Dreamcatcher

In Dreamcatcher, four men, friends since childhood, are out hunting in the woods of Maine. A lone hunter stumbles upon their cabin sputtering nonsense about mysterious "lights in the sky" while being plagued with the worst case of gas ever imaginable. It's Stephen King so you know what's coming.

The first third of the book is great. King hooks us right in and then beats a frantic pace: a snowmobile barreling through the woods with the reader being dragged gleefully through the snow. We can't help but stay up late turning those pages to find out what happens next. He seems merciful when he idles down the pace for the middle third so that we can catch our breath and brush off some of that snow.

But it dawns on me that some of this landscape show more seems familiar. We're given backstory on the protagonists, a group of men who've been friends since childhood, albeit a bit more distant (It). We get the long-winded side trip flashback, a King staple, where the boys confronted an evil back then (though it was a different evil) and now, as adults, face an evil alien threat in the woods (Tommyknockers). And then there's the psychotic government agent who becomes obsessed with one of the protagonists (Firestarter) and starts to hunt him down. Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers of our age. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that he began re-using some elements of past stories. But I was willing to let all this slide if the book ended well.

The final chase consumes the last third of the book, but it drags. And when the crisis is resolved, it felt anti-climactic. Although King doesn't use the old "it was all a dream" cliche, the ending, for me at least, was just as insulting. I had to re-read it a couple times just to make sure I was reading it right. Maybe this was some kind of catharsis for King. He wrote this story while recovering from the accident where he was struck by a minivan (which is paralleled by one of the characters here). I haven't read any other of his post-accident works and after reading this I'm not sure when I will. show less

I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, Dreamcatcher is not just a rehash of It. The bad news is it's a rehash of The Tommyknockers, too, which is perhaps my least favorite of all of King's works.

All right, maybe that's not quite fair. Dreamcatcher does involve aliens, a secret in the woods, and telepathy, but it's not exactly a carbon copy of The Tommyknockers. It re-uses pieces of many of King's works. There's the "adults who bonded as children and did a great thing" theme from It. There's also the "child with a great secret power" trope from The Shining and/or Firestarter. Granted, Duddits is technically an adult, but he is retarded and therefore retains, quite literally, the mind of a child, as evidenced by everyone show more calling him by his childhood name. Duddits is also reminiscent of Tom Cullen from The Stand, as another example of the sweet and noble retarded person who, after enduring great hardship, saves the day, or at least a piece of it. Speaking of The Stand, let's talk about a nasty, virulent disease that wipes out around 99% of the population. Granted, in this case the "disease" is actually a creature, and the affected area is relatively small, but within that area, the terminal rates are about the same.

So what's the big deal, you ask? King has always re-used certain themes in his work: kids in danger, life in Maine, narrators who are writers; why am I harping on this one book in particular? I'm harping on it because he doesn't bring anything new to plate this time. In the past, these themes were simply a framework of familiarity to hang a new story on. It was fun for long-time readers to get the references to previous characters and stories, and to feel like they knew the territory. We've been to Derry and Castle Rock so many times it feels like we belong there. But in Dreamcatcher, it doesn't feel like King's using similar elements. It feels like he's telling the same stories, albeit in bits and pieces and mixed around some. You know how you feel when you watch a movie adaptation of a Stephen King book? With a few notable exceptions, they just don't get it right. The casting is a little bit off or the script keeps the wrong parts of the story (or loses the wrong parts). The bones of the book you loved are there, but the mad doctor put them together all wrong, attaching a femur to a vertebra, or the skull to a kneecap. That's how Dreamcatcher felt to me: right pieces, wrong place.

King is an amazing storyteller; he always has been. Even the books I didn't particularly like, I finished. I find that I get caught up in his stories despite myself, and I have to follow through to the end. Maybe that's the crux of my displeasure with Dreamcatcher; I know King is capable of so much more. Authors aren't perfect. Some books are going to be better than others. You just hope that over the course of a career, the good books outweigh the weak ones. show less

This novel is just a hot freaking mess. It's hot garbage. It's a dumpster fire.

The first time I read this, I remember being not overly impressed, but I didn't actually hate the thing.

This time around, I was ready to just stop at least five times...in five days. Through the entire miserable experience, I kept wondering if this was a trunk novel he'd had kicking around during his drug-addled days. After I finished I found out he wrote it longhand while recovering from the accident.

My problems are many with this novel, but there's a couple of overriding elements that just ruined this experience for me.

The first is, King can't really write SF. He obviously loves the genre, and it's obvious that he tries to bring a human element into it. He show more tried it with TOMMYKNOCKERS and he'll give passing nods to it down the road in UNDER THE DOME and a little less in THE INSTITUTE. But, at least for me, while it always starts out really promising, it never works out.

