Dreamcatcher

Rating:
Summary: Sprawling Monstrosities
Review: Stephen King has a proven track record as one of the world's most popular fiction writers; unfortunately he is also one of the most self-indulgent. His books are gigantic sprawling blobs, rather like the rapacious alien fungus set to devour the world in Dreamcatcher. Sometimes he can't even contain himself within even a trilogy--the Dark Tower series advanced its plot not at all in his most recent (fourth) installment. In his continuing battles with the publishing world, his fans often come out the losers. It is they who ended up paying three times as much for the six installment version of The Green Mile than if King had originally released it as a traditional novel; and anyone who had faith in King and bought the internet version of The Plant simply got ripped off, as he never finished it.

Dreamcatcher continues along this self-indulgent path. Although there's a good story under all the fatty layers of excessive prose, it is a story King's fans have read before--sort of Stand By Me meets The Tommyknockers. King's style is full of self-reference--I counted at least four completely irrelevant references to other King books. He loves to bury the reader in detail; at its best this technique brings the characters to life, but too often simply distracts from the storyline. Although no one could truthfully say that his books are predictable, King is so fond of foreshadowing that we know well in advance what is coming. He also uses a changing point of view that allows him to move the story around from the original four characters to a situation completely unknown to them about one-third of the way through the book--a lurch I found quite awkward. I wonder how different, how much more compact and perhaps more compelling the book might have been if it had been told only from the viewpoint of the four friends, without ever introducing the one-dimensional, almost cartoonish villain Kurtz. (Given that some of those original characters die early on, it might have been quite a challenge!)

But King fans are all familiar with these foibles, and they seem to forgive him all. He knows how to reward his readers with little pats on the back for keeping up with him--the self-references are surely there for his die-hard fans as much as for himself, and asides like "Gray" and "Gary" being anagrams, or Kurtz as a pseudonym from Apocalypse Now and The Heart of Darkness make the astute reader feel just a little bit special.

In his afterward, King talks about the book as a vehicle for his pain; it seems to me that there is quite a bit of anger there too, and even contempt. The presence of these emotions, though, gives the book some strength that puts it above much of his other writing. Still, I have to hope that his pain will burn away some of the excessive gigantism; I far prefer the leaner, more intimate King of works like Misery and Thinner.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Underrated!! One of King's best...
Review: King spins an amazing tale that involves four childhood friends- Henry, Pete, Beaver, and Jonsey, who came together to save a boy with down syndome named Duddits, from getting beat up by local bullies. Ever since that time in their lives, they have been connected by the uncanny psychic powers that they gained in return, which they all refer to as "seeing the line". As the years pass, they are slowly split apart by their own problems, but always manage to come together once a year for their annual huting trip in the Maine woods. At first, the trip seemed like any other that they had taken for years. Unfortunately, things in their lives would change forver, when they are snowed in by an unexpected blizzard, and an injured man named Richard McCarthy stumbles into their camp rambling about lights in the sky and being scared out of his mind...

Stephen King is not my favorite author, but I have read enough of his books to realize that some are better than others. Dreamcatcher is one of his best books, and I am very suprised at the amount of people that disliked this book. Dreamcatcher reads at an incredibly fast pace. The book is almost 900 pages long, and I read it in two days. I literally could not put it down. King combines a wonderful coming of age story, with a terrifying alien invasion. If I had to describe this book in one line, it would be "IT" meets "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The story unfolds brilliantly. The focus of the story keeps switching back and forth between the four friends' childhood with Duddits, and the current situation that they are in. This involves the alien invasion, and an insane Army Colonel named Abraham Kurtz whose only mission is to destroy the aliens, and take everyone down with him. King uses amazing character development and outstanding dialogue. As the story unfolds, you come to like to each character equally. But the reason the book really succeeds, is that the main characters are not immune from danger. You see the characters you have come to love actually going through pain, torment, and mental anguish. This provides for unbelieveable suspense, because no one is safe. Due to outstanding dialougue, the book can also be quite funny at times as well, which makes the story enjoyable overall.

"Dreamcatcher" is one of the best books that I have ever read. The characters, suspense, humor, and overall terror that this book brings will amaze you. This remains one of the only books that I wanted to start reading again immediately after I finished.

Rating:
Summary: Subpar
Review: Critics jokingly refer to King's "loggorhea", his ability to churn out several lengthy tomes of new material each year, but the underlying implication is that this is one of the signs of his greatness. Pardon me for dissenting, but when every other novel (and sometimes several in a row) are of as poor quality as "Dreamcatcher" maybe it's time to take a laxative and kick off the shoes for awhile.

