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Cell

3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 · rating details · 73,626 ratings · 2,874 reviews

Witness Stephen King's triumphant, blood-spattered return to the genre that made him famous. Cell, the king of horror's homage to zombie films (the book is dedicated in part to George A. Romero) is his goriest, most horrific novel in years, not to mention the most intensely paced. Casting aside his love of elaborate character and town histories and penchant for delayed gra...more

Paperback, 449 pages

Published November 21st 2006 by Pocket Star (first published 2006)

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Nov 06, 2009 Ceridwen rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: You kids get off my lawn.

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Stupid, personal obsessions.

Shelves: america-and-environs, shit-show, omg-were-all-going-to-die, pulp, zombies, 9-11

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. Seriously, King? Hat...more 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. Seriously, King? Hating on cell-phones? This has to be the longest you-kids-get-off-my-lawn tract I've read in a while. I mean, yeah, we all hate the braying jackass who telegraphs his self-important blather in public, but you can have my cell phone when you pry it from my cold, undead hand. There may be an age limit on the cell-phone love, but it seems to me that it gets older every year. My 92 year old Grandma had one. In 20 years, this book is going to be seriously quaint. We don't always have to be writing for the ages, and horror often functions best when it speaks to specific cultural insecurities, but this one's already past its sell-by date. What's next: “Rap Music: More Like Crap Music”?

2. Stuff that I would rather not see used as instant gravitas/metaphorical enhancement in popular fiction: 9/11, Nazis, and Jesus Christ. Simply referencing these things does not make your metaphor coherent or thoughtfully layered.

3. Omg, but maybe, like, we're the monsters! Le sigh.

4. Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash called. It wants its nam-shub back. (Maybe I'm feeling better now. Let the pun begin!) I wouldn't even mention this, but King name-checks Stephenson at one point, which made me remember Stephenson's idea of a technology that can hack the human brain and how Stephenson uses this to talk about the ways that the technologies we create mirror our essential humanity while sometimes reducing us to automata, which may kind of be our essential humanity. Or not. It's complicated. Snow Crash does this WAY better. I want to stress that I do not care about originality, and I think when assessing genre fiction, originality is almost an impediment. What bugs me is King uses an idea that I found compelling in Stephenson's work, and does not add anything new or vital to it, and in some places, makes it stupider.

5. When I start flipping out about shambling corpses and planning contingency plans for the zombie apocalypse, my husband always chimes in with “but, physics,” by which he means that zombies violate the rules of physics, and I should stop worrying. (Yeah, dealing with my irrational fear with rationality – that's going to work.) King gets around this by making his zombies living people, capable of dying in the usual manner, etc. Then he completely hoses this by making them levitate, use telekinesis, and have psychic powers. I can't even stress how much I hate psychic powers. In addition to violating the rules of physics, rules that we all live by whether we want to or not, levitating using your mind makes you look stupid. It's worse than trucker hats. I realize this is an inconsistent set of opinions, but whatever.

6. No one is allowed to go cross-country anymore to find their kids after the end of the world. Except for maybe Dennis Quaid. But he has to ask me special.
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Sep 19, 2012 Seak (Bryce L.) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, braaains, 2012

Stephen King does zombies! Well...kind of. We'll get to that in a bit.

But first, here's how I think this book came about:

Way back in aught-6 (2006), or just before because Cell was published in '06, but who knows with King, am I right? But anyway, we've come a long way since that time. Everyone was getting cell phones and they were just about getting to every last person around. I imagine him having this conversation with, let's say, his son, Joe Hill.

Stephen: "Wow, cell phones have really gotte...more

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Jul 07, 2007 Leah rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 far King's...more 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 far King's most brutal, transgressive work to date.

Many have compared Cell to his earlier epic, The Stand. On the surface, the novels are quite similar: an apocolyptic event threatens the very existence of the human race as a band of survivors struggle to come to terms with the carnage and avert further catastrophe. Cell, however, is the far more mature novel of the pair. The Stand was, in many ways, a novel by an idealistic youth, whereas Cell is filled with the trenchant and world-weary observations of an adult. The subtext is laden with so much chillingly apt futurist rhetoric that it is as though the author had Marshall McLuhan whispering plot devices and metaphors into his ear as he labored over his typewriter. King manages to explore several of the major sociocultural conflicts of our time, most persuasively the end of the era of individualism and the rise of collectivism, here symptomatic of heavy reliance on technology. Whereas many dystopian novels are almost comically blunt when expounding upon the dangers of collectivism, King's horrific plot and action give his metaphors a sort of subtlety that renders his subtext much more graceful and easier to stomach than the work of Ayn Rand.

