The Tommyknockers

The first time I read this novel, 30 years ago, it was the first time I'd experienced any major disappointment with Stephen King's writing. Every single novel before this--with the exception of [b:The Eyes of the Dragon|10611|The Eyes of the Dragon|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1430121758l/10611._SY75_.jpg|3083085], which could be pushed to the side due to it being a bit of a YA experiment--had been, to varying degrees, all winners.

Then came The Tommyknockers. Hoo boy.

Back then, I was disappointed with the novel, but couldn't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe it was all the pseudoscience involving batteries and vacuum cleaners. Maybe it was the SF elements. Whatever it was, I show more wasn't crazy about it.

It was with some trepidation that I came back around to this one, having nothing but those feelings of disappointment, and they were only increased from the tragic image I still carry in my mind of Jimmy Smits fighting a big rubber alien in the movie version of this story. The movie did us no favours.

Yet, when I started the book, the entire opening, first with Bobbi, then the extended (and far too long) breakaway to Gard old Gard, then their coming together was actually quite good, if a little bloated.

But then the book breaks away and leaves them to focus on a series of different townsfolk for a few hundred pages, comes back to Gard, skips away again, gives us scenes that could have--and should have--been excised from the final draft.

And through all that, some of King's pseudoscience that had, at the beginning, not been too horribly out of whack (okay, well, yes, if you looked at it askance, eyes squinted, tongue at precisely the right angle, and brain in a very low gear), just seemed to get dumber and dumber as the novel progressed.

Provisionally, Gard is the main character, but that doesn't truly become apparent until about the last third of the book. Prior to that, the reader is thrown all these stories with all these characters, some deserving our empathy, most not, and we're left to puzzle out what it's all about.

It's about, like many of King's novels from [b:The Shining|11588|The Shining (The Shining, #1)|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353277730l/11588._SY75_.jpg|849585] on, about addiction. Unfortunately, I also think this was when his own was developing a life of its own.

This novel's a hot mess. There's a decent novella in there about Bobbi and Gard and Peter the dog, if you strip out most of the supporting characters and wonky science and make it more about the horror of slowly being consumed by your addiction while isolated from the world.

There's also an excellent creepy little story about a boy who accidentally makes his brother disappear and the toll it takes on him afterward.

And the rest? Sorry, for the most part, while there's some well-written showpiece scenes--this is King we're talking about here--the bulk of this novel is, I'm sorry to say, absolute shit.

It was bad the first time around. While I saw some glints of the King brilliance in the re-read, for the most part it was even worse the second time around. It's still a disappointment. show less

i like that while this is ostensibly a ufo and aliens-taking-over-a-town story, it's really a story about friendship. there are strong elements of addiction and community and nuclear power and the climax of the book revolves around the alien issue, but this is about friendship and relationship and doing the right thing. and i really can't get enough of how king writes people and the ways they relate. i'm always so impressed by that.

i'd rate it higher but this could have been edited down a bit, and the climax of the book was a bit farfetched in terms of jim's injuries and his ability to keep going (king does this often, too - pushes his heroes maybe past the point of reality in their heroism, but then most authors do this, no?).

"When he show more got drunk, his heart got hot. The nukes. The goddam nukes. It was symbolic, yeah, okay, you didn't have to be Freud to figure that what he was really protesting was the reactor in his own heart. When it came to matters of restraint, James Gardener had a bad containment system. There was some technician inside who should have long since been fired. He sat and played with all the wrong switches."

"[He] was garrulous-going-on-tiresome."

(2.75 stars)

from jan 2013:

somewhere around 2.5 stars or slightly above. so the thing is - i am really not into books about aliens and their spacecraft (this book), zombies (i think it was the mist and i haven't read it but i think also cell), vampires ('salem's lot), or werewolves (not a focus, but in the talisman). the fact that i liked this book as much as i did in spite of its alien content says quite a bit about how good stephen king is at his craft. how very, very good. he is truly a master storyteller and consistently writes characters more fully than just about anyone out there. i've long used this book (this was a reread for me; i first (and last) read it probably 20 years ago) as an example of how when the characters in a stephen king novel are faced with something unbelievable, stephen king goes about convincing them as he convinces the reader. i was less convinced during this reading than i was when i first read it, but that didn't detract for me (since i'm not into alien stories anyway, i guess) and was more interested in all the peripheral stuff he does. i loved how what he had to say here about nuclear power/war ended up being something so integral to the story. i also loved his subtle references to at least 3 of his other novels (it, the talisman (multiple times), the dead zone, and a totally overt reference to the jack nicholson movie the shining (it made me laugh out loud that he referenced the movie not the book). i loved his character development, as always. i just get sucked into his writing, which eventually gets me into the story, even when it's about aliens. i wanted to not really like this book, because of the alien thing, but just couldn't help myself from liking it, because of stephen king. and in the end, of course, because it's stephen king, while it's "about aliens," it's also really about people and relationships. and he just does that so well. (2.5 stars) show less

If, like me, you're a bit of an sf fan then you may find those elements of this novel to be cheap, derivative and merely a hook to hang the theme of the story from... which in this case seems to be drug abuse. Haven and it's inhabitants symbolise the drug user and the different elements of their personality, with the spaceship symbolising the need to get as high as possible. Apparently, it was after writing it that King gave up drugs, only then realising what the book was about. If this is true then he must have written it in much the same way as Bobbi writes her novel. Actually, if he did write it in that kind of disconnected way it would explain the defects of the book.

