Blood and Smoke

Rating:
Summary: Three shorts from the King
Review: "Blood and Smoke" is three unconnected short stories with a pack of Marlboros as a major plot point to each tale. Although not as engrossing or satisfying as his full-length novels, "Blood and Smoke" is definitely entertaining. The best thing about the short tales is the variety of horror contained within.

"Lunch at the Gotham Cafe" is a darkly humorous, offbeat horror story revolving around a man (written from 1st person point of view) simultaneously struggling with divorce and quitting smoking. As if that wasn't bad enough, he finds himself at the Gotham Cafe having lunch with his wife, her lawyer, missing his own lawyer, and being confronted by the maitre-d from hell. This story was my personal favorite.

"1408" is a classic sort of horror story, good but my least favorite of the bunch. It is about a skeptical ghost-story writer who writes about the nights he spends in various so-called haunted sites. He is about to face the real thing for the very first time. The basic plot of "1408" is very cliché (writer spending the night in a haunted hotel room), but King manages to bring it to life with an interesting opening conversation and an unexpected lack of subtlety in the room itself.

"The Death Room" could be classified as part political thriller, although the modernized horror is the real focus. The main character is a reporter from New York, now in some unnamed South American country, being interrogated by the government about his knowledge of a rebel faction. It is clear from the beginning that there is no chance the reporter will leave the room alive without a lot of luck and perhaps a cigarette. King's characters really come alive in this tale with some of his best character descriptions ever.

One last note - Stephen King the reader is not as talented as Stephen King the writer, but he does a decent job (better than other works I've heard read by the author). He sounds a little self-conscious in the beginning of Gotham Cafe, but loosens up toward the end and gives the characters clearly recognizable voices.

Rating:
Summary: Three shorts from the King
Review: "Blood and Smoke" is three unconnected short stories with a pack of Marlboros as a major plot point to each tale. Although not as engrossing or satisfying as his full-length novels, "Blood and Smoke" is definitely entertaining. The best thing about the short tales is the variety of horror contained within.

"Lunch at the Gotham Cafe" is a darkly humorous, offbeat horror story revolving around a man (written from 1st person point of view) simultaneously struggling with divorce and quitting smoking. As if that wasn't bad enough, he finds himself at the Gotham Cafe having lunch with his wife, her lawyer, missing his own lawyer, and being confronted by the maitre-d from hell. This story was my personal favorite.

"1408" is a classic sort of horror story, good but my least favorite of the bunch. It is about a skeptical ghost-story writer who writes about the nights he spends in various so-called haunted sites. He is about to face the real thing for the very first time. The basic plot of "1408" is very cliché (writer spending the night in a haunted hotel room), but King manages to bring it to life with an interesting opening conversation and an unexpected lack of subtlety in the room itself.

"The Death Room" could be classified as part political thriller, although the modernized horror is the real focus. The main character is a reporter from New York, now in some unnamed South American country, being interrogated by the government about his knowledge of a rebel faction. It is clear from the beginning that there is no chance the reporter will leave the room alive without a lot of luck and perhaps a cigarette. King's characters really come alive in this tale with some of his best character descriptions ever.

One last note - Stephen King the reader is not as talented as Stephen King the writer, but he does a decent job (better than other works I've heard read by the author). He sounds a little self-conscious in the beginning of Gotham Cafe, but loosens up toward the end and gives the characters clearly recognizable voices.

Rating:
Summary: Smokescreen
Review: After an agonizing 1 and 1/2 stories, I just could not bear to listen to Stephen King's high pitched monotone drivel anymore. This coming from a Stephen King fan, no less. The first story (Gotham Cafe) was a complete joke, not scary at all but extremely irritating and a waste of time. I could never get into the 2nd one (1408), kept having to rewind and start over. Sorry Stephen, please don't read for the audio anymore and *please* - write better stories...I miss the caliber of stories like "The Shining". Can I have my $$ back?

Rating:
Summary: STILL GOT IT!
Review: After the touching disappointment,Bag of Bones, he's back to scare. Though this collection is not is no Night Shift, It's good. The first, Lunch at the Gothame Cafe, is a humorous but scary look at a failed marriage and psychotic waiter handling too much stress. The second, I can't remember the name, but it is a cool ghost story about a room that doesn't have a pleasing effect on it's occupants. The last is the let down. In the Death Room is a bad spy/torture tale.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting stories
Review: All these stories were quite interesting and entertaining to listen to. I give 4 stars out of five on all of them. The best had to be the second one, the 1408 story, it's the only one that even came close to a 5 on my list. The third one, the death room, was also quite good but the main characters escape after getting out of the room was a little too easy. The first story was good but probably the worst. It had a lot of potential and I found some parts even funny, but it was really too far fetched and it didn't really make any sense, it was too UN-logical. In this piece of work, Blood and Smoke, Stephen King's great writing skills are UN-deniable but I can't help but think that all the stories could have been alot better if he would have put some more work into them. I would really love to see some kind of sequel to Lunch At the Gotham Cafe(The first story) It was quite interesting and I'm eager to see what happens next.

