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Nov 16, 2011

Ceridwen rated it:

Zombies, why can't I quit you?

I was all jazzed to write some massively immature pun-filled review of this book – you know, something along the lines of “Don't give me any static about this, but I felt like King was really phoning it in” – but now that I've actually read it, I don't feel up to it anymore. You won, Stephen King, you killed the fun of zombies for me. May they rise again to eat my brains another day. In lieu of a real review, I'm just going to do a lazy list.

1. More...

41 comments like (37 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Leah rated it:

Literary critics can moan all they want about Stephen King's "penny dreadful" oeuvre, but his mastery at the craft of storytelling is indisputable. King writes his novels like a seduction, the story unfolding delicately and deliberately. As any Stephen King fan knows, his coy expository chapters often take up the first hundred pages or more. In Cell, however, the reader is brutally dragged into the main action--unspeakable, senseless violence--within the first seven pages. Cell is by f More...

3 comments like (19 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Krok Zero rated it:

My first-ever dance with Stephen King. Yeah, I know I probably should've started with one of his canonical '70s/'80s works. But I picked this up because I was intrigued by the contemporariness of the premise (cell phones cause zombie apocalypse), because it seemed considerably shorter than King's classic novels, and because I was pretty well hooked by the opening pages I read on Amazon.

I missed out on King in my childhood because I was way too much of a pussy to handle anything scary More...

14 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Chris rated it:

You know, I'm pretty sure he said he was retiring a few years ago. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - this was a fun read. I just figure we should never trust a writer when they say they're done. This is like crack to them, I suppose.

With this book, King is back to my favorite story type of his - world-spanning apocalypse. Ain't nothing better than the end of the world, in my judgment, and The Stand is still one of my favorite King books.

In this one, though, he takes a More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2008

Chris rated it:

I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to say. I own about 30 Stephen King books, I believe I have read them all. Strange enough, it seems like just as I started getting into the King of Horror, his talent began to dwindle. I think it was when I was in sixth grade that I started digging him and becoming a fan, and at about that same time he began to put out books that pretty much anyone with a brain will concede are not nearly the clean-up hitters that his first works were. Carrie, More...

16 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jun 06, 2008

Nolan rated it:

I was in high school when Peter Benchley’s epic book Jaws became a movie. I used to laugh long and loud at my then-youthful friends who wouldn’t go near the water that summer, and if they did, they spent lots of time furtively glancing around them to make sure the evil shark wasn’t anywhere near, never mind that they were swimming in a public pool or local reservoir. Why do I tell you all this? Because I’m having just a wee bit of a problem picking up my wireless phone on the first ring these More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Evan rated it:

I really identified with the character of Clay, from his artistic origins to his driving need to find and save his son, the character really spoke to me. And he wasn't an asshat or a tool, which is refreshing; he was just stupid in the typical horror movie ways.

The character of Tom was great too. I think he might be the first gay character King has written that he hasn't killed off after making a caricature of him and/or turning him into a villain or asshole. He too was r More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2011

Zeek rated it:

Cell contains a brilliant idea. Sometime soon, a terrorist organization sets off a signal that totally wipes the brains of anyone using a cell phone at the time. The organization (which never is fully realized in the story and only guessed at) perhaps didn't realize the magnitude of their actions because The Pulse, as it became known, totally wiped the "hard drive" or the "higher conscience brain" of anyone who was on the cellular net, stripping humans to their most basic nat More...

7 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Daniella rated it:

Cell is vastly different, stylistically, from the other King novels I've read, and as a result, it took me awhile to really get into this book. Overall, however, I think the change in technique really worked for this story. Cell is extremely fast-paced and action-driven, with a more simplistic and linear plot than I've come across in a Stephen King book; a rather spare story, in other words, which might have broken down under the strain of his typical web of intricacies and complex subplots, co More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2008

Jeremy rated it:

Stephen King has re-written The Stand. The upside is story moves faster, starts quicker and is about 500 pages shorter. The downside is the characters aren’t as memorable, the story seems rushed at points and the ending is not very fulfilling.

There’s isn’t any buildup to the action, right away you find out what is going to destroy society. A signal from cell phones is doing something screwy with people’s minds, blanking them out and creating a cross between a zombie and a bird (it makes sense af More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Erik rated it:

This read like a poorly executed version of The Stand meets I Am Legend with a Pet Semetary ending, all three of which I liked. I didn't care about the characters; they were uninteresting to me. The reason behind the 'Pulse' is never truly resolved, and that's fine. But the speed and logic with which the characters formed their hypothesis was completely unbelievable. I hoped they were wrong because their hypothesis itself was uninteresting. I was glad that this novel had less of the "as so- More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2009

Trin rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 03, 2011

Abdulaziz rated it:

Rating: 3 out 5

Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror

This is an apocalyptic zombie like novel and as usual this novel is well written as Mr. King is a superior writer. The Novel can be divided to three major Section as the plot develop:

Apocalypse: This first part of the story where every thing goes Crazy and it’s the best one in it.

The Event: as I don’t want to spoil the story I named it the event. This section is the 2nd Part and the largest one of the story it’s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 26, 2008

Calamity rated it:

This books talks about a phenomenon called The Pulse that turns everyone that uses a cell phone into raving murderous maniacs that talk latin and have psionic superpowers .
Then there's those who don't have a cell phone and therefore need to fight (like hell) to survive.

I actually liked the book.
The orignal idea was good and the characters were enganging. I think I liked them all and that happens rarely to me. Also although it was 470 pages long it was action packed and g More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2012

Dahlia rated it:

10/11/11 20 mins its really good so far.. i love how everything is crazy and they dont know when they are going to get attacked.. its really descriptive and i like it because of that... I just wonder if the little girl they are helping right now is a zombie yet or not its hard to tell right now though.
10/19/11 20 mins
They closed the blinds and they put chairs infront of the broken glass. Clay was trying to decide if he should try and call his wife and child when he remembered his son has a cellp More...