As the epigraphs indicate, it is also a meditation on the intrinsic violence of the human race. King clearly feels as though the world is out of control and wants to find out why. His preferred genre, horror, is an excellent one with which to consider the depravaties of modern life. The Stand was a novel that, if not upbeat, was at least optimistic--a reflection of the times in which it was written. There was also violence, but it had its own biblical logic, if violence can ever be called logical. In Cell, the violence is senseless, oppressive, and omnipresent. There seems to be little promise for a better world... at least not one inhabited by human beings.

Many reviewers took issue with the unresolved ending. Considering the subtext of the novel, however, the reader will find that the ending's abruptness actually informs the sense that Cell, besides being an excellent horror yarn, is a meticulously painted portrait of the horrors of global culture. The many crises of our time are still developing and mutating. The end is not yet, it seems, in sight.
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Oct 11, 2009 Krok Zero rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fall-2009

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. I distinct...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: apocolypse

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 slightly different appro...more

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Jan 02, 2008 Chris rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: nobody

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, Pet C...more 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, Pet Cemetery, Christine, Cujo, The Stand, The Shining…..esteemed and awesome for the most part, only to be replaced with the likes of Gerald’s Game, The Woman Who Loved Tom Gordon, Insomnia, and the Green F@cking Mile.

There’s something wrong in that, I was always under the belief that the more experience you have in your craft the better you will eventually get, unless you’re an absolute nimrod. Well, Mr. King proves me dead-fricking wrong, especially with the release of Cell, a novel I can’t quite find a word for. Disappointing? No, I was expecting about as much. Poor? Too rich for this trash. Feeble? Getting warmer.

I want to put this to bed rather quickly, after all, Stephen King has written more than a few badass books and I’d rather not dwell on the poor bastard's dwindling talents as he progresses in age and rocks out in his crappy band, “Bookwyrm”. Ok, so his band isn’t called Bookwyrm, but it ought to be; it shows that in one second I came up with a more powerful and awesome name than he ever could. His band doesn’t matter here, what matters is that King had the great idea of making a back-to-the-basics horror novel, and what better subject matter than zombies! Flucking zombies man! Maybe Steve is the only one who hasn’t realized it, but zombies have been beat to death (no pun intended) in recent media via horror films and video games. Not to mention that the Zombie King, the venerable George Romero, has produced some rather slick zombie films in his “Dead” series recently, one example is Land of The Dead, which King liberally rips off with the idea of zombies evolving in this novel, although Romero isn’t gay enough to consider having them evolve super powers including levitation, thought-control, and telepathy. Thank god.

King, however, is down with this wishy-washy, flimsy shit, and it’s not surprising that the novel starts to nosedive about the time the undead begin using their newfound powers. Like all King novels that center around droves of mindless minions of evil, there is one badass leader zombie that seems to be running the show, and he’s the only character that I can really even recall from the book, how f@cking pitiful is that, especially since the only reason I can imagine the dude is because he’s such a archetypical figure that this is his only real intent.

The story plods along after all cell phones receive some sort of ‘pulse’ which leads to the poor f@cker on the phone becoming a zombie. If I recall correctly, that’s the only thing which turns people into zombies, the Pulse. Now, I understand King is trying to make a point on society through the sheer number of zombies, but let’s face it, the number of people this would effect is not that fucking catastrophic. In Cell, it is, almost 75% of the world seems to either have been zombified, or is in immediate danger due to someone else’s transformation into a zombie. This sheer mathematical impossibility annoyed me throughout the course of the story. Adding to my troubles, the main character, Clayton (of all fuggin names), is hell-bent on finding his family, he’ll do anything just to see if they are alive or dead, blah blah blah. I think another character was a homo and of course there was the ever-present Crafty Child. All dicking around while the zombies grew more powerful through their unnatural cerebral enhancements. Boring.(less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Stefan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For some reason, I had seen quite a few bad reviews on Cell before I read it. Not one to usually dislike a King novel, I did go into this one without the highest of expectations and ended up being very pleasantly surprised.

The story centers around a mass event that turns anyone who happens to be on their cell phone at the time into a zombie. Mass chaos ensues and a small group of survivors bands together and tries to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. Some of the plot-line does have...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Daniella rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: King fans and lovers of all things zombie apocalypse

Recommended to Daniella by: Angela Hupp

Shelves: horror, king, zombies, apocalypse, 2009

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, col...more

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Jun 06, 2008 Nolan rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 da...more 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 days, and it’s directly related to the fact that I’ve just finished Stephen King’s “Cell,” DB61241.