Rating:
Summary: More excellent work from Mr. King
Review: Although skeptical of the audio book format, I was pleasantly surprised. The stories were the quality we have come to expect from Stephen King short stories. I listened to them on the subway on my way to work and was glad I wasn't alone or in the dark while listening. I have been a Stephen King fan since Carrie and he never ceases to surprise me with what he will do. Some people may be annoyed by his voice but I had heard him read his work before at a public reading so his voice was no surprise. He uses perfect inflection exactly where it is needed to scare you. I prefer this audio format to the computer-only book recently published. The computer-only book is still sitting in my computer waiting to be read. Enjoy Blood and Smoke...but not in the dark...and not alone...

Rating:
Summary: Classic Stephen King
Review: Blood and Smoke deals with the typical smoker: the one that desperately dreams of giving it up and simultaneously can't live without it(it's just like that thing with women, can't live with 'em, but can't live without 'em either - sorry, my first line just reminded me of this old saying). Smoking is carefully woben into the kas (for those of you who have not made acquaintance with King's Dark Tower series and books like Insomnia and Rose Madder yet where he occasionally drops this term, it does mean "fate" or "live" seen in a more interconnected context)of the three main characters who join you on this 4 hour (just a guess) experience; it also connects with the sudden impacts of events that shatter the lives of these three guys and makes the stories King has to tell unique. Although King has written a lot of better stories, this set of three short stories read by King himself is classic story-telling, it's just good old-fashioned (not Wendy's hamburgers but) Stephen King, who starts reading when me made ourselves comfortable in our favorite chair and starts pushing when you are not prepared for it - shoving us into the world of these three guys ... shoving us into the live of the smoker with all the dangers that are ready to jump right on him. The package this cd-set comes in also is a nice exemple for taking pride in your work. The package looks like a huge pack of King-sized Marlboros with Stephen King's head in the middle. The pack even bears a Surgeon General's warning, making you realize that with opening this package and inserting the first cd into your player you get hooked immedeately ... on three unfiltered tales of blood and smoke.

Rating:
Summary: Stories are good, but . . .
Review: Blood and Smoke is an audio collection of three Stephen King short stories. All three are great. Lunch at the Gotham Cafe concerns the events than transpire when a divorcing couple meet at a restaurant where the Maitre'D isn't quite dealing with a full deck. It's a good but not great story. The Deathroom is a claustrophobic and probably improbable tale of a journalist taken in for questioning by a third world government. 1408 is the real prize on this collection -- a chilling tale of a haunted hotel room that cost me several hours of sleep.

BUT. But. All three stories are now available in written form in the collection Everything's Eventual. You do not have to buy this audio tape if you plan to buy that book -- that is unless you have a yen to hear King read his stories (and do a fairly good job of it).

Rating:
Summary: Stories are good, but . . .
Review: Blood and Smoke is an audio collection of three Stephen King short stories. All three are great. Lunch at the Gotham Cafe concerns the events than transpire when a divorcing couple meet at a restaurant where the Maitre'D isn't quite dealing with a full deck. It's a good but not great story. The Deathroom is a claustrophobic and probably improbable tale of a journalist taken in for questioning by a third world government. 1408 is the real prize on this collection -- a chilling tale of a haunted hotel room that cost me several hours of sleep.

BUT. But. All three stories are now available in written form in the collection Everything's Eventual. You do not have to buy this audio tape if you plan to buy that book -- that is unless you have a yen to hear King read his stories (and do a fairly good job of it).

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly King.
Review: Enter the Gotham Cafe, have lunch, experience what our protagonist in the first of three typically deep King stories is suffering. Steve Davis has quit smoking. Bad timing. His wife is asking for a divorce. They meet at the Gotham Cafe with his wife's lawyer for lunch to discuss terms. What follows is far worse than any craving for a cigarette or losing a wife can feel like. And a story you will not soon forget. In the second story, "1408", Mike Enslin is a writer whose books are about all the nights he has spent in supposedly "haunted" houses, castles, graveyards. Now he is to spend the night in room 1408 of the Dolphin hotel. He doesn't believe anything different will happen to him here than what happened to him in all those other "haunted" places, namely, nothing. But "nothing" is far from what happens one dark night in room 1408 and Mike Enslin will not come out the same man who went into that room. In the third story "In the Deathroom", Stephen King's talent for storytelling will have you believing that yes, you can feel the cold gray tile on the floor in this room, you can hear the steady hum of the torture machine, and you can smell the all pervasive odor of death that awaits a man named Fletcher, held captive here and being forced to tell all. In all three tales, told in Stephen King's own voice, the main character begins as one person, and ends up as quite another. All three men are changed profoundly, and all three men can link this change to smoking, or the cessation of. A brilliant trio of Stephen Kingness, you will at once find yourself grossed out at the Gotham Cafe, frightened to death in room 1408, and scared but hopeful in "the Deathroom".