The second reason—again, just for me—that it doesn't work out, and why this book is so much of a dumpster fire is because of all the "in the head" stuff that King slathers into this novel. We're in Henry's head. We're in Jonesy's head. We're in Mr. Gray's head. There's rooms in there. And boxes. And fax machines.

And it, to me, comes across as really amateurish and boring.

There's other stuff. The chase scene that runs about a third of the novel. Even the set up that runs a third of the novel before the military shows up. Kurtz is easily one of the worst characters King's ever dreamed up.

And yet...

There's smaller, far less important (and often completely unneeded) scenes, mostly centred around the four guys and Duddits when they were young that hinted at the incredible writer King can be.

This, at times, felt like a twisted IT pastiche, and I also (once again, personal opinion) feel that, had King done alternating young group/older group chapters, it would have been a better paced novel.

It's absolutely not the worst book that has Stephen King's name on it (that is, and always will be the toilet paper replacement GWENDY'S FINAL TASK) however, I'd always considered King's other SF travesty TOMMYKNOCKERS as his worst solo novel. I've reconsidered that. It's now only second worst.

This one now sits comfortably in that spot. show less

For all those people who call this a shitweasle of a novel, I would like like point out that it does exactly what it sets out to do. Maybe the usual King fan comes to the chopping block expecting nothing but detailed flawed characters and some rather heartwrenching stuff before a paranormal beastie chomps down.

But I would like to posit that SK IS a fan of Science Fiction. :) Sure, a few of his SF tales like Lawnmower Man and Tommyknockers might not get the love that they deserve, but remember, he also wrote that little epic called the Dark Tower. :)

So let's break this down a bit. We literally get to the heart of the novel through our guts at the beginning, Shitweasels and all, playing on all the paranoid fantasies of... um... SO MANY show more PEOPLE... by bringing in anal probing aliens. With a particularly gross twist, thank you very much, Mr. King. And then we get into the whole telepathy thing, the Aliens-type setup, and even a Theodore Sturgeon *More Than Human* homage with a very special special person holding this group of old friends together.

For the longest time I got the idea that it was kinda a Tommyknockers part 2, but then I laughed aloud when we got a massive direct reference to the boys and girl from IT, including Pennywise, and then I started seeing a lot more combined references to all his other novels. As per usual, but nicely solid and world-buildy. :)

In the end, I'm frankly rather amazed at what King pulls off here. Massive military action, chases, alien invasions and spore people and shitweasles and more, we even get a Battle For Your Mind. :) Dreamcatcher, indeed.

What is this book? A traditional horror as per usual? Nope. This is a great mashup that builds on the full Crimson King mythology, thank you very much. :) Pretty hardcore, too.

So why does it get a lot of hate?

Parts are juvenile and crass and other parts are free-range weird. But I like both on ocassion, so this is something I can snuggle up to. *ahem* or stay on the pot with. :) show less

Four lifelong friends head off into the woods for their annual reunion and hunting trip. Separated by a snowstorm they run into a stranger with a serious flatulence problem. The hilarious farting soon turns into something more sinister as a deadly alien parasite emerges and the landscape becomes covered in patches of a red fungus-like material which infects anyone who comes into contact with it. Two of the friends perish, but Jonesy, immune to the fungus is taken over as a vehicle for the alien contagion to escape from a brutal quarantine zone established by the army. Henry forms a telepathic bond with a disaffected soldier and between them they try to stop the aliens taking over the planet.
Dreamcatcher is quite unusual for a Stephen show more King novel. There are no ghosts, vampires or monsters and no alcoholic writers and this is pretty much a tale about alien invasion and the heavy handed response of the US military, with a bit of supernatural thrown in at the edges. It's an interesting read as King threads together a partnership between the friends who must destroy each other to save the world, the mad, bloodthirsty army commander and a dying boy with what I assume is Downs Syndrome. In reading it your sympathies for the characters are constantly shifting and the boundaries between the good guys and the bad guys are extremely blurred. Too long by 100 pages or so. show less

Whew... There's a lot that I want to say about this book, and I'm not really sure where to start. I first read this book back in... oh, 2002 or 2003, maybe, and I can absolutely say that I did NOT get much out of it. Sure, it's still a thrill ride, still entertaining, but it was definitely not his best, in my, somewhat oblivious opinion. But see... I was something of a King Re-reader back then. I had my favorites - 'The Stand', 'The Shining', 'The Talisman', 'Needful Things' - to name a few, and I read, and re-read, and re-read those favorites, so, I wasn't as well versed on my King Universe back then as I am now.

Now, having read many more of King's "inter-related" books, I see the threads that bind them all together. Reading this show more again now was like... well, kind of like meeting a cool person at a bar, having a really interesting conversation with them, and then 7 years later finding out they are a long lost relative. That feeling of recognition is the same, although probably toned down a little since this is a book and NOT a long lost relative. Many, many times though, my eyes popped open and I'm like "OH! That's a reference to...!" or "WOW! I see where he's going!" etc.