18 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Tim rated it:

Contrary to what I hear from critics of Stephen King, I love his modern works just as much as his earlier classics. His work from the 70s and 80s seems to primarily be concerned (with exceptions, of course) with the character's relationship to the supernatural forces acting upon him/her, in addition to the inner change that arises as a result. More contemporary works, like Cell, deal with the character vs. supernatural, as well as interior changes, but instead focus more on the way the main char More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 05, 2008

Anca rated it:

My first Stephen King book, if I don't reckon with "Carrie". Usually, and for a while now, I'm skeptical when it comes with horrors, thrillers, detective books etc. [I say 'for a while' because I liked them in my childhood a lot (though I don't remember reading lots of them - I think I was afraid not to get bored)]. Because I find them having no esence, not to call them comercial, which I find to be a snob and to-much-used term.

Maybe I was too eager to dive in it and More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 21, 2008

Jules rated it:

like (1 person liked it)

Jan 31, 2008

Christy rated it:

Okay, let me say up front, I am an official cult follower of King's "The Stand". I absolutely love that book and believe its popularity stems from a very primary concept: good vs. bad; God vs. the Devil. When I began reading "Cell", I immediately thought, oh, boy, another Stand. Wrong. The premise is great: world-wide (I think - it's never actually explained) devastation which begins from what King calls a Pulse via cell phones. Those on the phones turn violent at first, then More...

1 comment like

Sep 16, 2011

Thee_ron_clark rated it:

When I first heard about this book,I was very excited. The premise of one of the top horror authors today writing about one of my favorite topics was something worth celebrating. I picked up a copy and I was impressed that the action started right away. One thing King has done to me in the past is left me to suffer through several pages of overly descriptive nonsense waiting for the book to get moving along for me. The Cell did not have that issue. The premise of this novel was pretty cool; a ce More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 16, 2010

Alex rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 18, 2008

Lindy rated it:

This book started out strong. It had great description and I really got a great mental picture of the crazy scene in Boston on OCtober 1st. Great gore. Stephen King is always great at creating a sense of creepy. The only complaint about the book is that it was only about the handful of core characters who weren't that interesting. Clay spends a lot of time in his head and just doesn't seem like someone I'd like to be friends with. Tom's ambiguous sexuality is boring. Alice was interesting, but s More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Kristal rated it:

While 'Cell' resembles King's 'The Stand' in terms of apocalyptic events that bring together an unusual assortment of survivors attempting to cope with said devastating events, it offers a bleaker look at what might become of society. And whereas 'The Stand' seemed to build up to the apocalyptic event, this time you are thrown face-first into the gore and horror that can only come from King's macabre imagination.

After the initial blood-fest, more backstory starts to fill in, the cree More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 03, 2008

Eric rated it:

I do not usually read Stephen King. I think he has some great ideas but I just usually cannot deal with his writing style and I have no good explanation for why. I thought that this book seemed like and interesting idea and upon reading it was pleasantly surprised. I will probably never read it again but it was one of the most enjoyable books I have read by Mr. King.

The plot is compelling and fast enough to keep from bogging down. The story is unique and goes a few places I was More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Seizure Romero rated it:

I guess I should have a shelf titled "read-sort of." The first 50-75 pages were fairly engaging-- it is a timely concept and the "what if" factor keeps the plot moving. Then I realized I was reading The Stand all over again, but a slightly different version where the story actually becomes less interesting the further I read. I skipped ahead. I tried to find parts that didn't bore me. I failed. Then I fell asleep and later woke to a beautiful world where I had the freedom to More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2010

Wu rated it:

Molti ammiratori "storici" di Stephen King, letto questo libro, proveranno sollievo. Parleranno del "ritorno in forma del Re" dopo le recenti vaghezze e astruserie (da Cuori in Atlantide a Buick 8, da Insomnia a Colorado Kid, storie nate all'ombra dell'eptalogia La Torre nera). Diranno che "era ora", finalmente la storia ha un capo e una coda, proprio come ai "vecchi tempi", viva il figliol prodigo, King � ancora il maestro dell'horror. Diranno tutto questo More...

0 comments like

Mar 02, 2009

john rated it:

I love Stephen King and this book exemplifies all the reason why! Stephen King is just a master story teller and from the characters to twisting plot lines to the tone in which he writes everything is spot on in Cell. When I was reading this I was reminded what I love about Stephen King and I would describe it as this: the way he writes, it just feels like he is sitting in the room telling you a really cool story. His descriptions and style are unique and they generate a presence and an obvio More...

0 comments like

Feb 09, 2009

Graham rated it:

Cell starts off like a vintage King thriller, depicting the end of the world in a brilliant way: full of chaos, destruction and outright gore. The first few chapters of this book are remarkable, sparkling with excitement and danger, just like the good old days. And then the book changes. It becomes fleshy, plodding, just like a dozen other King books (I’m thinking Insomnia for one). Not exactly boring, but certainly a long way from the opening brilliance.

The text seems crammed with More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 23, 2009

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 07, 2008

Joya rated it:

I picked this up at the local library after reading a glowing article about how Stephen King had really gotten his mojo back after a string of strange and god-awful books (Insomnia, anyone?).

Turns out, not so much. I had taken a good 6-8 year break from reading anything new he'd written, and yet, Cell was, from the get-go, absolutely familiar and predictable. King has been writing the same main character for years upon years and he's back in this book. So are the 'hip' pop-culture More...

1 comment like

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