situations and up the desperation of the protagonists plight. Multiple point of view is used, showing each persons personal stake in each matter – this was an effective way to pen the novel, working the best for this kind of story. Even though some of the ‘villains’ do actions the reader show more may not agree with, it’s easier to see why when you’re in their heads.

King writes characters clearly, from the adorable little Charlie to the hardened death-obsessed Rainfield. The relationship between her and the father is endearing, the personal internal issues she struggles through harsh, and the chemistry between everyone brilliant. One thing that made this book soar was the relationships and personal motivations. It wasn’t about starting fires or avoiding putting them out – it was about what these fires meant to each person, and the lives of all. The feelings of the characters is easy to sympathize with; the unfairness of it all spoke volumes and could apply to several situations not involving pyrokinesis issues in real life.

The pacing was concrete as well. From start to finish I kept reading, absorbing the medium pace. Something was always happening, with the flashbacks never hurting interest I held.

King’s style really shines here. While later he can sometimes overdo the writing bit, and earlier on he was a bit short and choppy, here he was at his prime. The words are colorful, not weighed down by senseless description and unneeded detail. Paragraphs flowed together fine, creating a piece that was easy to lose myself into. He avoided overusing huge words that boasted a large vocabulary, yet didn’t keep things so simple it felt like it could have been written by any one other than an exceptional writer.

The gore and violence is not overly heavy, but it’s there when it needs to be, particularly when the Shop is at play and the atrocity of the experiments. The theme of novel is powerful, and the idea behind the fire starting child is impressionable. What most of the world wouldn’t give for a power such as this! (Without the side effects of experimentation and government agencies chasing you from Hell and back, of course.)

The beginning is heady stuff, making emotion strong from the opening line – the ending was a worthy tearjerker that left a heavy feeling in the chest, coated with an ironic realism.

I recommend Firestarter to anyone wanting to test the King waters, fans of King who haven’t yet read it, or fans of reading in general. It’s an emotionally driven story with a unique plot, convincing characters, and strong wrap-up. Buy it for the collection. show less

En gång under deras tid som universitetsstudenter behövde Charlies föräldrar alla pengar de kunde få. När de blev erbjudna 2000 kronor var för att delta i ett experiment sade de ja. Det fanns ju en chans att de bara blev injicerade med koksaltlösning men annars så var det ju inget som skulle döda dem, de var ju en frivillig studie, och dessutom fick de ju 2000 kronor för besväret oavsett. Fast det blev inte riktigt så. Det enda som blev så var väl de där 2000 kronorna, och de tog ju snabbt slut.

Deras dotter Charlie är inte som andra barn. Hon kan få saker att brinna. Bara genom att tänka det, genom att vilja det. Hennes pappa kan bestämma över andra, men bara ibland för det lämnar alltid kvar en arg huvudvärk. show more Hennes mamma är död, mördad av den hemliga statliga Butiken. Det är Butiken som de rymmer ifrån, Charlie och hennes pappa. Vad det är de vill är inte hennes pappa säker på, men de vet båda att vad det än är så är det inte bra. Men en sak är Charlie säker på. De ska aldrig få henne. Aldrig.

Vad ska man säga? Som vanligt är Kings berättelser som att komma hem - och detta var en väldigt härlig hemkomst. Han har visserligen en viss sorts karaktärer i sina historier men han lyckas ändå på något sätt göra dem unika, och väldigt levande. Hans värld är avslappnad och vardaglig även mitt i en science fiction thriller på ett sådant sätt att den lever sitt eget liv, och det är svårt att lämna världen på annat sätt än att tvingas när det inte finns fler sidor kvar att läsa.

Eldfödd är inget undantag till detta, och jag kan inte riktigt förstå varför jag inte läst den tidigare. Ibland känns King inte märkvärdig alls, men på något sätt är det precis det som gör honom så märkvärdig. Att läsa en sci-fi som till stor del består av att vara på rymmen men som samtidigt känns så vardaglig, så mysig är bland den bästa läsningen man kan få. show less

It feels like a year ago when I started this book and it was merely a month. (Would have been shorter if being an adult wasn't so time consuming...) I don't say that to mean it was a hard read- quite the opposite for me. What I do mean is that the events at the beginning of this book feel so far away compared to where it ends up. King does a swell job of showing the passage of time, I really feel like Charlie and I did some growing up together.

Stephen King's work are in two categories for me; verbose-sluggish-long-winded and sweet-to-the-point-exceptional. Firestarter is in the latter for me, despite being nearly 500 pages. I enjoyed most of the POVs and even the ones that did feel slow brought an interesting perspective to the story. show more But Charlie McGee is the star of the show, I love her so much. It gets me excited to check out the movies adapted from this book. I'm convinced she's hosting the Phoenix Force.

