Rating: 
Summary: i hate to add to the mixed reviews of this book....
Review: I don't like having write another "it's good but..." review of this book, simply because I feel like Stephen King's simultaneous strengths at creating strong characters and fast-moving plot are rare gifts, even more rarely found in conjunction. Anyway, onto the review...As everyone knows by now, "The Tommyknockers" is about a buried UFO uncovered by a naive local which slowly takes over the town, giving incredible powers of ingenuity to everyone but also slowly turning them into puppets of its force. The book is structured very well, with nimble hop-scotching between characters and times as various people either fight or succumb to the Tommyknockers. The hero is the troubled alcoholic poet, Jim Gardener, who comes to check on his friend Bobbi (the original excavator of the UFO) and soon realizes what's going on and moves to fight it. My favorite portion of the book was the middle third, where King begins broadening his focus to show what's happening throughout Haven (especially the heart-rending portion of the kid's magic trick gone wrong... god!), then into the first battle against the Tommyknockers, by which time the town has become nearly uninhabitable by outsiders. My complaints are this: The climax of the book jumps a tad *too* much, using less important characters who don't last long anyway :), and its a psychic bloodbath on all sides by the end of the book. Also, the book seems a bit confused as to what it wants to be - either a small-town-destroyed story like Salem's Lot or a destroyed-by-temptation story like Pet Sematary, and we don't get quite enough of either. We don't meet many important town figures until they're taken over by the Tommyknockers; and while Gardener's hero is fantastic, Bobbi's consumption by the alien force seems comparatively antiseptic, almost :). But these *are* minor complaints -- King's grasp of a big, complex plot is wonderful; the characters are by and large fantastic; *and* its scary as hell. I'd recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: A Milestone
Review: I think that this book is a true milestone in King's work, something you can not compare to his literary landmarks like "It", "The Stand", "Insomnia", "Hearts in Atlantis", "Bag of Bones" (I could go on like this for a whole load of more titles, because there are so many of really good books by King but it's close - let's leave it at that. First of all, I have to express a certain feeling of shock, because there are so many reviews that just do not do this book any justice. Second, there are lot of positive reviews, although - they are well-written, I read some of them - they are much too long. I too have a tendency to get short things long (see?), but I want to stick to my main concerns this time! A lot of people will try to convince you of the contrary, but this book is ORIGINAL. In a way, this story is originality itself. Or have you ever heard of a western novelist who stumbles across the edge of an alien space-ship while taking her dog out through the woods? This may sound a bit cynic - at least it does to me -, but it is a very good beginning, the first sentences already are something worth of mental achievement. I like too recall certain passages from this book from time to time, while I realize that I have to read it again soon. To put it in a nut-shell: the plot is a thrilling heart-jolter, the language is alive and very strong, maybe not as strong as it has been in "It", but still very healthy, the characters start to caputre yourself, pulling you deep into their lives, letting you witness the pure horror that splits their silent world apart. The Tommyknockers is, beside the well-done writing job and the absolutely gripping story, a tale told in old-fashioned Stephen Kingish: first, there WAS the quiet small-town with its quiet inhabitants, THEN there IS the horror ... and when I say horror, Johnny, I m-e-a-n HORROR!
Rating:
Summary: An old favorite
Review: Tommyknockers isn't considered one of Stephen Kings best. It does have it's moments. I have read nearly all his books and this one fits in with the whole Stephen King world he has created. If you are observant, you'll catch a glimps of an old favorite clown in the book. And the childs rhyme of the Tommyknockers is clever too. I rate this book with 4 stars cause it's one of the books I'd like to sit down and read through again if i ever get the time.
