Rating: 
Summary: Nice book for those who haven't read King
Review: Being one of 7 people who have only recently started reading King, I should know. Having got this from my local library, and read it in 3 days (despite my never bringing it to school), I now have started Cujo. Thank Goodness I read this first! The opening of Cujo discusses a sub-plot's ending. The sub-plot involves a murderer, and Johnny is contacted to stop him.If you haven't read any of the plot, here's a summary: Johnny Smith is put int a coma for 4 1/2 years. When he wakes up, his legs are broken (through the book, they heal), his girlfriend has married, and he has a psychic power he didn't ask for... My two complaints. 1. The opening that introduces Greg Stillson is CRUEL! Yes, King needed something to characterize him with, but KILLING A POOR DOG? I know you can do better, and less cruel things, to characterize people with. Try a mean-hearted conversation! 2. Why is the book (and part of Johnny's powers) called the Dead Zone? There is no dead people in the Dead Zone part of his powers, just numbers and addresses. It could have been called the Unclear Zone. If you are looking for an intro to King, get this. The other Castle Rock books probably spoil it. (Cujo does.)....
Rating:
Summary: one of King's best
Review: Having read virtually everything Stephen King has ever written, what is there to do next but to set out re-reading them? That has been my mission of late. This is one that has worn particularly well. The characters are so compelling, so tragic, so human. That tragedy & that humanity are what mark the best of King's writing. This would be an excellent introduction to Stephen King for all 5 people in the country who have never read him.
Rating:
Summary: A spectacular book
Review: "The Dead Zone" is my second favorite novel by Stephen King. It's about a man named Johnny Smith who gets in a car wreck, which leaves him in a coma for five years. In that time, he has lost his job, his girlfriend...but gained the ability of second sight. Whenever he touches someone, he sees there future. The sherrif comes to him for help in catching a serial killer, and one day he shakes hands with a politician at a political rally, and sees the horrible future involving the politician. This is a great book by Stephen King, and it is also the book that introduces the town that King has made real in the minds of his fans, Castle Rock. I definitely recommend this novel, because it is one of the best books by Stephen King, and will not disappoint you.
Rating: 
Summary: Book fizzles out at the end
Review: The Dead Zone starts out with a bank, then fizzles in the end. John Smith is on the verge of becoming romantically involved with Sarah when he is in a tragic car accident that leaves him in a coma. Smith wakes up 4 1/2 years later with the ability to see a person's past and future by touching them. King does a great job of describing Smith's reentry into the world that had gone on with out him. As King does so well, he makes us feel Smith's pain at losing the years of his life and losing Sarah to another man. John Smith just wants to lead a normal life, but he still manages to use his power to help people in need. I kept wondering where Smith's power would lead him, and that question was answered when Smith shook the hand of politician Greg Stillson. This is where the book starts to lose its power. Smith obviously gets a vision from shaking Stillson's hand, but King doesn't tell us the exact details of the vision. Instead, King describes Stillson's life in every detail even though he provided plenty of characterization earlier in the book for us to already despise Stillson. Once you realize what Smith plans to do, you can guess as to his motivations. After the climax, King ties up loose ends by revealing the letters John wrote to his dad and to Sarah before the final climax occurred. Sarah and Johnny put an end to their relationship in a morally questionable way yet highly understandable. Throughout the book, King hints that Johnny's gift may be from God. King never really finishes that line of thought, but it does make the reader think that Johnny could live with his actions knowing he was sacrificing himself for the greater good. This is a great book except for about 40 pages that are devoted to Stillson, a character we already know enough about.
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Summary: Simply the King
Review: This book is the epitome of why Stephen King is who he is today. Read this book - I promise you that you will never forget it. It is morbid, sad, hopeful, and wonderful - READ IT!
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Summary: King's best early work.
Review: *spoilers included* When discussing the best of King's early novels, many point to CARRIE or 'SALEM'S LOT. I point to THE DEAD ZONE. THE DEAD ZONE--which introduces us to a little town called Castle Rock--is simply marvellous. Taking place years before I was even born, this novel contains one of King's best protagonists, the aptly-named Everyman John Smith. John has suffered two accidents, one as a young boy, the other as a young man. As a result, he gains various psychic powers. However, he is also sent into a coma that lasts four and a half years. As John struggles to readjust, he tutors a young man, helps to capture a serial killer, and tries to stop a madman from achieving high political office--which would doom the world. This is magnificent, moving book, about the tragic story of a young man who spun "00." Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: I Keep Coming Back
Review: This is not the favorite book of most Stephen King fans. I know. I know. They all like THE STAND or, more recently, THE GREEN MILE. Those books are great, too, but I'm lobbying for my quiet favorite, the book I keep coming back to, the one that is not even horror in the truest sense. More than anything it's freshman-comp-one-in-class-essay-time philosophical: what if you had the power to see the future, would you kill a madman before he started World War 3? The character development and subplots in this book are so good, one has to forgive King for naively over-simplifying the answer to the question as posed. Yes, kill the madman, is his answer. The problem is that the madman in the book is predicted to start A WAR, not THE WAR, and I don't want to be nit-picky, but this is a critical difference. King's answer resonates of Sixtie's idealism: all war is bad! Maybe. Perhaps. But what if one fights a war to STOP a madman ala Hitler? Hmmm.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow at first, but then ending is a whopper.