Clay Riddell is on top of the world. He’s just made his first major sale as an illustrator and author of comic book characters to a publisher in Boston. But his entire world is turned upside down and changed forever on a seemingly normal afternoon in Boston. Civil, ordinary cell phone users are turned into murderous zombie-like creatures when they use their wireless phones because of some kind of pulse that is broadcast to their phone which obliterates their minds and reboots their brain somehow. The consequences are awful. Clay witnesses graphically violent murders all around him, and Boston is soon on fire with flames and explosions everywhere.

Clay realizes he must get back to Maine to his estranged wife and son, and he remembers with horror that his son got a new red cell phone for his birthday! He manages to attach himself to a group of normal people who do not use cell phones and therefore haven’t been affected by the pulse. Clay and his companions realize they must take action against the Phoners, as the zombies are called. For the Phoners are evolving into a group of people who can communicate telepathically and levitate themselves.

The book is violent with graphic details of murder and mayhem. King drops the F bomb in here quite liberally it seems to me. A major character for whom you develop a great deal of sympathy dies, and I think her death was entirely unnecessary. It did nothing but detract from the story as far as I’m concerned.

The overarching theme of this book almost seems to be that we need to beware of our increasing dependence on technology and how easy it would be for the right group of people to somehow forever alter our world through the very technology we’ve come to think of as harmless and indeed helpful.

Would I read this again? Well, perhaps. It was well written in so many regards, and King’s ability to horrify and tell a gripping story is well known to us all. This wasn’t my favorite King book, but it’s certainly understandable how it can be a bestseller.
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Mar 26, 2010 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, horror

There have been many who have compared Stephen King's Cell with his earlier Apocalypse-Now effort, The Stand. And there are some good reasons, End-of-the-World setting, the survivors polarized into two camps, one camp, arguably no longer even human, a big bang ending in an arena like setting, etc. But there are differences as well. When King wrote The Stand, it seemed to mark a moment in that writer's life where he was becoming overt in things religious. The Stand is a battle between good and ev...more There have been many who have compared Stephen King's Cell with his earlier Apocalypse-Now effort, The Stand. And there are some good reasons, End-of-the-World setting, the survivors polarized into two camps, one camp, arguably no longer even human, a big bang ending in an arena like setting, etc. But there are differences as well. When King wrote The Stand, it seemed to mark a moment in that writer's life where he was becoming overt in things religious. The Stand is a battle between good and evil, darkness and light, King's Book of Revelation if you will. Cell is more ambiguous. The zombie like creatures that inhabit the novel are, through no fault of their own, zapped by the "surge," which pretty much wipes out anyone's human hard drive if they happened to own and use a cell phone. No choice there. To some extent, as animal like as they can be, the zombies of Cell are pitiable. Meanwhile, King's little band of survivors are just trying to get somewhere, find some human traction in a world that has been blasted. In particular, there is Clay Riddell, who in his previous pre-Surge life was a graphic artist, and probably something of dreamer. His marriage is probably on the rocks, but he loves his son dearly, and when the deal goes down, he can only think on one thing: to get to him. In King's universe, we now see the Manichean Good and Evil from the Stand being replaced by Cell's Love and Duty. To some extent Cell is similar to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Both are Father and Son stories; both look beyond the End, to what must remain if we are to survive as a species: Hope. The ending of Cell has bothered some, but I think this is unwarranted. In many ways, it's one of King's most powerful endings, and shows the mature writer that he has become. There is no need for a sequel, and I would be surprised if King wrote one.

Cell is a fine effort by King, and one that will be viewed, as time goes by, as one of his best efforts. It has as an effective leanness and nastiness to it that will remind some of Thinner, but also a suggestive depth to it that carries it beyond merely Pulp Fiction.
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May 25, 2007 Evan Peterson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 refreshing.

King has this...more

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Apr 12, 2010 Zeek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: stephen-king, horror, post-apocolyptic, favorite-author

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 nature- De-evolution as...more 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 nature- De-evolution as it were. Immediately the world breaks into chaos as the newly formed Zombies go into kill mode and tear out the throats and various other body parts of anyone near them. Scary stuff no? Because we all know if someone or some group found a way to mess with us through our cell phones it would wipe out a lot of people. A LOT!

The story also evokes our recent history with Katrina an 9/11- minus the Zombies of course. The chaos and the reaction of those not effected by The Pulse hit close to home because of it. (From heroes to selfish baboons- we've seen it all.)

In Cell, our stalwart hero Clay Riddell is unaffected by The Pulse because he doesn't own a cell phone- his broke weeks earlier. And he, rather quickly, discovers the source of the madness as he just happened to be sitting in a city park observing life after being told his comic book is finally going to be published when The Pulse hit. He quells the urge to seek out a phone and keeps himself clear of it throughout the story- until the very end.

