Cell by Stephen King (2006, Hardcover)

Stephen King's newest novel is a violent, brutal, unflinching look at the possibilities of "brainwave interference." Cell follows Clayton Riddell, a comic-book writer, on his journey to find his wife and son in Kent Pond, Maine from Boston. Along the journey, Clay meets up with Tom McCourt, who is the best character in the book. Tom is an intelligent, emotional, thoughtful man who truly bonds with Clay and Alice, the teenager they also find in Boston and take along with them.

I wouldn't call this book a "zombie book." The phone crazies are not really zombies, in the general sense of the term, at all. They have some small ability to think and communicate, and have a clear purpose. What starts out as random violence and destruction turns into a specimen of group think, reducing our technologically-advanced society to a vast landscape of rainforest. There are no rules. You aren't safe, and you don't know what you are in danger from and what you aren't. The world that King paints is a scary one. Coming from the viewpoint from a few protagonists, the reader can still get a personal feel from the book, unlike a book that would try and paint a picture of the entire world, and what was happening everywhere. In fact, we don't get an outside viewpoint at all throughout the book, we are just left to assume about what is going on outside of the northeast region of the U.S.

The book starts out on an amazing note. When the Pulse goes out, all Hell breaks loose, and King writes with a style of violence that is second to no other. I have never felt as much of a sense of chaos as the opening pages of Cell. However, after about the first 100 pages, the book slows down a great deal. The middle part of the book is definitely the weakest. Filled mostly with the character's musings about what is going on, and thinking about those they have had to leave behind. Not much action takes place in the middle third of the book, and that hurts the breakneck pace that the first part sets. The third part of the book, when the group sets out on the final part of their journey, it returns to the pacing that doesn't let you put the book down even for a second. King is one of the only writers that I know of that can still have the reader completely guessing as to what is going to happen with only 20 pages left to read.

This isn't one of King's elite novels, but it definitely was a really fun, interesting read.