Cell by Stephen King
I wanted to preface this by noting that Stephen King is my favorite all time writer and I have read most of his novels. Having said that, Cell is an absolute mess of a novel. There was nothing about it that made any sense. King must really have been fixated on phones and computers while writing this. From what I can gather from reading this novel, the human brain is basically a hard drive that can be wiped out and reprogrammed. It can also be exposed to viruses and worms just like a computer. In this novel, some mysterious pulse occurs, which turns people into ultraviolent, nonsensical monsters, but these are only the people who have cell phones. Good thing this didn’t happen now or the whole human race would have been taken down in one shot, since I don’t know very many people who don’t have cell phones.
The story follows a group of survivors from Boston, where Clay, a struggling comic book artist who finally gets his break, is trying to return to his ex-wife and son in Maine. Along the way, they meet other survivors and have confrontations with the phone zombies. The best part of this novel is the characterization. I thought that the characters in this story were well done, starting with Clay but also with the other members of the group. Where the book falls apart is that the plot and concept behind the book are a train wreck. There is no explanation for anything. Somehow, I’m supposed to believe that a pulse, whatever the hell that is (is it a solar flare, an electro magnetic event, something supernatural) can wipe clean the brains of anyone who has a cell phone, and then give the phone zombies a hive mind, telepathy, voice projection to the normal people who were not affected, the ability to control the minds and actions of those unaffected, and even the ability to levitate. With no explanation whatsoever how any of this is happening. I’m sorry, but in a book like this you need some type of explanation, but apparently King didn’t feel that his readers deserved to know how any of this was happening. This novel came in that time period after King’s accident where he was putting out the worst material of his career, e.g. Lisey’s Story, Bag of Bones, the final chapter of the Dark Tower, etc. I’ll give him a pass because the body of his work is so much better than this.
The story follows a group of survivors from Boston, where Clay, a struggling comic book artist who finally gets his break, is trying to return to his ex-wife and son in Maine. Along the way, they meet other survivors and have confrontations with the phone zombies. The best part of this novel is the characterization. I thought that the characters in this story were well done, starting with Clay but also with the other members of the group. Where the book falls apart is that the plot and concept behind the book are a train wreck. There is no explanation for anything. Somehow, I’m supposed to believe that a pulse, whatever the hell that is (is it a solar flare, an electro magnetic event, something supernatural) can wipe clean the brains of anyone who has a cell phone, and then give the phone zombies a hive mind, telepathy, voice projection to the normal people who were not affected, the ability to control the minds and actions of those unaffected, and even the ability to levitate. With no explanation whatsoever how any of this is happening. I’m sorry, but in a book like this you need some type of explanation, but apparently King didn’t feel that his readers deserved to know how any of this was happening. This novel came in that time period after King’s accident where he was putting out the worst material of his career, e.g. Lisey’s Story, Bag of Bones, the final chapter of the Dark Tower, etc. I’ll give him a pass because the body of his work is so much better than this.
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