Insomnia

Rating:
Summary: O, What to Say
Review: Alright. King is the man. No question he is one of the top storytellers of his generation. This book starts off a little slow, as some King novels tend to do, but stick with it until you get to the little bald doctors, then it wont leave your hands for any reason. You will lose sleep at the point, trying to finish the story to see how such a story could possibly end. And the ending(especially for anyone who has read the DARK TOWER series by King) brings a bittersweet conclusion that will almost make you cry. The development of characters and all of the other literary areas one could critique are all used as well as possible, which King is great at. It is a little long, but I love the feeling you get when you finish a book like this. Its just great.

Rating:
Summary: What the ???
Review: At first when I was reading this book I wasnt sure what to expect with it. I thought the story was sooooooo slow and a little boring... Then it started to pick up and I just couldnt put it down. It was soo great. I really liked how things kinda ame together at the end there. The characters are all well written and its just a great story with soo much going on.
I really liked the descrition when the main character would go another level higher and sees all the auras and stuff, I thought it was great !!!!

Rating:
Summary: As a long time King fan I was very let down.
Review: Having realling enjoyed Kings books such as The Gunslinger, The Stand, and his masterpiece, Misery, I have to say this is one of his weakest books. At 600+ pages I found this book to be a big let down with a hookey storey and boring unoriginal characters. It does have a Darktower reference, but it's really nothing important so don't feel you need to read this book for that reason. Besides the Tommyknockers, which is another major King Flop, this may be his worst, so my suggestion is to skip it.

Rating:
Summary: It will keep you awake by how bad it is
Review: I've never suffered from Insomnia, but I can imagine that it would not be a pleasant experience to go through, especially if you suffer from the things Stephen King's characters go through in this book.

How do you explain a plot that makes no sense? Get ready readers and make sure you got your thinking caps on, because some of this probably is not going to make a whole lot of sense (just like this novel).

The story is basically told from the point of view of Ralph, in third person. In the beginning of the story Ralph's long time wife dies of cancer. Shortly after, Ralph discovers that he is getting less and less sleep with every passing night, and the realization comes to him: he has insomnia. We then get the pleasure of reading though 200 pages or so of Ralph trying to find various ways to cure his insomnia. If you do suffer from insomnia, this just might be the cure for you in these first 200 pages. Despite how boring the first part of the novel is, it only goes downhill from here.

It goes from boring to ridiculous.

All of a sudden crazy things start happening to poor old Ralph. First, he watches his long time neighbor start to go crazy, becoming violent towards his wife, and demonstrating in violent anti-abortion protests. Worst yet, Ralph begins seeing things, like an eerie acid trip. The world changes in front of his eyes; people suddenly have colored auroras all around them now. Some people have orange ones, some purple ones, etc. These auroras represent people's emotions or vibes. Beside these auroras, they have balloon strings attached to these auroras that represent lifelines. Ralph's hallucinations begin to worsen, and he begins to see little bald doctors from another dimension of time causing havoc, and cutting these balloon strings from people's heads causing them to die. Are you getting it all yet? It gets worse. Ralph next finds out his lady friend, Louis, can see the same things as he can. Eventually, some of the bald doctors (there are good ones and bad ones) need his help to save a little boy that is going to die in the near future. The event this disaster is to take place is no other than a Pro-choice rally that is going to be held. Ralph's crazy neighbor is planning to suicide bomb the whole thing, and now it is up to Ralph and Louis to stop him, with the help of their "other dimension" friends. What will happen? Who cares?

Did I mention that Ralph is able to do a karate chop that sends a wave of colored energy which can do harm to the bad "other dimension" doctors? Or that Louis can do the same thing with her hand pointed like a gun, similar to what we did as a kid when we played cops and robbers. Did I mention that Ralph, despite all the chaos going on around him, gets the urge to have sex with Louis? I am sure I forgot to mention that the little doctors from the other dimension love to say dirty phrases that are so bad they couldn't even be appropriate in an R-rated movie, and that everyone in the whole down of Derry, both old and young, use the f-word like its going out of style. I gotta mention the dramatic climax where Ralph fights a giant catfish.

Ugh. I could go on and on. The book gets more stupid and ridiculous as it rolls on, and you are almost praying for the boredom you felt to come back in the beginning of the novel. The plot has more holes than a slice a swiss cheese. The dialogue is weak. The characters are weak. Ralph and Louis try to be funny but they are not. King tries to come off as creative, but I assure you there is a fine line between creative and ridiculous. King also could have left out the heavy handed issue of abortion from this novel, because it doesn't even need to be there, and it makes this book even worse. I have read some of the reviews here, and I am stunned people could actually enjoy this novel. If you gave me a quarter for every time I rolled my eyes and said "c'mon" I would be a rich man. The novel gets worse and worse as you progress, and the "touching" ending makes it even worse, as if somehow King is trying to put a powerful statement on all this trash.

This is the worst novel I have ever read by Stephen King, who I really do love as an author. I think that alone makes this novel even more inexcusable, considering the talent that he has. He should know better than this. I just was amazed how bad this material really was. I could go on and on about what else was bad and why, but I think the things I have said should suffice.

Grade: D-


Rating:
Summary: Please, I beg you - DONT READ THIS BOOK
Review: I've read and loved many King novels. Do not waste any time out of your life on this one. Narrow minded one sided political rants with the most STUPID story known to humanity mixed in. It's about as scary as sharing a pot of tea with your Grandmother. No rewards for the reader what so ever..... just DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

Buy MISERY instead!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: Insomnia is the definition of a good read, the literary equivalent of comfort food. It has everything you'd expect from Stephen King - grotesque monsters, a dramatic conception of good and evil, and a convincing sense of peril. It also has plenty of thigns you might or might not readily expect from King - a complete and authentic vision of an entire community, a compelling, human protagonist, pacing, and a brilliant sense of humor. It's sort of like Russo's Empire Falls with a couple of supernatural doctors thrown in. And at seven hundred pages, King doesn't bring you up short; he carries the story all the way through to its final conclusion, guiding it with the hand of an experienced, as well as talented, author. If you've liked anything else King has done, this book is certainly one of his best, if not _the_ best. And if you're ever looking for a book to read on the plane, be ye ne'er so well-read and cultured, I advise you to give Insomnia a try.

