Cell

A rough Fall lead into a worse December and a very busy January, but I’m going to try to do a little more posting this winter. I’m rewarding myself with a Harry Potter reread so I’m going to try to go back and review the books that I skipped last year. To really illustrate what a slacker I’ve been, I picked up Cell by Stephen King at the train station in Washington back in July. Entertainment Weekly gets credit for luring me into this one; I read the first chapter in the magazine back in 2006 before it was published.

Cell is about a group of people who survive after a “pulse” turns anyone who uses a cell phone into, for lack of a better word, a zombie. After an initial burst of violence the zombies begin to flock and exhibit characteristics of a hive mentality. The book follows Clay Riddell as he attempts to travel from Boston to Maine to find his wife and son.

The use of the flocking and the zombies’ slow evolution are what save the book from being a simplistic zombie story. The Dark Man is quite scary and there are many suspenseful moments. The problem is that King has done this story before and much, much better in The Stand. I spent most of the book thinking about The Stand and how much it better it is. The other problem is the very abrupt ending. I’m all for an ambiguous end, but this felt like ambiguity for ambiguity’s sake.

All that said I found Cell to be truly scary, but most of my goodwill was corrupted by the weak ending. I don’t like to say that one shouldn’t read a particular book, but if you’re only going to read one Stephen King book there are many that are much better. I’d go with The Stand, It, Bag of Bones, Carrie, or Hearts in Atlantis instead or as well.