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3.35 AVERAGE
3.35 AVERAGE
Everyone that knows me knows that I am a King completionist, which isn't easy to be when he releases several new books per year. Dreamcatcher wasn't high on my to-read King list, and I'm happy to say my instincts were mostly correct on this one.
The story has to do with four friends who take a yearly hunting trip and are accidentally caught in a government-led quarantine after an alien ship infected with a deadly fungus crashes near their lodge (no, I'm not making this up). King is good here with writing suspense (when is he not?), and true to form, the flashbacks to the friends' childhoods are some of the best parts of the story.
Unfortunately, I think King is also true to form in that this book has a rather complicated plot and when it's coupled with the tense feeling of suspense, the ending falls very flat. Parts of the ending are great, but some other parts are almost incoherent. There are characters that I felt could be completely cut from the story, which would have made the ending better and streamlined the book as a whole.
Overall, I felt that this book is one you could probably give a miss if you aren't a completionist like me. There are better King stories.
The story has to do with four friends who take a yearly hunting trip and are accidentally caught in a government-led quarantine after an alien ship infected with a deadly fungus crashes near their lodge (no, I'm not making this up). King is good here with writing suspense (when is he not?), and true to form, the flashbacks to the friends' childhoods are some of the best parts of the story.
Unfortunately, I think King is also true to form in that this book has a rather complicated plot and when it's coupled with the tense feeling of suspense, the ending falls very flat. Parts of the ending are great, but some other parts are almost incoherent. There are characters that I felt could be completely cut from the story, which would have made the ending better and streamlined the book as a whole.
Overall, I felt that this book is one you could probably give a miss if you aren't a completionist like me. There are better King stories.
It amazes me how he ties stories together that were written 20+ years apart!
An excellent book from one of my favourite authors about the gray men, or mr gray and his evil sidekicks the shit weasels! Loved the storyline and the characters, written just after king had his terrible accident his pain and suffering is written all over jonesy and henry. Highly recommended!
Ok ready for an unpopular opinion here?
I enjoyed this very much.
There are a lot of things about this that I really loved actually. I really enjoyed this group of characters personalities, especially all the "slogans" they had between them. I am pleased to report that this is one of only a few of King's endings that I enjoyed and would call a "real good ending". As someone who doesn't read a ton of Sci-Fi and definitely doesn't read a lot about aliens I was really engaged with this species. I felt like it was a nice twist on a classic invasion. As I am a novice in the genre take that as you will.
Then there were the things I didn't love. The ending was a nice surprise but the first 400 pages felt like a drag. It may have been my own fault for reading this in the spring/summer (it's much better suited to the winter season I think) but I had to put it down for weeks at a time because I just couldn't get into it until the last half which I did finish within just a few days. There were times I thought it took way longer to cover some scenes than was necessary and as much as I loved the slogans they were repeated what felt like constantly. We're talking one on every other page it seemed, it's seriously packed with them.
I enjoyed this way more then I was anticipating but I get all the flack it gets. One of the better ones in my opinion but not one of the best.
I enjoyed this very much.
There are a lot of things about this that I really loved actually.
Spoiler
The fact that there was so much pulled in from IT (my favorite of his novels) was really cool for me while reading and definitely made the setting and scenery more interesting.Then there were the things I didn't love. The ending was a nice surprise but the first 400 pages felt like a drag. It may have been my own fault for reading this in the spring/summer (it's much better suited to the winter season I think) but I had to put it down for weeks at a time because I just couldn't get into it until the last half which I did finish within just a few days. There were times I thought it took way longer to cover some scenes than was necessary and as much as I loved the slogans they were repeated what felt like constantly. We're talking one on every other page it seemed, it's seriously packed with them.
I enjoyed this way more then I was anticipating but I get all the flack it gets. One of the better ones in my opinion but not one of the best.
Actual rating 3.5. Like Tommy knockers, it's pretty slow going in the beginning, for the first 300 pages. But after you power through that hill, things really take off and come together.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Having seen the movie when I was a kid, I found it’s mystery and sci-fi/horror elements to be exciting and intriguing. That’s why, reading this book, I was looking for answers to all the holes and flaws in the movie. By and large, the book provided them. But at the same time, I found it to be much more flawed than I’d hoped for, especially in its slowness (it was way too long) and its oddly anti-climactic ending. I found the conceptual aspect of the aliens compelling, but I just felt sort of let down by the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore
Minor: Ableism, Fatphobia, Suicidal thoughts
I was lead to this book via recommendation - sort of. A King fan I work with mentioned it while we were discussing his older works, and when I asked what it was about, she said (or so I thought she said) "oh, aliens." Handful of chapters in and it suddenly dawned on me that she'd said "It's like Alien," -- as in, xenomorphs. Not exactly the kind of alien I was looking for, but I do love a good xenomorph story.
