Dreamcatcher

Rating:
Summary: Alien meets Outbreak
Review: King weaves the lives of four boyhood friends in flashback and present day, and how their friendship with Duddits, a Downs Syndrome boy, affected their lives. Beaver, Pete, Jonesy, and Henry spend one week a year hunting in Beaver's family cabin. They come to the aid of a lost hunter not realizing they have just invited something horrific into their lives. The friends are unaware that a UFO has crashed not far from the cabin. They are also unaware that the hunter has been infected with a fungus which sometimes uses its human host to grow a weasel-like creature. The infected humans also acquire telepathic abilities.

The aliens are your typical gray boys with almond-shaped black eyes and asexual bodies. Our military has rounded up the infected residents, and destroyed the ship and survivors, except one. "Mr. Gray" has taken over Jonesy's body. The plot becomes a little muddy in a few areas. The four friends have always been telepathic, something they acquired or learned from hanging around Duddits although I'm not quite sure what is meant when the boys say they "see the line." And they mention several times that they are caught in the dreamcatcher which made me think the entire book was about someone's dream and that person will wake up and none of it happened. But that's not the case. I don't pay too much attention to confusing parts of these types of books because it really is up to each person's interpretation. What King does best with this book and some of his earlier ones is get you wrapped up in "the chase." Good vs evil, evil on an apocalyptic mission to destroy earth/mankind/fill in the blank. He did it in THE STAND where everyone converged on Las Vegas. And also THE SHINING with the father possessed by the demon and the son having a telepathic race with the demon while the black hotel work who befriended him races to his aid. And in DREAMCATCHER, Mr. Gray has one final attempt to destroy humans while the friends race with Duddits (whose telepathy is the strongest and can aid in communicating with Jonesy) to stop Mr. Gray. Although Mr. Gray has taken over Jonesy's physical body, Jonesy's mind/conscience is trapped in a mental "office." If he walks out, he dies. If he stays inside, Mr. Gray doesn't have complete control. Sound complicated? In a way, yes. But don't let that stop you. A lot of the apocalyptic, SciFi, horror books leave much of the interpretation to your imagination. I'm still trying to understand 2001-A Space Odyssey!

Rating:
Summary: Stay away from this one!
Review: I'll keep this short, no need for a plot summary, just knowthat this book is not worth your time! Luckily, I checked Dreamcatcherout from the library, so I didn't get taken .... I plodded along for300 pages before realizing I was wasting my time and giving up. I haveread every Stephen King book published, and this is his worstever. The writing style is crude and bitter, he must have been on alot of painkillers when he wrote this one. I'll never give up onStephen King, but do yourself a favor and skip Dreamcatcher! END

Rating:
Summary: This book scared the hell out of me.
Review: My god this book was terrifying. It's The Shining meets The Stand. That Mr. Gray character freaked me out. I only have one regret about this book though although I don't want to give it away for those of you who want to read the book.

Rating:
Summary: A solid horror title.
Review: I have almost lost faith in the "big" novelists. Writers like Grisham seem to churn out one bad book after another without ever losing their popularity. However, one popular writer who has stayed fairly solid is Steven King. Not everything he has writen in the last five years has been top notch, but I have at least felt I got my money's worth from his books. Dreamcatcher is no exception. A solid horror title mixed in with a great backstory of the 4 men involved. It is loaded with the suspence, horror, and offbeat humor King seems to have a knack for. This book is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Everything Old is New Again
Review: I enjoyed this book. It's not the best King has written, certainly (that distinction goes to *Wizard and Glass,* in my opinion), but *Dreamcatcher* certainly grabs you and holds your imagination. King has a knack for creating characters that become your friends, and this book's characters are no exception. Buy the book--it's worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: The King never left his throne.
Review: First off, I want to say....WOW!!! What a fantastic book!! Mr. King tried something new (I won't say what it is, you'll have to read it to find out) and it worked. Let's face it, King is such a wonderful writer, he could write the phone book and it will sell.

The plot is pretty basic...at first. Some life long friends have a yearly ritual. They go hunting in the woods. Well this year, something goes wrong, horrible wrong that will change the life of humanity forever. If you want to find out what happened....then read the book.

The characterization that King gives his char is just incerdible. You can't help to care about each one. Persoanlly, my favorite is Beaver. He's soooooo funny. You can't just help but to love him. One char was in a car accident. To read what the char went through, you can't help but to think that King was telling what he went through. It really gave me chills reading that part. I also liked the char of Duddits. He has a special relationship with the characters in this book. I also liked what motivated the char to do what they did.

What I also liked is that you can't tell who the good guys are. Just b/c they say their good, doesn't make it so.

I was suprised to see that this book is getting such a low ratings from people. King tries something different in his writing style, and it works. But to each their own. I loved this book

Once you start to read Dreamcatcher, you won't be able to put it down. I highly suggest this book.

The race for humanity is on. Who will win....buy this book and find out. You won't be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Steven King's Worst Book
Review: Just a very short review but I thought I had to do it. This is Stephen King's worst book and the only one I have been unable to finish. I loved his last four books. It's a good job you can return books at Amazon.com.