This book is cookie cutter King at his worst. Not only does he bite heavily from other writers and filmmakers, constantly quoting other superior works that deal with similar themes and plot elements, but he's guilty also of ripping off his own material. We have shipwrecked aliens that use mind manipulation techniques to control humans (Tommyknockers), recurring flashbacks to life altering events in the characters' childhood (It), an intellectual infant who turns out to hold the key to everything (too many books to count)... the list goes on. Unfortunately so does the book. I suppose it's King's matter-of-fact storytelling that makes some fans feel every word that spills out of his typewriter is priceless, but it's rather obvious to the more objective reader that very little he's churned out in the past 10-15 years (at least) couldn't use some judicious editing. Most of the back story in "Dreamcatcher" is mildly diverting but not at all necessary. Not to mention it smacks of that old "Moby Dick" ploy of heightening the suspense by tossing in chapters unrelated to the current narrative at key moments. Problem is, Melville employed this technique with expertise and finesse, rarely overstaying his welcome, whereas you get the impression with "Dreamcatcher" that King just doesn't have much of a plot to work with and is padding out the opening segments with excess exposition in a vain attempt to achieve some sort of balance with the later parts of the book. This "balancing" means the novel takes over 300 pages to really get going.

I hate to even expand too much farther on my thoughts here, since most people reading this review will probably be diehard Stephen King fans and the ensuing carpal tunnel syndrome will be all for naught, but when that "4 out of 162 people found this review helpful" eventually appears above the byline I want to make sure I've earned the right to protest (after all, rating a review is not supposed to be whether you agree with the writer's assessment, but rather how well they've elucidated their opinion and given someone who hasn't read the book an idea of what they might expect).

So what else do we have here? First of all, as others have already mentioned, King's penchant for namechecking pop culture icons and including snatches of classic rock tunes in his work used to be cute and quirky, but after thirty years of publishing it's now only indicative of his inability to get up off his laurels and try something fresh.

Furthermore, though King has long been known for his realistic portrayals of children (particularly teenagers), he also has a tendency to take advantage of their youthful uncertainty to make them do things that would seem plausible to an adult. In "Dreamcatcher", the pivotal event in the lead characters' life comes when, as 8th graders, they come across some high school bullies tormenting a mentally disabled kid and intervene. That in and of itself is not all that unbelievable, but the fact that they befriend this kid (Duddits for those keeping score) for life seems like an act of charity unbefitting these capricious youths. I say this because, frankly, Duddits as written is not all that endearing a character. I'm sure his enthusiasm and baby talk were meant to be cute, but instead he comes off as a complete caricature that is bordering on offensive in and of itself. The bottom line is he's portrayed as a challenged individual that would be more likely to be tolerated for his inadequacies than embraced as a joy to be around. Furthermore, I'm getting a little sick of these "innocence as salvation" motifs in King's work, but if it had to continue here he could have at least fleshed out the whole telepathy aspect a bit more, maybe explore the possibility that Duddits' mental deficiency is tied in with his telepathic abilities, etc. And speaking of fleshing out character arcs, one character's drinking problem is mentioned repeatedly but only serves to force him into making one dumb decision that helps to drive the plot forward (deus ex machina, anyone?). Another character's accident the previous year is introduced as a psychically tramautic event but only gives King an excuse to introduce the element of intrusive thoughts before the aliens swoop in and give them something of their own to think about.

I could go on but I'm held to 1000 words and I've gotta be getting close. Hopefully I've managed to convey the depth of inadequacies in this book without beating anyone over the head, but the various levels of failings in "Dreamcatcher" do warrant more than a brief "thumbs up/down" synopsis, especially in light of King's reputation and prior body of work. I'm sure he'll bounce back (and forth), but in the meantime he might consider the idea that not everything he sits down to write needs to see the light of day. There's another book entitled "The Lost Writings of Stephen King" that I was perusing recently, and I noticed that the lion's share of unpublished fiction was either written in his younger, pre-published days or in those first 5-10 years of semi-stardom, when his work was judged strictly by it's quality and not just because it had King's name on the cover.

Rating:
Summary: Classic King is back...finally!
Review: While this is not King's best novel by a long shot it is still a fast-paced and entertaining read that will keep you turning pages late into the night. After a couple of stinkers like "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" and "Storm of the Century" it is good to see King return to the long novel format we've all come to know and love. Yes, Dreamcatcher is "wordy" as ever, but King finally brings it back to the familiar apocalyptic territory that he explored in "The Tommyknockers", and "The Stand" with a tale of alien body snatching out in the snowy, remote woods of Maine. While most of this story has been done before (either in his own novels, or in films like "Alien" or "The Thing") King still manages to grow and cultivate his influences rather than merely ripping them off. The story happens in multiple layers, ranging from the present nightmare situation of his characters, to childhood flashbacks, and even an entire world inside the head of his possessed character Jonsey. First time King readers will be put off by these abstract settings, but longtime fans will recall classics like "Insomnia" and "The Talisman." Other elements like the telepathic relationship between the four characters, and the growing alien threat are equally frightnening. Overall, Dreamcatcher proves that King is still the master when it comes to creepy tales, and it makes for a great winter read!

Rating:
Summary: a very good read
Review: a very good read ideal to be read in one or two sittings. however, a few points to be cautioned about - 1) not a horror novel 2) for the first few pages (about 150 or so) it`s hard to figure out what the hell is happening or where it`s heading. with that behind, this book is a hell of a good read. this book can be enjoyed the most if you dont hear anything about it`s plot and read it with an absolute open mind.