Rating:
Summary: Careful, the trapped ETs are there to suck on you
Review: This book is one of the most interesting books by Stephen King. It is heavy with meaning and many themes are present. The first theme, which in fact is not the main one in the story, is that of the drunk poet and the western novel female writer. The story hence revolves around two writers. The poet is the one who is different, unable to be integrated in his society and to follow its evolution. He has had an accident and he has a metal plate in his head. This metal plate gives him the capability to stand apart, to remain aloof, to keep out of the main stream, and that is why he is a poet, because he can see things and events from a different position. His problem is then that he cannot really live up to this aloofness and he has the tendency to drink too much to negociate his difference. He is an alcoholic. But the events in the book enable him to test his will power and requires him to reject his desire and inclination : he has to reject his alcoholism, perfectly well shown at the beginning, to remain in touch with his project that has to do with the rejection and destruction of the menace that hangs over the heads of his fellow-citizens, and thus to save them, or to save his society. He is able to regenerate himself but that leads to only one thing : his death, a heroic death since he is able to destroy the menace that has taken possession of his town. He is a-social, never able to refrain from doing what he is expected not to do, particularly to denounce those who exploit society, even if it means danger for him, and even if he needs the protection of alcohol to find the courage to do it. He is the moral voice of our society, but the restraint society applies on him zips up his mouth, silences his voice. He is called Gardner, the one who cultivates the private garden of his society. Then the book shows an array of women and their attitudes toward their male-dominated society. First of all, the « sheriff » of the city is a woman and she gives her job a more humane dimension. She thinks of children first and tries to enable them to understand the protective role of the police. She is more protective than repressive, and this is good because that is what the police should be. The western novelist is adventurous because she cannot live the time of the frontier she writes about, and her adventurousness will find its field of application in the discovery and excavating of the alien spacecraft. She will trigger the invasion of the community by these aliens, not so much dead but hibernating and waiting for their chance to capture the vital energy of the humans to regenerate their own vitality. They are like vampires who finally, through the intermission of this western novelist, find their revitalizing victims. She is also the lover of the poet and brings him the equilibrium he needs. But she is the discoverer of the wild forest, she is the adventurer who opens new vistas to her community and who brings danger into it. The poet will be in his turn her balancing element because he will trigger her into regeneration, enabling him and her to break the yoke and the dependance weighing on their community. The private gardener and the wild frontier discoverer are like the two sides of one coin and the two trends of any society : danger of wild discoveries and balance of inner imagination. The third woman is the deputy sheriff, the wife who is betrayed by her postal worker of a husband. She is the passionate and possessive lover who will prefer becoming totally crazy and insane by following the vengeance brought to her by the aliens rather than any sane call that would mean a divorce from a dominating husband that we also can imagine slightly brutal at least psychologically. She is the standard middle of the way wife who keeps their dominating men in the right path. They prefer being dominated by faithnful husbands to recapturing their freedom from a betraying husband. So her natural call will be to kill, though she is a deputy sheriff, rather than accepting to live in independance, hence in total responsibility because it also means loneliness, at least sexually, though not socially. She is a useful lady in the community but she cannot live in sanity if she is not under the domination of a man. The next woman in the book is the sex-appealed and preying manta of a socialized husband-thief. She cannot know love as a feeling, but only love as a theft, hence her loving power is only a lusting impulse for married men who are all the more lustful and attractive because they are married. She is a thief at heart and she kind of understands her mission as the big revenge of women against men for centuries of enslavement. She can only be destructive towards her « men conquests ». She can only use and destroy the men she lusts for. She is the perfect prey-« bird » in our society. Then King ponders upon scientific and technological inventiveness. It comes from the aliens. It is the little change they give those victims to lure them into accepting to become their vegetative energy bank. So they start inventing things that transform, that would transform, everyday life into a real haven on earth, but due to the direction imposed by the aliens it transforms life into a daily hell of absolute totalitarianism in the community, an attitude that leads them to become totally autarcic and to eliminate all those who do not accept this yoke. There is here some kind of fear on the side of Stephen King in front of science and technology. Life is simple as long as it remains what it has always been. It is simple as long as it progresses slowly. Any fast revolution is alien to human society and dangerous for human society. It is a reflexion of the present all-comprising technological and scientific revolution the world is living. Any small town community rejects that at first sight because