Regardless, King is always hard to rate for me. He's so prolific and so famous/infamous, and he's generally considered an astute author -- and in many ways, he is. Perhaps I always find King's novels hard to rate because nothing, absolutely nothing, will match the magnificent and unparalleled horror and artistry that was "Pet Sematary." I have this running theory that King has a ghost writer finish all of his novels, because my complaint about his work is always "it had such a weak ending."
"Dreamcatcher" wasn't unsatisfactory per se. At first, once I realized the general vein of the story, I was a bit skeptical; I asked myself just how derivative this was going to be. Since King fully embraced the cheeky (pun intended) references to Alien/Xenomorphs, I dispensed with that skepticism. I'm okay with derivative if its reverent (often times, derivations of iconic works are nothing more than soft core plagiarism). Digressing a bit - I liked the concept, and I think King has a knack for very average, humanized characters. He writes disjointed thoughts in a realistic way, and I was all in at the beginning - but the book devolved into a 300 page snail-paced car chase.
Literally. At least 1/3 of the book was comprised of three sets of characters tailing each other slowly in against a snowy New England backdrop.
Again, as King brings his stories to a denouement, I always feel like there's something missing, or something so far off the mark that it critically injures what the story could achieve. In "It," the issue is the childhood orgy; in "The Stand," it's the oddly set up come-to-Jesus between good and evil, in "Cell," it's the thinly veiled metaphor of cell phones as mind mush devices. He doesn't seem to be able to finish a thought well.
Everything that was going on with Mr.Grey/the Mind/the byrus from a psychological aspect was fantastic, but then we had to contend with the side story of the "shit-weasels," which was gory and gruesome but not really relevant (what was their purpose, other than to inject jaw-dropping horror into the story -- which, to be fair, they did QUITE well).
But the bits about Duddits had an awkward foundation - why was he the way he was? Because he had Down Syndrome? I don't think that's what King intended to say, but in a cringe-worthy way, that's what it sometimes felt like -- "this disabled magical boy taught us so much and was magical even if he had Down Syndrome" -- again, to reiterate; I don't think King was trying to convey that, but it came off that way to me, and because of that, Duddits as the "key" to it all ended up making very little sense. I thought it was going to circle back to previous alien contact throughout the years in some way or even -- behold -- connect to Derry, the deadlights, and Pennywise, but it didn't -- and that feels like a serious missed opportunity. Instead it's "Duddits is the key, but don't ask me why, and oh, also, despite the fact that there are literally no Native characters or Native stories told in this book, it all centers on a Dreamcatcher."
?? Big question marks in regards to the flow and poignance of the Duddits storyline, even though I liked the character.
Next big problem is the "Kurtz." From what I can tell, he was functionally useless to the entire plot. Remove him completely, and virtually nothing changes. He existed as some sort of homage to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" Kurtz, but rather than infuse it with subtlety, King just whacks you in the face with it. He's an insane military official who loves killing and has the most asinine turn of speech. I was bored to tears enough by the lack of depth to Kurtz when I had to read "Heart of Darkness," it was painful to sit through it again.
The only function he truly served was to further Owen Underhill's choice to join Henry, and that could have been achieved in other ways, rather than forcing the reader to sit through pages and pages of additional drivel about what a batshit monster Kurtz is - we get it, and the excess horror was already present in the novel by virtue of the "shit weasels" so again we come to "What are we doing, Stephen? Get to the point, get to the plot."
The scatalogical nature of the "shit weasel" gestation got to be...absurd. More often than not, it just jolted me out of the story because it was such...prepubescent bathroom humor. I understand the need to make the story of an alien bursting from a human body unique (Even if you're going to call it a Ripley) - but I just felt this was a boyish, weird choice. Perhaps I'm immature. But it detracted from the horror and just made it farcical at some points.
I love stories about first contact and want to immerse myself in the "lore" of fictional alien cultures, so it was disappointing to me that we never got so much of an inkling of real background on the byrus/greyboys - even Pennywise gets some juicy, if brief, origin story. King usually does focus more on the very raw humanity in the story, and that was done well here in terms of Jonesy and Henry.
I did very much like the very, very end, and the epilogue -- which I don't often say for King novels. And so it comes down to being hard to rate because overall, I like Stephen King. I like reading his books - but they always leave something to be desired. They are almost always overly ambitious, and thus neglectful of (figures) some part I would have most liked to hear more about.
