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Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dreamcatcher--more of a nightmare
Review: This books starts well but ends with a fizzle. Stephen King obviously lost interest in the book. This book doesn't begin to compare with Hearts in Atlantis or Bag of Bones. If I didn't know better, I would think it was written by someone else. I wouldn't recommend this profane, grotesque, absurd story to anyone. If you have read or listened to the excerpts, you've heard the best parts of the book. I lent the audiobook to two friends (Stephen King fans) and they each gave up listening after two tapes. Yes, it's that bad.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: revisiting derry
Review: one thing you know when you pick up a stephen king novel is that you are most likely going to get a good story. as you do here. and with 600 pages you can figure king is going to give you plenty of lead-up time before it really gets going. but that isn't the case here. king immediately leaps into the story. the first part of the book moves at a blinding pace, one you usually don't see until the end. unfortunately he slows down during the middle section before finally speeding up again. locating the story in derry, king runs the risk of resurrecting pennywise, but don't fear, he doesn't (though the story does remind one of _It_ and _Tommyknocker_. i would have given it a higher rating except for two problems: 1) the ending is too neat. after investing 600 pages worth of reading time, king cops out in the end and makes everything end far too neatly. 2) i've noticed in king's later fiction he has a tendency of giving away the action before it happens. he mentions that something has happened or will happen, then in the next chapter he writes it happening. gives too much away. not his best work, but by no means his worst.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring. Stupid. Disappointing.
Review: I actually made it to page 180 till I put it down in disgust. I have read everything King has written and this one is a real piece of ... Makes 'Tommyknockers' look like a winner. Its all recycled stuff and King tricks from previous novels. All the the reviews I'm reading here that say 'Great' and 'Awesome' are baffling to me, were we reading the same book? I hope he remembers how to write for the next Gunslinger book, screwing that up would be a REAL disappointment..

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: I have been a fan of Stephen King's works for over 20 years, and have read pretty much everything he's published. Most of his work is engrossing, fascinating, and hard to put down (most notably The Bachman Books, Cujo, Different Seasons, and Hearts in Atlantis). ~~ I was looking forward to checking out his latest effort and I was greatly disappointed. The novel drags on and on in a very disorganized and boring series of events. The best parts are the flashbacks to the group of 4 boys and their special friend Duddits as children. King writes convincingly and honestly about growing up as a boy in Maine in several of his books, and this one is refreshing and realistic in those episodes. ~~ The "present day" front story, full of strange alien fungus and wanna-be "Heart of Darkness" style military escapades is just tired and sad. I had a tough time plodding through this book, when normally I literally can't put a King novel down. I hope this post-accident work is just a fluke and not indicative of a new direction for King.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Controversial
Review: "Dreamcatcer" is one of the most controversial books I've read so far. Therefore, I am going to separate my analysis to positive points and to negative points.

Let's start with the good news: The story itself is gripping, thrilling and interesting; I actually forced myself to stop reading from time to time, under no circumstances is it boring.

The similarities, mainly to "IT", you may look at it as a sequel, and that way accept the mirror images (I'll refer to this point later on more extensively).

The different view King offers of the Down syndrome stricken persons: I have a feeling you're going to look differently at them after you've read the book, and that's a great achievement of the author.

And, naturally, the bad news (there are quite a bit)...

I have a distinct feeling King has started to recycle himself. It seems he has ran out of good new original ideas for a story; it's kind of sad, but while reading I couldn't help thinking that maybe he'd run out of aces in his sleeve. Not only does he borrow from himself, but he also borrows from others- external influences are apparent. Would you believe he'd been heavily influenced from Chris Carter of the X-Files?

The structure and content of the plot resembles in many aspects to "IT", which is a bit annoying. King starts by introducing four characters - in their prime, but all going through hard time. Surprisingly, their problems are connected to a mutual past experience they had as a group of children. Yes, they had been best friends, done something extraordinary and today, suffer from the implications. The story gets started as they reunite, for a new mission of saving the world. Sounds familiar?