King writes some of his best horror here that I've read- we get an insane eye-gouging scene in the first 40 pages! Though, the rest of the book doesn't quite keep that standard. I am also glad that despite a lot of this taking place in a medical/scientific setting, we are not bored to tears with professional jargon. It's appreciated.

Unfortunately, there are some major issues with some of the other characterizations. We have the classic King trope of 'woman is sexually assaulted', though it is thankfully only mentioned, and happens before we meet the character. (Later the same character is mutilated and stuffed in an ironing board cabinet by government officials, but I'm not saying they're connected...) Some things can be shrugged off as 'of the time' nonsense, like use of r*tard (thankfully not really used derogatorily), but we have some serious character issues that make you wonder about King's outlook on the world. As if it's really a secret at this point what kind of man he is. (All slurs that I caught in this book are listed under the content warning.)

There are two major issues I have, larger than what I've mentioned above, and they come in the form of two characters. One is a minor presence- an Evil Government Doctor with a creepy smile. No problems there. Until he gets messed with a bit and so called 'deviance' is revealed- he cross dressed when he was younger and thought he was pretty when he did it. Yikes. His POV is short and there are things I love about it, but I can't ignore the fact that of all references to 'transvestites' (as named in this text), it is within a bad person who harms and scares children and then is driven to kill himself, with nary a thought of guilt at his charged demise.

The second major issue is not minor at all. We get a lot of time in the POV of John Rainbird (as well as what other (white) people think of him). He is Native American, missing one eye and has a badly scarred face, is described as an "ogre", tall and large, and speaks "musically". King is one step away from calling him savage. He is one of the most disturbed characters I've seen King write, meditating on the thoughts of murdering, and then doing so without any hesitancy. He makes literally everyone around him uncomfortable, except Charlie, who he wants to know "intimately"- but no, not that way though...! It's too bad, this character has one of the best lines I've read:
“You look, you see a monster… Perhaps that is because you are a white man. White men see monsters everywhere. White men look at their own pricks and see monsters.”

I wish I could rate this higher, but these issues are significant in my opinion. Stephen King just sucks. show less

Having always been a big fan of the film, I was anxious to experience the fire starting abilities of Charlie in book form. Did the book end up leaving a burned imprint in my mind as much as the movie did?

Stephen King's Firestarter, written in his older school style, begins with Charlie and Andy McGee on the run from a company called “The Shop”. The first few chapters are riddled with intriguing flashbacks to fill the reader in on current day situations and up the desperation of the protagonists plight. Multiple point of view is used, showing each persons personal stake in each matter – this was an effective way to pen the novel, working the best for this kind of story. Even though some of the ‘villains’ do actions the reader show more may not agree with, it’s easier to see why when you’re in their heads.

King writes characters clearly, from the adorable little Charlie to the hardened death-obsessed Rainfield. The relationship between her and the father is endearing, the personal internal issues she struggles through harsh, and the chemistry between everyone brilliant. One thing that made this book soar was the relationships and personal motivations. It wasn’t about starting fires or avoiding putting them out – it was about what these fires meant to each person, and the lives of all. The feelings of the characters is easy to sympathize with; the unfairness of it all spoke volumes and could apply to several situations not involving pyrokinesis issues in real life.

The pacing was concrete as well. From start to finish I kept reading, absorbing the medium pace. Something was always happening, with the flashbacks never hurting interest I held.

King’s style really shines here. While later he can sometimes overdo the writing bit, and earlier on he was a bit short and choppy, here he was at his prime. The words are colorful, not weighed down by senseless description and unneeded detail. Paragraphs flowed together fine, creating a piece that was easy to lose myself into. He avoided overusing huge words that boasted a large vocabulary, yet didn’t keep things so simple it felt like it could have been written by any one other than an exceptional writer.

The gore and violence is not overly heavy, but it’s there when it needs to be, particularly when the Shop is at play and the atrocity of the experiments. The theme of novel is powerful, and the idea behind the fire starting child is impressionable. What most of the world wouldn’t give for a power such as this! (Without the side effects of experimentation and government agencies chasing you from Hell and back, of course.)

The beginning is heady stuff, making emotion strong from the opening line – the ending was a worthy tearjerker that left a heavy feeling in the chest, coated with an ironic realism.

I recommend Firestarter to anyone wanting to test the King waters, fans of King who haven’t yet read it, or fans of reading in general. It’s an emotionally driven story with a unique plot, convincing characters, and strong wrap-up. Buy it for the collection. show less