Dreamcatcher

Rating:
Summary: Stephen King's Demented Mind Produces Awesome Story
Review: It has been a while since I read a book that I couldn't put down and Dreamcatcher certainly grabbed my attention. Stephen King's imagination is incredible and I was in awe after reading this book. Dreamcatcher and Bag of Bones are two of my favorite Stephen King novels.

Rating:
Summary: Really get's you going...
Review: ...and then it, well... it just ends. Hmph.

I give this book 4 stars, because it is--simply--a good read. However, it really fizzes out in the end.

The style is brilliant, back and forth; just when you get into a particular event, and can't wait to turn the page, it ends, and a new event unfolds. Each chapter consistantly refer's to prior, current, and future happenings. This really shows his talent, and keeps the pages turning. Somehow he seems to lose this in the end, leading to a less than hoped for ending.

A must read for all die-hard King fans, and a pretty good read for everyone else.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. This is my first Stephen King book and I was very impressed (after watching the movie The Stand, you would get worried to). I bought it over Spring Break and read it in less then 3 weeks, and that says a lot because I am an incredibly slow reader. Now, to the story. It starts out with about 30 pages of exposition, getting you to know and like the characters in the story--Pete, Henry, Beaver and Jonesy, all of which haver quite a few problems. The four of them get together every year to go hunting at Beaver's cabin. But then one day Jonesy gets hit by a car. Despite this, they go to the cabin anyways, just the four of them. Henry and Pete go to get food, and Jonesy and Beaver stay at the cabin. Due to his leg, Jonesy stays in a loft in a tree. He thinks he see's a dear and nearly shoots it when he realizes it is a person, then the story explodes. This is a must read that I recommend to anybody.

Rating:
Summary: Great start, poor finish, unrewarding result
Review: The best summary for Dreamcatcher is that it ended up as typical Stephen King fare. For me, that is not a good thing. I have always felt that King writes novels by taking some fairly simple--perhaps weird, perhaps scary, but still relatively simple--ideas and milking them for all they are worth. I nearly always come away feeling cheated, that the time spent was not worth the final result. Dreamcatcher fits right into this theme.

With Dreamcatcher, King takes the ever-ready body snatcher formula, mixes in some really crude and disgusting bodily functions (...from Alien, with a twist only a twelve-year-old boy would appreciate), pours on some completely undeveloped aliens and the generic military crazy guy, tries to spice it up with a poor pinch of biochemistry, and winds up with a labored and predictable car chase. It ends up being a mess. How bad can the book get? When King runs out of old ideas he can muck up, he comes up with stuff like: the human memory becomes, literally, a storage room full of filing cabinets.

Still, Dreamcatcher has more than enough to get you going, and to not want to put it down for quite a while. King has some very good characterizations, and an interesting storyline, with a group of boys/men that are psychologically connected somehow. The story of these men as teenagers would make the book worth reading except for its excessive length.

So a great start with some pretty bad plot devices through the middle, unfortunately running into a long, predictable chase scene at the end; King just peters out with hundreds of pages to go. Unless you are a Stephen King fan, I recommend picking up something more worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: It might be a dream, but it's a bad one....
Review: Let me say at the outset: I am a HUGE Stephen King fan, and I've read all the novels and short stories, as well as his rather wonderful books on writing.

Unfortunately, Dreamcatcher is a bloated, vacuous, dreadful piece of self-indulgence that mostly goes to show that King has apparently gotten so famous that no one dares edit him or tell him that he's written a bad book.

The pointless repetition in this door-stop of a novel is staggering beyond belief (and, ultimately, stultifying as well). King beats you over the head with his 7th-grade brand of peepee/caca humor (I presume it's supposed to be funny, if you think scores of pages with people reacting to fetid flatulence is funny) until you're ready to join forces with Tipper Gore. He gives his main characters an annoying set of catch-phrases (meant to be all down-homey Maine) that they say over and over and over and over and over like verbal tics until they sound like mental defectives. He needlessly involutes the plot, requiring the reader to go back and forth in time-which must have seemed like a nifty device at some point in the writing, but which is ultimately just a nightmare (and not the good kind) of padding and disorganization.

Since I also love (or have loved) the 'potboilers' of Grisham, Crichton, et al., I note an increasing trend among these writers (case in point: Tom Clancy's tumid *Sum of All Fears*): to write obese and flabby novels (high-cholesterol plot, no unneeded fiber such as character development) that all but completely ignore the reader and keep winking ingratiatingly at the screenwriter over your shoulder. Personally, I'm a little sick of it.

Thankfully, you don't have to give up good writing in order to enjoy action-oriented, heavily plotted suspense fiction-consider the truly wonderful series of carefully constructed books by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston or Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.

...P>Meanwhile, I'm giving this book one star because that's the lowest rating you can give; in reality, it shouldn't even show up on the scale.

Rating:
Summary: DreamCatcher
Review: I thought the book DreamCatcher by Stephen King was an extremely interesting and well written novel. Despite the length it is certainly a book that many people should consider reading. The details and descriptions are awesome. It is certainly worth the time and once again it proves what a great writer Stephen King is.

Rating:
Summary: Never hesitate to read it
Review: As a constant reader of Mr.King,I was at first dissappointed at the news and rumors when the book first came out that he repeated himself.As a result, before reading Dreamcatcher,I read his a couple of previous novels and plus From a Buick 8.When I got The Dreamcatcher I was already more than 2 years late to read it.What a shame as a constant reader!The Dreamcatcer is one of his best work along with the It,The Shining and The Stand.It will suprise you at many ways and times thruought the book.His description of snowy and cold weather is perfect too.You will love it.I hope and pray he never quits to write.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Although, "Dreamcatcher," wasn't what I would normally expect from Stephen King, I certainly enjoyed it. I loved all of the twists and turns that he provides for his readers, and I especially liked the ending. It was unexpected, yet it all made perfect sense. I would encourage readers to read this book. It has a little something for everyone, you could say. It was most defiantly an interesting find. In short, I loved the book and would read it again.

Rating:
Summary: A great Stephen King Book
Review: This is one of his better books. It's not that scary, but has great action. It takes place in the common setting of his book, Maine.The psychological aspect of this book is great. This book also hints at parts of older books, such as "It." This book is twice as good as the movie. I'd recommend this book for any Stephen King fan.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: I thought it would be nice to read the book before going to see the movie. However, after reading the book, I do not want to see the movie at all. There are a lot of cheap thrills in the book...the play on bodily functions, while funny, is dull after awhile. Duddit's cancer and Down's Syndrome seem somewhat overly dramatic, like the book is trying too hard. Plus, by page 200, I cannot help but feel stupid for reading the book. Nothing in the book is fresh or imaginative. The emotions that are supposed to be stirred up are unconvincing and uninspiring. Although the plot is interesting enough for me to want to find out what happens at the end, I feel like I wasted a lot of time reading all 600+ pages of it when I finished it. If you are a Stephen King fan, this may satisfy you. However, if you are not a fan, don't bother.