I've read handful of his books, and seen him originating and innovating, creating masterful readings like "Bag of bones", "The stand" and "The green mile". The man has got what it takes, but kind of 'blew it' this time in some places. I know he had a rough time after the accident he endured, but this doesn't justify a decline in quality.

The inside havoc continues to be revealed in the novel, as he uses extremely violent and foul language extensively throughout the book. Even for a King's book it's way too much. The swearing and cursing are so frequent it's irritating, and, clearly, King exaggerated. Again, you can ascribe it to his physical condition, not to mention his mental state back than, but it is hardly an excuse. The curses and obscenities are so intense that they bring the violence of the book to the level of "Needful things". To sum up this point, the story gets quite gruesome from time to time, so take this in your considerations when deciding whether to read it or not. If I'd known, I would have passed over this one.

Characters - Due to the fact it is a shorter reading compared to "IT", for instance, there is not enough time to get to know the center characters. This is a major problem of the book, because it's one of the reasons I read Stephen King's books. He is very good in characterizing, describing and, telling stories about the life of his heroes, but here, he was negligent. Suffice to say, I won't miss any of the characters.

All in all, the feeling you get while reading the novel is that the author vended a lot of anger, and maybe if you remember this you can accept the faults and fully enjoy the story.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Trippy Alien Adventure
Review: This was a fun book. I will never look at Bacon the same way again. I listened to it on Audio, and toward the end I would drive my car around the block a few extra times just to hear some more of it. It really is a comfortable book, and unlike some of King's stuff, it has a triumphant ending. Jason F. Smith

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not his best at all!
Review: I have read every Stephen King book ever written and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. Well, what a let down this was. Dreamcatcher was not a good book in my opinion. The start was great but after a while you get the feeling the author was just making it drag out to get the 600 words. This story could have been done in 300 words, it would have been better. All up I was seriously disappointed. The story line was totally unbelievable and way too far fetched. I didn't like it and would not recommend this book. It wasn't in the slightest bit scary. Disappointing!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good Book
Review: I reviewed it very recently, on August 8th, but I'm writing another review because of something I don't get. In my first review I mentioned the parasites that dwell in the victims colon and come out their you-know-what. Being the classy guy I am, I didn't refer to them in the way they are mentioned in the book. Instead I carefully put a dash in there. This time I'll put four dashes in there when I mention the ---- weisels. My question is, why, right above me, did the people who approve these reviews allow a reviewer to write the word without any dashes at all, but the last paragraph of my review, where I mentioned the ---- weisels with only one dash got edited out? I don't understand. Disguising the swear word is apparently worse than just typing it out. But why... In conclusion, this is a good book, if somewhat familiar. King fans will enjoy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "IT" meets the X-files
Review: If you enjoyed IT (which I did) and you like the X-files (which I used to in the early seasons), you'll enjoy this book. Great to see King back on his feet.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Meh
Review: I've read all of King's books except for about half a dozen of them. This one wouldn't make the top 10 of the 30 or so I've read, but it wasn't the worst either.

Once again it seems about 20% too long. In this case perhaps a hundred pages could have been cut. Also as usual there are more parentheses in this book (and aren't those annoying and mostly include things that could just be edited out without ever missing them?) than there are in any other ten books you'll pick up. If a paragraph (and there are pleny of paragraphs in a book, you dig?) is longer than five or six lines, it's a good bet there's a parenthesis in there.

The last ten King books I've read with an almost overpowering urge to do so with a yellow marking pen and highlight what I would take out if I were King's editor. It's getting to be a real problem for me now. I'll read a page (35 lines or so) and think: I could cut out three of these lines and no one would miss them. Then, in this fantasy of mine, I'd flick through the pages of the book and see all that yellow flash by. I think I could have cut this 620 page book down to at least 550. And that's without altering any other text. With a little rewriting I could get it down to 500....


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