Book Week Collapses in Exhaustion!

As we cross the finish line. I'm sure you're so excited you could just plotz, whatever that means. But why is Book Week ending, you ask, afraid of the answer? Well, for one, I've got six comics coming in tomorrow, and hopefully at least a few of them will fire up my creative centers, or at least raise some questions. Secondly. . . I've finished the books my dad loaned me. So there you go.

Today's author is an old favorite of mine, he's not very well known, but if you're well0read enough you may have heard of Stephen King. No? That's OK. The particular book is Cell. It's like taking The Stand, plus War of the Worlds, plus the underlying message on humanity from 28 Days Later, plus a book I read years ago called The Day the Tripods Came. Or The Day of the Tripods, I can't recall, it wasn't very good.

Anyway, cell phones spell the end of the the world, or at least civilization as we know it. People talking on phones become insane. Well, that's no surprise. They talk on those things while driving, obviously they're crazy. The story follows three characters as they try to get from Boston to Maine because one of the characters has to make sure his son and ex-wife are OK. Well, the son anyway, he's a bit ambivalent towards the ex-wife. This little quest gets aided by his companions either having no loved ones, or being completely certain said loved are already dead. Along the way, they begin to notice that the "phone crazies" are exhibiiting strange behavior. Moving in flocks, sleeping in giant collections at night, and listening to music. Given these "people" have no real problem with killing those who aren't in their condition, the heroes have no problem with setting two full gasoline trucks in the middle of the soccer field a mass uses for sleeping and blowing them to hell. Fortunately, the crazies lack higher cognitive functions, and either don't recognize gasoline trucks, or think nothing of the fact that they've appeared there since the crazies went to forage that morning. But striking at them carries it's own problems.

A couple of issues I have with this book. The theory initially expressed for what's going on never gets much improved upon, which was difficult because I kept waiting for the true explanation, like a punchline that never came. I mean, I guess the given hypothesis works as well as any, but it just felt silly, given who was argued to be behind the whole thing.

The second problem is I never felt any real connection with the characters. This is very important for me, whether I'm watching TV, or movies, reading books, or comics, I want to feel something towards the characters. Hatred, derision, concern, admiration, something. I can't recall ever really getting that feeling from this book, probably because the characters aren't very fleshed out. Clay wants to get home to his family. he's an artist and he just got an agreement to publish his Dark Wanderer series as graphic novels (wink, wink). Tom has a cat he loves dearly, grew up in a very religious family, and likes guys. Alice, took karate, soccer, killed her phone-crazy mother, and keeps a baby-sized Nike she found (no the foot wasn't in it) as sort of a stress release device. The others we meet along the way don't get even that much fleshing out. Thus, even when two characters take their own lives, and two more get killed in revenge, it had no effect.

Honestly, it feels like King had a larger novel planned, and then pared it way down, removing much of the character development, whether through conversation, action, or internal monologue, that would have made me care more. I mean It felt like a long book when I first read it, but damn it, I cared about those kids, and I wanted them to make it out OK. There's no real sense of that here.

Of course, he left the ending somewhat open, so maybe he's got a follow up planned. Or maybe he just felt a little ragged after wrapping up The Dark Tower series, which I could understand. Still, kind of a disappointing read.