Wanting to get away from a society stripped of the veneer of civilized behaviour, and desperate to get to his family, he meets up with a gentleman unaffected by the pulse. They are joined by another young lady and decid to stick together for the duration as Clay makes his way back home to find his ex-wife and kid.

The Zombies are creepy as hell. But. They are evolving.

We all know it's believed we only use a small percentage of our brains, (for some people, even less!). King proposes in Cell that once the percentage that we do use is wiped out, the other part gets a chance. Zombies with telepathy and the ability to function like Star Trek's Borg on acid is what we get.

I loved the interaction between the main characters and how they survive the horror around them. But the ending of Cell left much to be desired. Overly rushed, it left a taste of dissatisfaction in my mouth that I can't get into for spoiler purposes.

However, I fell for the premise of this book because I love post-apocalyptic fiction- despite not giving us the ending it deserved!

To finish I have to add this fun line from a review on Amazon:

"Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance."(less)

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Aug 06, 2008 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 04, 2010 Erik rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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-and-s...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: end-of-world-dystopian-apocalyptic

I suddenly realised half way through this book that it is really a zombie novel. After a shower I felt better and rationalised that this was occupying my "wouldn't normally read this" slot in my book consumption; sigh of relief.
I must admit that I did enjoy some of King's early novels, but this was so far fetched and ridiculous (Am I really saying "It" wasn't?). The plot is simple. Somehow, someone sends a pulse through the mobile phone system which wipes clean a person's mind and sends them ba...more

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Feb 06, 2009 Trin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-lit, apocafic, horror, queerlit

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In which King Technophobe turns everyone with cell phones into zombies—or rather, into the Borg. I was more into this in the early chapters when it was survivors vs. zombies; the Borgian bits bored me a little. I was also a little skeeved that King chose to make a black man in a Harvard sweatshirt the leader of the Borg army—there’s so much nasty stuff one could read into an educated black dude being used as the representative of the mind-enslaving Big Bad. But I am afraid to touch Stephen “magi...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Abdulaziz Fagih rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

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 were thing got familiar and start leading to maj...more

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Dec 26, 2008 Calamity rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Zombie lovers and Cellphone addicts

Shelves: horror

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 gorey enough to keep me i...more

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May 24, 2013 Daniel B rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a good book explaining what would happen if there was something that goes wrong with a cell phone. It also has symbolism showing how much we need our cell phones. Over all what happened is a mysterious radio wave goes though the cities cell phones. If you hear the wave you are turned into a "zombie." Killing these zombies is found to be a struggle as the main characters try to get back to their families. I thought the author did a good job on how developed the characters. They went fro...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Dahlia rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 14, 2011 Timothy Dalton rated it 1 of 5 stars

What can I say that is positive about this book? The only thing that comes to mind is, Thank goodness it was not another page longer. I was committed to finishing this book as writing a review for it would require I push onward to the end. Now here is the deal, I haven't read a King book since I was in middle school, and I can tell you also I was simultaneously reading a Robert McCammon book at the same time. This made my experience with Cell more profound. Here I am reading, The Queen of Bedlam...more What can I say that is positive about this book? The only thing that comes to mind is, Thank goodness it was not another page longer. I was committed to finishing this book as writing a review for it would require I push onward to the end. Now here is the deal, I haven't read a King book since I was in middle school, and I can tell you also I was simultaneously reading a Robert McCammon book at the same time. This made my experience with Cell more profound. Here I am reading, The Queen of Bedlam, by McCammon an author who seems to paint his books verbally with skillful brush strokes and then I'm reading a book that seems to have been written by a child and never edited. Cell, was not polished and from the acclaim that King was given early on in his career as an author this book just piggy backed on their shoulders and King was able to reap thousands. Most likely laughing all the way to the bank!! The pages of this book are best used as toilet paper, and the script and story line are best never to be heard by human ears again.

In this book, Cell phones emit a pulse and those using them become zombies. Fair enough. But oh no, King wasn't done there! That wasn't enough. He had to make the zombies turn all X-men like. Now they don't just chomp brains, they can levitate, yes that wasn't a spelling error. These zombies can make like superman and fly. Uber gay. Then, they have telepathy! WTF! Seriously, King seemed to be grasping at straws for new ideas here! I was waiting for zombies to start shooting laser beams from their eyes and pop out with adamantium claws any second. Telepathic powers wasn't where it ended. These zombies can get into your mind and make you kill yourself. Ummmmm okay?? If there is a book out there that makes you want to kill yourself, Cell is the one! I felt like bashing my own head in at the absurdity of this novel, if novel is really even the right word to describe this book. If I could turn back time I would read, "One fish, two fish, red fish blue fish" by Dr. Seuss a thousand times before reading this crappy tome.

