Rating: 
Summary: Not the Steven King I remembered as a kid
Review: Don't get me wrong- this story was well written, but it lacked the punch that other Steven King books delivered for me when I last read some of them years ago (e.g., The Stand, Pet Cemetery, It). King is gifted at describing horror in the commonplace (think Cujo or Christine), but even he couldn't wring macabre out of a simple case of a girl lost in the woods. The story was convincing in that I believed it accurately depicted what a 9 year old would do if lost in the woods, but I just didn't care that much. Also, the creature stalking the girl is a let down and kind of seems tossed in as an afterthought. The girl was perishing all right on her own without the intervention of evil incarnate shaped like a badly drawn bear.
Rating: 
Summary: A Novel to Read Over and Over
Review: This novel is about survival to say the least. When reading this novel, you feel as though you are apart of it. Your heart will go out to this brave little girl as she struggles to overcome obstacles not only in the wilderness, but obstacles caused by family strife and fear. The girls survival through the wild goes far beyond what most adults could ever endure. Stephen King does another extordinary job creating a story that has you turning back to the first page to read it again!
Rating: 
Summary: King is king
Review: This is indeed Stephen King. Who else could make a suspense story about a nine-year-old (but tall for her age) girl who strayed from the hiking trail on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail? Not only is King's story suspenseful, it is believeable. I had forgotten how well King writes--his other novels so gripped me with their story lines, I never really considered his writing skills. My loss.In Legend, King tells his story from the perspective of the lost Tricia McFarland. It's not in the first person--that would have detracted from the story line,as readers would wonder how a nin-year-old , one even tall for her age, could think in sentences of a mature adult. This approach to the narration allows the author to think like a young lady, but narrate in terms ofa young lady's perspective. Confusing? Trust me. Consider some of Tricia's thoughts as she muddles her way throught the forest. "She said the Our Father, but it came out of her mouth sounding flat and uncomforting, about as useful as an electric can opener would have been out here." Or,"The moon was so bright that it had embarrassed all but the brightest stars into invisibility." Or, when thinking of her mother,she says to herself, "If Mother had been at Little Bighorn, the Indians might still have won, but the body-count would have been considerably higher." When Triciaaccidently comes across an abandoned road in the forest, King captures the moment as "the night stretched out ahead of her like a thousand miles of empty road." Mosquitoes? They were clustered on the back of her neck, lined up just below the hairline like kdrinkers at happy hour, guzzling their fill" And the scene in which Tricia and a wild bear meet in the forest is uncomparable King. King's c hapter headings are called Pre-Game, First Inning, Second Inning, and so on.The title of the novel comes from TRicia's hero-worship of Tom Gordon, Boson Red Sox pitcher whose chief responsibility was that of entering the game as closing pitcher, that is, as the one responsibe for protecting a lead. There is a real Tom Gorgan on the Red Sox team,but King assures us in an author's Postscript that his Tom Gordon is fictional. Tricia hallucinates throughout her adventure,seeing Gordon, talking with him, and being guided by his calm and wisdom. Child=like, but not childish. Big Surprise.
Rating: 
Summary: well written, the best yet.
Review: A nine-year-old girl and her family go on a six-mile trip on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trial. Trisha McFarland goes on this adventure to leave the city and forget their problems at home. Later her old brother, Pete,and her recently divorced mother start arguing. Trish wanders off, then realizes that her mom and Pete are nowhere to be found. She tries to catch up by taking a short cut, but finds herself lost as she goes on. As the night start to fall, she tries to find a place to rest and sleep for the night, but as soon as she tries her mind takes over. Then she finds herself scared walking around the woods finding a slaughtered animal, and thinking that a "THING" is watching her every move. The only thing that keeps her in contact with civilization is her Walkman, on which she listens to the broadcast of the Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows every performance of her favorite pitcher Tom Gordon. As her Walkman's batteries go low, Trisha starts to imagine her favorite Red Sox player Tom Gordon. Then days later her luck turns worse and she has all kind of misfortunes. This book is a mystery and suspense book that keeps you on the edge of your chair. I recommend this book to anybody that likes mystery and suspense books because Stephen King makes the characters seem real and this problem can happen to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: A little bit slow and boring.