Rating:
Summary: If you want another longtime King reader's opinion...
Review: I'm not going to go into a detailed plot description because 1. the editorial reviews, especially Booklist, do it quite well and 2. because the plotline is so convoluted it would take up most of the 1,000 word limit. As a rabid King reader for 20+ years, the first book I actually had trouble finishing was Gerald's Game. Unfortunately, after that, a few more came, and I was starting to worry King had finally burned himself out. Then the Green Mile restored my faith. Since then, enough titles that I've really enjoyed, such as Hearts in Atlantis, have been interspersed with the ones I read once and put away with the rest of my collection, gathering dust. One of those titles is Insomnia, and unfortunately for me, that's the King book Dreamcatcher reminded me of most strongly.

I am sorry to say that Dreamcatcher falls into the "never pick it up again" category. I really didn't think it was going to. All the excerpts I read online were wonderful, and I was starting to get attached to some of the characters already and couldn't wait to read more about them. I was pretty sure this was going to be one of his better ones. I didn't have high expectations, but I did expect the rest of the novel to be somewhat as entertaining as the excerpts I read. At first everything was going great-I was getting into the plot, I couldn't wait to see what happened next, and hoping nothing bad happened to the characters I liked. There were a couple of points where I got a little confused, but no big deal. A couple of plot-lines that involved events in the character's past started, and I was interested to know what happened to the characters as kids. The narrative jumped around just a bit, but I knew it would be explained later. So far so good.

Then I finished part 1 (about 150 pages in, I think). Part 2 started and it wasn't quite as enjoyable, but I gave it a chance. Fortunately other readers have commented that the narrative was confusing, so I don't feel so stupid, but I started having to page back and see if I'd missed something, or get the male characters straight. IT jumped around a lot too, and while I agree IT was uneven and bordering on sloppy in a few spots, it's one of my favorites. 3/4 of the way through, I wondered if he had to rush Dreamcatcher out because of a deadline, because it seemed like he was desperately slapping together the plotline as he went along. I know King has said in the past that as he was writing, he didn't know what was going to happen next, and the book almost wrote itself. I have no problem with this when the novel is well-written and I'm drawn into the characters-some of the books he's said this about were among my favorites. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work so well this time.

There were scenes in the character's past that seemed to play a big factor on the events that were eluded to, but on a couple, he never went back and fleshed it out. I also wondered if he'd handed in a rough draft, and since this was his first fiction since his accident, his editors didn't want to discourage him so they kept their usual feedback to themselves and figured it was better to put out the book, flaws and all, quickly and not give any suggestions to improve the book. I also get the sneaking suspicion someone in charge said, "what the hell, it's Stephen King so it'll sell like crazy no matter what's between the covers". It just seemed to need polishing up, and I kept wondering if King just submitted the first draft the second after he finished it without even a re-read, and that's what was published.

I liked the flashback scene to the first encounter with Duddits, the characters I did care about, and the you-know-what weasels. After I was halfway through, about the only thing that perked me up were the "in-jokes" about Derry that first time readers won't catch. The character of Duddits and his mother started out great, but I ended up feeling manipulated and feeling like Dean Koontz (who I also enjoy, but when I want to read Koontz I'll pick up one of his books) stepped in to write a section, and didn't try very hard. Another thing that bothered me was that there's a strong theme of childhood and memories of past, but the novel didn't flash back long enough for it to work, and it felt incomplete. Several times I found myself paging back, thinking I missed something. Nope. What seemed like recycled material from IT and Tommyknockers didn't help either. I have no problem with 'recycling' but only if it works.

So, if I had to put every King novel I read in order of my favorite to least favorite, this wouldn't be at the very bottom (Insomnia would be there along with Rose Madder and Gerald's Game). I feel guilty not giving this more than 3 stars, but I know King can do so much better. If you're a hardcore King fan like me, obviously you'll pick it up like all his others if you haven't already. But I would advise not paying full price, and keeping your expectations low...unless you loved Insomnia, in which case you'll probably have more fun with this book than I did. I understand that there's bound to be some misfires with a writer as prolific as King, so I chalk Dreamcatcher up as one. Fortunately, I know there's gonna King books somewhere in the future that I love and become some of my favorites. This just isn't one of them.

Rating:
Summary: His 15 MINUTES ARE UP.
Review: I was a die-hard SK fan until about 4 books ago. He's lost his touch. I so wanted to like this book, but it's bad, really bad. Incomprehensible and all over the place, and much, much too long. Sorry, Mr. King.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't finish it
Review: I really, truly wanted to love this book. I have been reading Stephen King since the late '70s and always look forward to anything new by him. I could only get through 300 pages before I just had to give up. I reached the point where there were three Jonesys and then I realised it was time to throw in the towel. King is best when he does straight horror and Sci-fi is not my favourite genre, but this book was kind of muddled and kept jumping all over the place. I think that this story would have benefited by being 200 pages less and not delving so deeply into the whole psychological thing. Anyway, I will continue reading Mr. King's books, but just can't really recommend this one.