it disrupts their life, and here it leads to collective totalitarianism and suicide. In a way Stephen King is an anti-science-fiction writer who refuses to consider aliens as a chance and progress as a positive gamble. He is in the line of many other thinkers and writers in the field : he sets from the very start that those aliens are dangerous and have to be destroyed. I understand he would say it is the attitude of any small town community, but he never gives another vision, or nearly never. So it has to represent one of his deepest fears. There are strange connections appearing here, like the similarity of attitude and ideology with that we find in Ron Hubbard's science-fiction (« Battle Earth » for example). It is the same attitude we find in the « Alien » film series. It is the same vision we find in the « Predator » film series, particularly in the second film. And we could multiply the examples. That is the complete opposite of Frank Herbert's approach in his « Dune » series, or Jules Verne's approach in all his novels. Finally we must question the Christian approach of the book. Gardner, the poet, will have to sacrifice himself to save humanity. He is the perfect Christ, but a modern Christ. He is a poet, he is a socially marginal character even if he is the conscience of this society. He has to sacrifice himself like Christ, leaving behind tears in the eyes of his lover (though there is no mother, holy and virgin, in the background). He will have to face the hatred of the crowd who wants to crucify him, to get him out of the way, and he will have to trick them all into crucifying himself to save them. There is no reasoning with a mad crowd. There is only using their madness to achieve the destruction of the evil forces and to regenerate the crowd against its or their own will. Another aspect is essential : the use of children dogs and senior citizens. The first captured victim is a child. The second is a dog and one of the later victims is a grandfather. It is the conjunction if these three unsocial, antisocial or a-social forces that will bring the danger down. The children are adventurous (becoming the gate openers and the first victims), on the incitation of the grandfather, and it is their escape, though only coming through Gardner, that triggers the final destruction of the danger. It is the stubborn resistance of the grandfather that leads to the discovery by Gardner of the true nature of the danger, and this grandfather will save the western novelist, after her liberation, from the criminal hands of the man-stealing woman who will come to kill that woman who now stands between them, the community, and the aliens. She will come with an axe, the perfect castrating tool, the perfect representation of male chauvinistic alienation and enslavement of women (see « The Shining » for instance), but here brandished by a woman, meaning that any woman who becomes a male chauvinistic pig in a female body can only lead, if she is free to act, society to its ruin. The dog is also essential because it is the guardian of humanity, though it is also the natural victim of men. It is able to become the tool of the aliens in the name of its love for its master or mistress. He is killing them all, master and mistress included, out of its own love for them (this idea is present in « The Green M
Rating:
Summary: This is a tough one
Review: I'm currently working my way chronologically through the work of Stephen King, mostly in an attempt to observe and catalog the rate at which he introduced Dark Tower concepts into the rest of his writing. Right now, I'm not really sure where I sit on The Tommyknockers. I've certainly read worse books, that had the problems that this one purportedly had to much greater degree. Cujo, for example, didn't go much of anywhere but rather spun a tremendous amount of backstory for no reason, which is a problem this book tends to develop at points. Misery seems a little too close to alegory for comfort (and if it is, he really needed to get over himself at the time he published it). Little problems, nothing big. So what about this book in particular. Well, I think that this is probably one of the few books that I would classify as the personification of Stephen King. His style comes through quite strong in this writing, and I personally enjoy the short trips through the backstory that he takes at points. Reading it, I couldn't help but be reminded of 'Salem's Lot, which bears a lot of superficial resemblance to this book--perhaps this was his effort to clean up and make deeper a piece of work he wasn't satisfied with the first time around. Overall, I wouldn't call this a must read by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a fan of King (not of his horror or his fantasy or his Dark Tower books but HIM and his writing), and I'd recommend this to any other fans out there who have yet to read it. People who aren't too familiar with his work may be mildly annoyed by the references back to The Dead Zone (Johnny Smith) and It (the clown in the Derry sewers) and Firestarter (The Shop, and just as a side note, how is it that nobody in this story which supposedly continues in the same universe heard about a little girl who could basically destroy the Earth?), but it shouldn't get in the way too much for a determined reader. If you're looking for meaning, I don't think you'll find it. Even the material on nuclear power (which would have been a fairly obvious political effort, if that had been the motive) plays with the hollow emptiness of the zealot, probably because most of it is half true and melodramatically constructed. Fortunately, politics is not King's point in this book (I really don't know what that reviewer was talking about). As a fan, I'd give it four stars, as a casual reader, probably closer to two and a half.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read That Kind Of Fizzles....
