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In which King Technophobe turns everyone with cell phones into zombies—or rather, into the Borg. I was more into this in the early chapters when it was survivors vs. zombies; the Borgian bits bored me a little. I was also a little skeeved that King chose to make a black man in a Harvard sweatshirt the leader of the Borg army—there’s so much nasty stuff one could read into an educated black dude being used as the representative of the mind-enslaving Big Bad. But I am afraid to touch Stephen “magical Negro” King’s racial issues with a ten-foot pole, so I’m just gonna leave it at that.
I’m focusing on the negative rather early here, aren’t I? That’s actually not all that fair—there was in fact a lot about this novel that I enjoyed. King is great at envisioning post-apocalyptic landscapes; what you’ve got here in Cell is basically a more succinct version of the good parts of [b:The Stand|149267|The Stand (The Complete & Unabridged Edition)|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1213131305s/149267.jpg|1742269]. So while it never achieves the heights of the best parts of The Stand, it never hits that book’s low points, either. Also, remarkably for King, one of the main characters is a gay man—a gay man who’s awesome! And who actually survives! The friendship between this fellow, Tom, and Clay, our everyman hero, is by far the best part of this novel. It’s also slashy as hell. At one point, oh-so-hetero Clay actually thinks about how much he is going to miss Tom’s smile. Hee! How has the internet seemingly failed to produce fic for this? I want to read all about Clay and Tom’s wacky post-apocalyptic adventures! Because if surviving the end of the world isn’t the perfect excuse to experiment with your sexuality, I don’t know what is.
I’m focusing on the negative rather early here, aren’t I? That’s actually not all that fair—there was in fact a lot about this novel that I enjoyed. King is great at envisioning post-apocalyptic landscapes; what you’ve got here in Cell is basically a more succinct version of the good parts of [b:The Stand|149267|The Stand (The Complete & Unabridged Edition)|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1213131305s/149267.jpg|1742269]. So while it never achieves the heights of the best parts of The Stand, it never hits that book’s low points, either. Also, remarkably for King, one of the main characters is a gay man—a gay man who’s awesome! And who actually survives! The friendship between this fellow, Tom, and Clay, our everyman hero, is by far the best part of this novel. It’s also slashy as hell. At one point, oh-so-hetero Clay actually thinks about how much he is going to miss Tom’s smile. Hee! How has the internet seemingly failed to produce fic for this? I want to read all about Clay and Tom’s wacky post-apocalyptic adventures! Because if surviving the end of the world isn’t the perfect excuse to experiment with your sexuality, I don’t know what is.