I have two main problems with it. Firstly, Gard has to be the most show more boring lead character ever created. BORING. Secondly, King doesn't seen to know who's side he's on. He spends ages gaining your sympathy for Bobbi but then you step outside her and her transformation. You're left in an emotional limbo. Either let us sympathise with those undergoing the change, or give us entirely an outsiders view so we can feel some threat from them.

Still, that said, as always it's a pleasure to listen to King's voice and there are some nice touches, like the destruction of the clock tower and its subsequent disguise. show less

The Tommyknockers is not a fan favorite, but I REALLY like the book. It could be that I'm a fan of Stephen King who also happens to love a good UFO story, so I am more forgiving. I dunno. I like it anyway.

Reclusive Western author Bobbi Anderson stumbles over a chunk of metal in her back field. She decides to dig it up expecting to find anything from a can to a refrigerator. It turns out to be something else. Something massive. Something not of this Earth.

The more the object is unearthed, the more she changes. Not just her, but the entire town of Haven suddenly seems to have flashes of genius. There are also more sinister changes taking place in Haven…

So there are similarities to his classic ’Salem’s Lot. But he isn’t just show more rewriting his own work here. The tone and themes are quite different and I get the feeling that Stephen King used the book to deal with his addictions. The closest we get to a heroic main character is an alcoholic poet and the effect the object has on the people of Haven is drug-like.

The book isn’t just some slog through an author’s dark night of the soul though. It is still a typical big Stephen King novel with a detailed, believable small town and realistically drawn characters full of Peyton Place intrigues. Watching what they can do to each other as their petty emotions are coupled with their newly discovered ability to cobble together lethal gadgets is half the fun of the book.

I really don't see why it gets such a bad rap. It is long, it is detailed and it probably could have been pared down. But I enjoyed it the whole way through. show less

Well, that was unexpected.

First time I read this, I loved the first two-thirds of the book and loathed the last third. This time, it was the exact opposite. I enjoyed the introductions to Bobbi and Gard all right, I guess, but the middle was boring. I almost gave up. In fact, I switched to the audio book so that I could play Minecraft while listening to it. Then, an odd thing happened. I became involved again. (This was after the vagina tentacles.) I started catching reference after reference, and the book became a kind of treasure hunt. Fucking awesome, dude.

But here's where it gets really weird. All the cool references at the tail-end of the book are for books King hadn't yet written. Specifically, Under the Dome. Usually, I tell show more people to read King's books in order, but if you plan on reading Under the Dome, you might want to leave The Tommyknockers for after you finish it. There are at least two huge spoilers for Under the Dome in this novel. There are two more, but they are well hidden gems.

I also find it terribly rad that King first mentions Haven way back in 'Salem's Lot, yet it would be more than a decade before he actually wrote about the town.

Time for the bad news. This book is one of those King novels that feels bloated. There's so much unneeded information in here that I would suspect as much as two-hundred pages could have been left on the cutting room floor and no one would have noticed. King doesn't even like this book. He stated as much in a recent interview that and Dreamcatcher are his least favorite novels because they were both written during periods of recovery (one before and after drug rehab, and the other while recovering from being ran over by a van). To quote King exactly: "The Tommyknockers is a mess, man. So's Dreamcatcher."

References to other books:

Gard mentions Ka while in deep thought.
Gard meets a young boy named Jack outside of the Alhambra H. (Huge reference to The Talisman here)
Clown holding balloons is seen in a storm drain.

All this further cements my claims that all of King's novels tie-in to the Dark Tower in some way. Even books like Firestarter and Misery, as well as other books that King has not verified as tie-ins.

Notable name:
Big Injun Woods (Pet Sematary)
Derry (It, Insomnia)
Johnny Smith (The Dead Zone)

There are far more connections to other books in the King-verse but some of them are spoilers and/or I'm saving them for my next Decade with King post.

In summation: The Tommyknockers is a big book. It feels like a big book. His novel It doesn't feel half as long as this book, and it's over 400-pages longer. A lot of ideas are rehashed this time around, too, and reading King's library in chronological order makes all these reused concepts stand out like a sore thumb covered in neon pink spray paint and glitter. I wouldn't tell anyone to skip The Tommyknockers, but you can leave it for last. Recommended for King completionists. show less

The premise is hardly new (uncovered artifact wreaks havoc) and the narrative padding bloats a decent 300 page book to a rambling 860 pages with too much background information, too many introspective moments (presented in parentheses and italics as if to warn us), too much repetitive action, and a horror/sci-fi link that is a bit hard to swallow. But the words flowed easily and it did have a decent grand finale which left me gloating somewhat maliciously. Stephen King is usually a hit or miss with me but I'll consider this one a "graze".

*all reviews pulled from web comments*
There's something strange in the woods in Haven, Maine. Bobbi Anderson, out walking her dog quite literally stumbles over it. A few weeks later when Jim Gardener, poet and drunk decides to visit Bobbi, his only real friend, he finds a woman who's changed. Obsessed, intense, she's inventing things, making things happen. She's developed telepathic powers. But oddest and most ominous of all is what she's discovered buried down beyond the end of her garden.

In my opinion this is the type of story Stephen King does best, horror in a small town. What I liked most about The Tommyknockers was the vast and complex plot featuring lots of gruesome imagery and the building anticipation surrounding the meaning show more behind a mysterious object and what the consequences of its discovery will be.

The first half of this book is pure character development, the second half is all action. Is it a little overwritten? Maybe, but I still really enjoyed it. So it has some super weird bits (I’ll never look at a Coke vending machine the same way ever again) but I love that. Small town residents go crazy, nastiness, extreme gore and aliens! No one destroys a whole town like Stephen King!

If you like strange and unusual, you'll like this. If you are a slow/impatient reader, I wouldn’t recommend this one. show less