Rating:
Summary: A treat for an old fan of Stephen King
Review: I grew up on "The Stand", "Cujo" and "Salem's Lot", but it's probably been well over a decade since I read a book by Stephen King. How great it was to reconnect with this old friend! King is so prolific and so populist that his work is easily dismissed by serious critics, and that's a shame. "Dreamcatcher" is a perfect example of his brilliance at work. The central concept - bodysnatching aliens - is an old one, but King gives it new life. As always, his plot is imaginative, compelling, and just the right amount of horrifying. His core characters are similar to the "everyman" lead in most of his novels, but more layered and finely nuanced. There are characters within characters, literally and figuratively. The story is beautifully paced, and King masterfully weaves the different plotlines together - much like a dreamcatcher. Even things that would normally turn me off a book are surprisingly well done. While I generally consider scatological stories juvenille and a [poor] attempt to shock, it actually makes reasonable scientific sense in the context of this plot, unpleasant as it is.

An interesting little side note - the action in this book takes place in the November after the 2000 election, i.e. November 2001. At the time King wrote the book, the presidency was still undecided. As part of the story, the new president must speak to the nation and soothe everyone's fears about the threat presented by the alien invaders. The speech leans heavily on the patriotic and is considered to be the new president's finest hour and erases the scandal of the election. Eerie.

Rating:
Summary: Stephen King's therapeutic alien invasion story
Review: Because "Dreamcatcher" is the novel Stephen King wrote (in longhand) while recuperating from his near-fatal accident, it easily lends itself to all sorts of psychological interpretations. After all, one of the characters is hit by a car and breaks a hip. To me, the first part of the book comes across as a melting pot of familiar elements from King books: once upon a time there was a group of four boys who were best friends ("The Body"), who become involved in stopping a great evil as adults ("It"), because of a spaceship that has landed in the woods ("The Tommyknockers") and a horrible infection is spreading around ("The Stand"). Fortunately they have some psychic ability ("The Dead Zone") that will help them not only with the aliens but also with the psycho running the government operation ("Firestarter"). For good measure, throw in literary homages to the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Alien" with a generous twist of "The X-Files," while keeping in mind that not everybody gets out alive in a Stephen King novel, and you have the general picture of what "Dreamcatcher" is about.

The four friends--Joe "Beaver" Clarendon, Pete Moore, Henry Devlin and Gary Jones--are bound together in a way that they do not even suspect. Beaver is an inventive curser who owns a cabin in the Maine woods where the group gathers for the last time, Pete can find lost car keys or anything else when he puts his mind to it, Henry is a suicidal shrink who has a tendency to lash out at patients from time to time, and Jonsey is a college professor who just "knows" when students cheat on exams. The common link in their lives is Duddits (but I am not letting that particular cat out of the bag--read the book). When Richard McCarthy stumbles out of the woods, dazed and confused, not to mention the worst case of flatulence in the history of civilization, the group has no idea that they are on the edge of the end of the world as we know it.

"Dreamcatcher" is not a great Stephen King book and even while it rehashes some familiar elements once all the pieces are in place the guy knows how to tell a story. The idea that the right people are in the right place at the right time can come across as either heavy-handed coincidence or another instantiation of King's faith in the hand of the divine. Certainly, it does not work as seamlessly as it does in "The Stand." Be warned: this book contains some of the grossest scenes King has ever created (i.e., do not read parts of this book while eating). This is not a book for King neophytes, but for his fans. In the final analysis, the important thing is the man is up and writing again.

Rating:
Summary: Oh brother...
Review: The setup for "Dreamcatcher" is sooooooo perfect. Four old friends from Derry (yeah, THAT place again) get together for their annual hunting trip. They're all going through several mid-life crises but looking forward to bagging a couple of bucks. And then they meet this crazy old man who's supposedly been lost in the woods. They take him in, make him feel comfy, get him a bite to eat. And then he leans over and...

PPBBT!

Let's out a HUGE fart. A real stinker. I couldn't STOP LAUGHING from this point on. And the FARTS OF DOOM are a recurring occurence throughout the story. I never knew King was so adept at toilet humor.

Then I went back and read "The Shining" and it still scared the crap out of me. Oh Stephen, you've lost your touch.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best work.
Review: I am a very big fan of Stephen king's novels and can honestly say that this book just isn't hapenning. The book starts very interesting but as you keep reading it gets more and more boring. If you are thinking of buying this book, you will be better off buying one of his other novels.

Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age ¿ Gone Nuts
Review: Dreamcatcher is the story of a group of 4 friends that come of age "twice" with the help of a special boy. The special friend they make gives them each an insight that gives them abilities to read minds, find lines for lost trails or items and a connection that holds them together through adulthood. This group of friends takes a hunting trip each fall and this year is no different, until everything that could go wrong goes very wrong in an inter-galactic sort of way. Their special friend Duddits has been waiting for this day his whole life, and the insight he has given them is their power to try and make the world right again.
This is a journey that you will love to take and friends that you will love to meet! A must read.