Rating:
Summary: A good read; in King context, "Medium."
Review: Insomnia was a good read. King is a masterful storyteller; the narrative voice, the compelling main characters and the absolutely unstoppable plot are all trademark King features. Still, compared to the other King that I have read, I would rank it somewhere in the middle.

The recent King novels that I read before this were Rage, The Long Walk, The Running Man and Bag of Bones. Insomnia is very obviously a 1990's King; he writes with the kind of dry, New England wit that has come to distinguish him. But Insomnia just does not feel as tight as The Running Man or as compelling as Bag of Bones, which I feel really is King's best work that I have read. The dialogue in Insomnia is a choppy (which isn't unusual) and the pace of the story seems to start out slow and then to fluctuate back and forth between slow and quick.

There is also a lot of exposition involved, a good deal of fleshing out the world of the Dark Tower series, which is a little frustrating. The climax of the book turns out to actually be about two figures from the Dark Tower series which kind of annoyed me. I was compelled by the characters in the book, I felt empathy for them and I felt that the book didn't need this kind of deus ex machina to stress the importance of the climax, to make it integral to the continuation of the King Uber-story.

I am focusing here on some of the bad things. I listed the good things above, but you really just can't say enough about King's easy prose style. King is one of the authors that I just flat out love to read; he is imaginative, his voice is distinct and he consistently reinvents the fantasy (because this book is more fantasy than horror) genre in very exciting ways.

So to sum up: not King's best, but a good, fun read. Despite the three stars, I definitely suggest reading it (just make sure you have already read It, The Stand, Bag of Bones...).

Rating:
Summary: A strong effort by a master
Review: Ralph Denton of Derry, Maine, is an old man with a common ailment for the elderly: insomnia. But despite all his efforts to get a good night's rest, he start waking up earlier and earlier. Eventually, he links this phenomenon with a strange ability to see a whole new world around us that none of us can see. The aura surrounding someone signifies how long they have to live. And then he starts to see things more substantial that auras, actual beings that exist on some plane that is critical to our world.

I love that this book strikes off in new directions for King. His first senior citizen hero is a novelty, and he makes even a whippersnapper like me put some serious thought into what it will be like to reach an advanced age (if I'm so lucky). Contemplating the inevitable troubles that accompany aging is actually perhaps the scariest thing in the book; at the least, it's refreshing.

I also enjoy seeing Derry from another pair of eyes. In It, King described how children operated in a world of their own that was basically hidden from the world of adults; this description was so true that it stuck with me. I was delighted to see another world and society operating, equally unseen, in the town of Derry. It is a take on the senior citizen community that was really engaging and enjoyable.

The chills are chilling (and I like that there's an homage paid to ancient Greek Mythology), the scares are scary, and the gore is gory. But no one reading a King book would expect any less.

The real test of a King novel is how the pacing and the plot and the character development work, and I'm pleased to say that in this book, they all work quite nicely. There are a couple of confrontations that come off as a little cheesy to me, but for the most part, the book is a great read.


Rating:
Summary: Dark Tower fans will enjoy it better
Review: Stephen King is an author gifted with a great power of development: his characters are, almost always, believable, even if the situations they are involved in are completely fantastic. Among SK's greatest characters we will notice many children. In "It", "The eyes of the dragon", "The talisman", "The shinning", the most interesting character are always children or young people. "Insomnia" is completely different in this aspect.

The main character in "Insomnia" is Ralph Roberts, a man pushing seventy, and not in a very good health. After the death of his wife, he starts having sleeping problems, and, stragest thing of all, his perception rises to fantastic level: he starts to see colored auras around people, little bald doctors with scissors and scalpels, and other unbelievable manifestations. Soon Ralph finds that all this has a specific purpose, and the fate of many worlds may lie in his old hands.

The beginning of the book is a little slow, very strange, but when the pace increases, it's hard to put it down. I don't think "Insomnia" has any political conotation whatsoever, even with the abortion issue. Serious as the matter surely is, I think it's there only to provide a thrilling background to the story.

I don't consider "Insomnia" my favorite Stephen King book, but nevertheless I was never bored while reading it. I think it's very good, but a little confusing at some parts. The confusion and the sense of pointlessness will be greater if the reader is not acquainted with the Dark Tower series. For that, "Insomnia" can be considered a standalone, but more like a complement to the Dark Tower books.

I would not recommend reading "Insomnia" without reading the Dark Tower first.

Grade 8.2/10

Rating:
Summary: Just understand............!
Review: This Book is Great!...and doesnt matter how many people might think is Boring or confusing or long or blah blah blah; you can't always expect an author write his best work thinking I need to make this book a commercial hit, Mr. King does agreat job writing a complex book that enrolls his point of view in politics and society, and that makes it very special...also If you Like the Dark Tower series, I gotta tell you that this book contains VERY important aspects about the series....I true Stephen King Fan will enjoy this book and will not expect the same type of stories as some other noels he has written! Slow beggining but the book is full of ideas and concepts that makes you think about life. If you are extremely close minded or if you just want to read some murder thrills, etc.... dont expect Stephen King to write like that...he is a genious and his intepretation of the worlds life in this book is excellent...and he brings the Clinto administration...that only proves how critical he can be and how lucky we are to have a great writter like him...doing all that magic