For instance, the number 19 crops up many times, as does the color red (or crimson, if you like that better), as does the theme of children bonding for life and for better or for worse, no matter where their adulthood may take them, King's own accident, etc. But in addition to the many references to King's other works and life (which I've barely even touched on), there are references here to many external things that I never recognized before. Things like twice calling Duddits a "tribble", which is a reference to Star Trek, or like the red growth that is very reminiscent of the mossy red flora from 'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells (and speaking of, Dean Koontz borrowed the idea for his semi-recentish book 'The Taking'), or the "Turn the dial up to 11" line from the movie "This is Spinal Tap".

Aside from all of these references, the story itself was a "pisser", as Beaver would say. Three parts sci-fi, one part fantasy and a tablespoon-full of tongue-in-cheek prophecy, it's definitely a rollercoaster. I mentioned to friends when I started this book (or maybe I just wrote it down, I dunno) that it reads like a movie. Lots of King's books do, which is possibly why so many have been adapted, but this one especially felt that way to me. I would set the book down for a minute, to freshen my drink, or move a cat-paw that was creeping oh-so-subtly onto the page because everyone knows that cats can't sleep next to a reading human unless they are obstructing the view in some way, and it would be just like I pressed the pause button. When I pick the story back up, I'm right back where I was, like the interruption never occurred.

We start out meeting Pete, Beaver, Jonesy and Henry as adults, and then throughout the story we find out about their childhood and what (and who) bonded them together. Beaver is my favorite character. Dubbed such an appealing and cool nickname due to his habit of always chewing on a toothpick, he has a foul mouth and a heart of gold. I love the way King describes Beaver, and shows us his general character in three sentences: "His glasses started to unfog then, and he saw the stranger on the couch. He lowered his hands, slowly, then smiled. That was one of the reasons Jonesy had loved him ever since grade school, although the Beav could be tiresome and wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, by any means: his first reaction to the unplanned and unexpected wasn't a frown but a smile." This passage makes me love him too. He's got a bit of innocence about him... and a kind of raunchy purity.

I'm not going to go into the rest of the guys, that would take a long time... but I would like to talk about the characters. Suffice it to say that each of the friends are perfect and flawed in their own ways, but none of them are as dear to me as Beaver. I love Duddits too, who is really innocent perfection epitomized. He's got Down Syndrome, and with that a kind of extrasensory ability that makes him special- probably more special than anyone else.
Roberta Cavell, Duddits's mom, is another of my favorite characters. She's got very small parts in this story, but each and every one of them touch my heart. The woman is almost saintly! When Duddit's leaves with Henry, and Roberta crumples, it just breaks my heart. King spent barely two pages on this, but I felt it as if it was happening to me.
Abe Kurtz, the main military madman, is plain old crazy like a fox and as unpredictable as a tornado. Owen Underhill is Kurtz's right hand man, but one who happens to still have a spark of humanity in him. And speaking of humanity, this brings me to Mr. Gray...

Mr. Gray is an alien life form whose sole purpose is to survive by any means necessary. Not just himself, but his race. These aliens are alien in every sense of the word. They are inhuman, don't understand humans, don't understand our emotions or thoughts or anything. They just seek to continue to exist and emotionlessly do what it takes to ensure that. They are smart, but in a wily, calculating way. Mr. Gray finds and infiltrates Jonesy's body, in a kind of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" way. (This happens quite early in the story, so I'm not giving anything away, don't worry.) What happens then though, to Mr. Gray specifically, is very interesting to me.

King is really a master at showing us what humanity looks like. All parts of it. His stories are all people stories in which horror or gore or whatever is used to bring out the best and worst in us. If King ever had a theme, that's it. But here we have an inhuman, emotionless, calculating being who has none of that - only a relentless will to propagate. And then King shows us how this being starts to become human. And this I find fascinating, because it's one thing to plumb the depths of someone's soul and find out who they really are, but it's something else entirely to watch someone becoming that person.

"Becoming" is usually depicted as that which we know turning into something we don't know, something that terrifies or horrifies us. People turning into monsters, vampires, or werewolves are the most common supernatural cases. But slowly slipping into madness is another case, and 'The Shining' comes instantly to mind as Jack becomes more and more unstable and dangerous. But here we have an alien becoming human - craving food, thrilling in the human emotions that it's never before experienced, enjoying curiosity for the first time, feeling the rush of adrenaline and wanting more and more - and I thought it was fascinating to see humanity being the unknown and feared trait... to see things from the other perspective.

Anyway, I really did enjoy this story this time around. I enjoyed it the first time, but this time I feel like I got so much more out of it. This book is entertaining in its own right, but much much more so for the Constant Reader who can spot all the references embedded within it. :) show less

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 show more 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. show less