Review: Although others may disagree with me, I found the Tommyknockers to be my least favorite King book. Not because of the meat of the book which does its job of keeping you glued to the pages but the fact that the end kind of fizzled where usually King's books end with a bang. I find Stephen King to be the master of the imaginary monster and I suppose the reason why it didn't do well for me was because I was not expecting anything about aliens. I was under the impression that we were supposed to be looking under the bed for the monster and not the sky. Perhapes it is that fact which attributes the lowest grade I've ever given a King book. Nonetheless, had I known what to expect, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Either way, I'm glad I read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Uneven
Review: "The Tommyknockers" starts as many of King books do. Something unusual happens to a Maine resident, a blue-jeans everyman. Then, an apocalypse of events follows and we get what we like so much in his fiction: ordinary individuals facing problems which are usually too difficult for them to overcome. Snip: (...)
Rating:
Summary: Is it worthy?
Review: Well I didn't like "Tommyknockers" very much. The book is divided in a way that there is the first introductory part, the second which is just for you to understand the last one, which is the best. The middle part is very boring! King concentrated the boring stuff on the second part, instead of keeping the book interesting all the time (like he done on other works). The whole book is not that bad but is certainly not as good as other books by him like "Desperation". I thought the story was a bit silly: a spaceship that changes the behavior of all the persons around by a strange force. The final is the best part of the book, the only one that have great actions and stuff like that. The end is very good, but the whole book... well, its not that good! Definitely very different from his other books.
Rating:
Summary: Good read - but a few chinks in its armor
Review: This was my first Stephen King book and, overall, I really liked it. The plot was very interesting even given that, from an initial standpoint, it is sort of hackneyed. But I have always been a sucker for the "insidious invasion" type scenarios. What really made me like it was the characterization that was done, particularly for good ol' Gardner. When you realize that the protagonists of the novel are filled with more shortcomings, in some ways, than the antagonists, you have a good love-hate thing going with the characters. The "chinks in the armor" of this good story, however, start to show up for me near the end of the book where what is basically meant to be scary (or at least threatening in a sci-fi sort of way) almost turns into a bad B-movie set of props. However, by that time I was so hooked into the story that I pretty much took it all in stride. Overall, a very entertaining book with great characterization.
Rating:
Summary: One View: The Tommyknockers
Review: Although this book starts out with a very interesting 50 pages or so, it quickly degenerates into what, I suppose, is Mr, King's writing technique: rambling dialogue which focuses on characters who have no significance......stilted descriptions of things which are assumed to be frightening or disgusting......and depictions of bloody violence which seem out of place when assuming that this book has a "theme." Eventually, King returns to development of the central theme: the discovery of an alien artifact and its effects upon human beings. And the book again takes on life. But anyone who manages to read this work will soon come to the conclusion that it really did not take 700 pages to convey the messages within this non-classic. I believe that the book would have been a much better book if King had eliminated all the blood & gore and maintained some sense of continuity by eliminating all the extraneous characters which he put in (obviously, just to make the book longer).......but I don't believe that King is capable of writing any style other than the one which he has "perfected." Good start.......poor finish......most thinking readers will be disappointed with the anomalies which are not considered in the seemingly "thrown together" ending. The ending is the most unlikely event which happens......and it destroys any credence which a reader might have given to King up to that point. I would recommend this book for those "die-hard King fans" who delight in nonsensical blood and violence.........I would not recommend it for anyone who believes that writing is a creative mode of sending messages of import........from one human being to another.
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