Review: Being a King fan, I was fairly disappointed in this book. Though he has the ability to capture what could go through a persons mind in a situation like this, I found this book a little slow without much happening. Just alot of walking around in the woods. So if you are looking for the bizarre and something with action that will capture your imagination, this is not it.
Rating:
Summary: A small, tense book
Review: Fans of Stephen King will not believe he wrote a book you can lift with one hand. Friends of the blow-'em-up endings of Needful Things and Insomnia (among others) may be disappointed that the fireworks is missing. But in this short, tense novel you will find all the slowly mounting fear, dread and terror that Stephen King writes so masterfully. And he does it slowly, carefully, and, as always, letting us fill in the blanks with the worst of our own nightmares. A little girl gets lost while on a hike in the woods with her mother and brother. She is lost spiritually and psychologically, too. Her parents have divorced and her brother is stuck in his own anger. King uses the clever device of the samness of the woods, the sameness of her attempt to find a way out as a counterpoint to her interior struggle with despair, the existence of God, her relationship to her angry parents. As her Walkman fades out she is left utterly alone. Well, except for the hallucinations (or is that scrabbling in the leaves real?) In this book, King shows that that terror can travel slowly, and that if the world ends with a whimper instead of a bang, it can still be terrifying.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed King Fan...
Review: I'm a huge Stephen King fan, and this one let me down. As we've seen in many of his books he definitely has an interest in baseball... this one was awkward and sorry to say a bit malformed. Even in this short book all i could think is - thank goodness for Darwin - in his version the lead character would have eliminated herself from the gene pool!
Rating: 
Summary: Stephen King Flopped with this book.
Review: I am an avid reader of any Stephen Kings books and expected much more from him then this book offered. It was very slow and had a very boring, repetative plot. The book is based on a little girl who gets lost and does the same thing day in and day out, over and over again. If you would like a excellent adventure..check out some of Bently Little's books.
Rating:
Summary: Even though Mr. King wrote it, not the best
Review: I admit being an avid King fan having read every book he ever published. I also admit that not every book he has published is a masterpiece, and Tom Gordon is sadly one of these. I will never say that Mr. King published this work as an offering to the gods of finance and the pleasing of his publishers; however, I think Tom Gordon could have been more fully prepared than it was. I enjoyed the hallucinatory images by the protangonist and really enjoyed the attempt of Mr. King to see into a young girl's mind in an extraordinary situation. There was something I thought was left out of the story, I can't tell you what it was because its just a feeling. The only other reason I give this novel an average rating is that for first-time King readers the level of abstractness can be confusing. I sometimes look at his work in the mind of a first time reader and abstractness is the first to come to mind. Overall this book is worth the read in that it has a satisfactory ending and gives you a sense of completion.
Rating:
Summary: The girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Review: I liked the book because it was intresting sand the littel girl pand her mom and brotherwent for a walk in the woods. The littel gril was complaing about how grouchy her father was. Trish brother said he still loves his dad even know he can be a groiucy person. It was boggy out so mom ask her kids if they want bug spray on. The kids were talking and not really looking at all the neat stuff. They were walking on the appalachian trail. They ran in to a littel hut that had a water pump in it and said to remember to fill the jug for the next person because there was no water for a long ways. Trish wanted to stay tell a liitel kid came around so she could mak freinds. Trish thinks that she is invisible to every one so she thinks that she should have stayed home it would not have made any diffrents to her because nobody pay attention to her. Trish said that she had to go and nobody paid attention. So trish went right there well heer mom and brother and trish moms boyfrind kept on going not knowing. The bok is also good becuse it will keep you on your feet or on the edge of you seat because you will not know what is going to happen next and how the moms kisd are going to act about things that there nmom is going to do. Not knowing the littel girl got lost in the woods becuae her mother was not paying attention to what her littel gril had said to her and her mom keep on going and not stoping and waiting. Trish was trying to find her way out of the trail but could not she just keep on going and she keep her eyes on the direction of the main trail. Her mom fialy notice after a while that trish was not there by her side. Then they started looking for her and yelling her name. Trish herd the voice and walk in the direction that she herd it coing from. Then the woods became silent and she herd nothing Then she feltsomthing moving under her she looked down and saw a black snake. she scream in horror because she hats snake. I think that a lot of people could learn from this book if they read it. I think that it has lots of life lessons in it.
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