Dreamcatcher is no different.
Regardless, King is always hard to rate for me. He's so prolific and so famous/infamous, and he's generally considered an astute author -- and in many ways, he is. Perhaps I always find King's novels hard to rate because nothing, absolutely nothing, will match the magnificent and unparalleled horror and artistry that was "Pet Sematary." I have this running theory that King has a ghost writer finish all of his novels, because my complaint about his work is always "it had such a weak ending."
"Dreamcatcher" wasn't unsatisfactory per se. At first, once I realized the general vein of the story, I was a bit skeptical; I asked myself just how derivative this was going to be. Since King fully embraced the cheeky (pun intended) references to Alien/Xenomorphs, I dispensed with that skepticism. I'm okay with derivative if its reverent (often times, derivations of iconic works are nothing more than soft core plagiarism). Digressing a bit - I liked the concept, and I think King has a knack for very average, humanized characters. He writes disjointed thoughts in a realistic way, and I was all in at the beginning - but the book devolved into a 300 page snail-paced car chase.
Literally. At least 1/3 of the book was comprised of three sets of characters tailing each other slowly in against a snowy New England backdrop.
Again, as King brings his stories to a denouement, I always feel like there's something missing, or something so far off the mark that it critically injures what the story could achieve. In "It," the issue is the childhood orgy; in "The Stand," it's the oddly set up come-to-Jesus between good and evil, in "Cell," it's the thinly veiled metaphor of cell phones as mind mush devices. He doesn't seem to be able to finish a thought well.
Everything that was going on with Mr.Grey/the Mind/the byrus from a psychological aspect was fantastic, but then we had to contend with the side story of the "shit-weasels," which was gory and gruesome but not really relevant (what was their purpose, other than to inject jaw-dropping horror into the story -- which, to be fair, they did QUITE well).
But the bits about Duddits had an awkward foundation - why was he the way he was? Because he had Down Syndrome? I don't think that's what King intended to say, but in a cringe-worthy way, that's what it sometimes felt like -- "this disabled magical boy taught us so much and was magical even if he had Down Syndrome" -- again, to reiterate; I don't think King was trying to convey that, but it came off that way to me, and because of that, Duddits as the "key" to it all ended up making very little sense. I thought it was going to circle back to previous alien contact throughout the years in some way or even -- behold -- connect to Derry, the deadlights, and Pennywise, but it didn't -- and that feels like a serious missed opportunity. Instead it's "Duddits is the key, but don't ask me why, and oh, also, despite the fact that there are literally no Native characters or Native stories told in this book, it all centers on a Dreamcatcher."
?? Big question marks in regards to the flow and poignance of the Duddits storyline, even though I liked the character.
Next big problem is the "Kurtz." From what I can tell, he was functionally useless to the entire plot. Remove him completely, and virtually nothing changes. He existed as some sort of homage to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" Kurtz, but rather than infuse it with subtlety, King just whacks you in the face with it. He's an insane military official who loves killing and has the most asinine turn of speech. I was bored to tears enough by the lack of depth to Kurtz when I had to read "Heart of Darkness," it was painful to sit through it again.
The only function he truly served was to further Owen Underhill's choice to join Henry, and that could have been achieved in other ways, rather than forcing the reader to sit through pages and pages of additional drivel about what a batshit monster Kurtz is - we get it, and the excess horror was already present in the novel by virtue of the "shit weasels" so again we come to "What are we doing, Stephen? Get to the point, get to the plot."
The scatalogical nature of the "shit weasel" gestation got to be...absurd. More often than not, it just jolted me out of the story because it was such...prepubescent bathroom humor. I understand the need to make the story of an alien bursting from a human body unique (Even if you're going to call it a Ripley) - but I just felt this was a boyish, weird choice. Perhaps I'm immature. But it detracted from the horror and just made it farcical at some points.
I love stories about first contact and want to immerse myself in the "lore" of fictional alien cultures, so it was disappointing to me that we never got so much of an inkling of real background on the byrus/greyboys - even Pennywise gets some juicy, if brief, origin story. King usually does focus more on the very raw humanity in the story, and that was done well here in terms of Jonesy and Henry.
I did very much like the very, very end, and the epilogue -- which I don't often say for King novels. And so it comes down to being hard to rate because overall, I like Stephen King. I like reading his books - but they always leave something to be desired. They are almost always overly ambitious, and thus neglectful of (figures) some part I would have most liked to hear more about.
Dreamcatcher is no different.
really good but i was glad to finish - mr grey was so well done.