Review: When I started reading this book, I thought, "good story, guy and girl go to fair...bla bla bla (don't want to give anything away)." But then King started introducing new characters and events. And for a long time none of the happenings tied together. I contemplated not finishing the book but then I changed my mind. I don't like stopping books and not knowing the end. As the book went on the everything tied up and showed its relationship to Johnny Smith. The ending was very good, a bit sad. In this book I could definatly sense King's horror aspect. Other books I have read such as Green Mile and Different Seasons aren't exactly horror stories, but Dead Zone is scary. The main reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because half the time I didn't know where the story was going. But it was good, and I am gonna rent the movie
Rating:
Summary: Definitely not his best.....
Review: First off, I want all the Stephen King fans to know, that if you haven't read The Shining, Misery, It or The Stand, that you should definitely try those before you spend eight bucks on this novel. The beginning of this book starts off strong, but heading into the last 150 pages, you may feel your eyelids getting heavier, do to so much blah- blah- blah dialogue. This was my first Stephen King novel, and after reading The Dead Zone I hoped that none of King's other novels were like this. However, this book can be, at times, quite entertaining to read when King tells about Johnny's new and somewhat creepy "abilities" whenever he touches someone. The climax is quite surprising and I also liked the thorough backround info. about most of the main characters. This isn't Kings best work, but by all means purchase The Dead Zone if this review was helpful to you.
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Summary: Fascism is always lurking behind the wings
Review: The hero, John Smith, due to an accident in his youth, is endowed with a special visionary power when he touches someone, a power that was activated by a car accident in his early twenties that caused a long coma of five years. When he comes out of his coma he discovers his power with a nurse. He helps her infant-daughter to be saved from a blaze at her home when the child is alone while her mother is working. This power reveals the present. But then the power his enlarged with the doctor, Dr Weizak, a Polish Jew who survived the assault of Hitler on Poland in 1939. The doctor thinks his mother is dead. But the vision reveals she is alive, living in the US, married under another name. The doctor will call her but will not talk to her, because « it was not meant to be ». This power thus reveals the past and the present. This historical event and the beginning of the Shoah, at least for the Polish Jews, is essential in the dramatic construction of the book. In another case, John Smith will be able to reveal the future, and hence influence the present to change it, and along with the present to change the foreseen future. A young boy he is tutoring in English would die in an ice-hockey event. The boy is advised not to go and he doesn't go, though his father is sponsoring this event. The father does not cancel the event. The accident on the ice takes place , but the boy is safe. So John Smith can change the outcome of an event, hence the future, quite naturally by having an influence on the decisions of the protagonists in the present. This sounds like Back to the Future, but it is not the same thing because in another novel, The Langoliers, in Four Past Midnight (New American Library, New York, 1990), Stephen King shows his vision of time : there is no past because everything is eaten up by the langoliers and there is no future because the future is just the waiting for the coming present. Hence the past is death and the future is the promise of life, but life is nothing but the present. So the past is memory and the future is imagination. You cannot travel in time. But the real core of the book is his meeting with a candidate to the Senate. It appears, in the subsequent vision when John Smith shakes his hand, that he will be President of the United States and will start the final atomic holocaust, the total human Shoah, out of pure craziness, pride and egocentric selfishness. Then John Smith asks for advice from Dr Weizak and the question is : « If, knowing what you know now, you, could go back to 1933, would you kill Hitler ? » The answer is, without any hesitation : « Yes I will kill the son of a bitch. » on the ground of his medical mission to protect and save human lives. Then John Smith prepares the killing of that politician. He will not succeed and he will be killed by the bodyguard. But the politician will reveal himself as a coward by protecting his life with a baby used as a human shield. The picture of this stance published on the cover of Newsweek will destroy his political future and he will shoot himself. This last means to achieve such a goal (the destroying of the politician), the use of the press is common in Stephen King's novels. Let's quote : Firestarter (The Rolling Stone magazine), The Stand (a local TV station that is captured by US military forces), The Running Man (a TV game show that turns sour for the organizers in a clearly science-fiction book), etc. But, in The Dead Zone, the Shoah is used as the dramatic turning point in the novel, justifying the right for a citizen to kill a dangerous politician when he knows the latter shall jeopardize the whole of humanity in the future.
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