I guess from now on I'll just stick to reading books from King's drug days, since apparently that's where all of his creative genius came from in the past. (less)

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Aug 06, 2010 Tim Wilhelm rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: absolute-favorites

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

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Sep 05, 2008 Anca rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: with-a-movie, old-holidays, sf-and-fantasy

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 too curious how it's gonna...more

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May 21, 2008 Jules G rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jan 31, 2008 Christy rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 morph into zombies...more

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Dec 18, 2007 Thee_ron_clark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of Stephen King, post apocalyptic novels, and zombie-type stuff

Shelves: zombies

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

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Sep 16, 2010 Alex Telander rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2006

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. CELL BY STEPHEN KING: Cell is Stephen King's first horror novel since he completed his epic "Dark Tower" series. In the middle of writing the last two books in the series he was asked what he'd be writing about next and his response had been something to the effect of: "I'm never writing another book again!" That's what happens when you ask a guy about writing when he's drowning in thousands of pages and hundreds of thousands of words. But now some years and much needed rest and recovery later,...more CELL BY STEPHEN KING: Cell is Stephen King's first horror novel since he completed his epic "Dark Tower" series. In the middle of writing the last two books in the series he was asked what he'd be writing about next and his response had been something to the effect of: "I'm never writing another book again!" That's what happens when you ask a guy about writing when he's drowning in thousands of pages and hundreds of thousands of words. But now some years and much needed rest and recovery later, Cell takes technology and cell phones to a whole new level: zombies!

With the opening line, "The event that came to be known as The Pulse began a 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1," the reader is immediately dragged into the thrall of the book, which is unusual since King usually takes up to fifty pages to get started with his books. "The Pulse" is an electromagnetic signal sent through cell phones, so anyone using their phone at that point is immediately affected, the result being their mind is completely wiped. What's left? Our primitive, primordial thoughts and reactions, which are little to none; the result: zombies!

Clayton Riddell has just landed his first huge lucrative comic book deal and is ready to return home to Kent Pond in Maine to his wife -- who is drifting away from him -- and his son to tell them everything is going to be okay, but then the pulse hits and pandemonium erupts: zombies!

Clay has only one goal in mind: to get to his wife, and more importantly his son and make sure he's alive and well. He consoles himself with the terror of knowing his son has a shiny red cellphone, though the last time Clay saw it, it was under his son's bed, forgotten; then again with everything that's happened, his son might have chosen to keep his cell phone handy. With the help of a homosexual middle-aged man and a fifteen year old girl, they make their slow journey north through New Hampshire and on to Maine. Somehow the reader is supposed to just take it for given the fact that the other two have little interest in going anywhere else except to see Clay's son and wife. They soon discover that the zombies are very human in one way: they sleep at night and for some reason like easy listening music while they are in this "resting state," which involves packing together like sardines in a big arena or gym and just lying there, eyes open, doing nothing. Strange zombies!

As the novel progresses, through a process of elimination, it is discovered that the zombies are telepathic, work on a "hive mind" system, and also possess some psychic power that allows the "phonies" to talk through "normies" using their mouths. It is also revealed that there is a protected reserve in Maine called Kashwak where there is no cellphone reception (KASHWAK=NO-FO), and therefore a place of refuge for the normies. It is there the group is headed (other members are added), destroying "flocks" of phonies along the way, and are in fact pulled there with the psychic power of the phonies, who's spokesperson is a zombie they call the Raggedy Man. As Clay discovers that his wife and son are already near Kashwak, they all head there, knowing that the reserve will be the final showdown between the normies and the phonies. The question is whether humanity will triumph, or whether homo sapiens sapiens will be reduced to zombies!

As Cell got into full swing, I was hoping for something a little more epic, though I kind of figured this wouldn't happen since the book was only 350 pages, I knew it couldn't get too "big." Nevertheless, I would have liked a little more depth to it. My biggest complaint with cataclysm stories is that they tend to focus on such a small scale.

For more book reviews, and author interviews, go to BookBanter.(less)

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Apr 18, 2008 Lindy rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Feb 21, 2011 Kristal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, df-challenge-winter-2011, read-in-2011

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 creepiness then...more

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Sep 03, 2008 Eric Smith rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: King fans and zombie genre readers.

Shelves: horror, techno-thriller

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 wasn't expecting. If...more

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About Stephen King

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family...more Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.(less)

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Quotes from Cell

“What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.” — 18 people liked it

“Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.” — 15 people liked it

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