Unlike other King works, I find Cell a different kind, altogether. Here the story is unputdownable at the most. It is a very chilling horror story with a lot of detail. The story is about cell phones being used to distribute a dark power that possesses human beings that speak to or overhear cell phone conversations. The chilling moments come into existence, when cities and cities of people are just going mad and over moments become cannibals. They just eat the other people around them without the slightest knowledge of what they are doing. Almost what you might see in films like Resident Evil.
It however doesn’t look like vintage King. This novel feels much like written by someone else. And not Stephen King, who also wrote the Shining, The Stand and It. But it is in the line of James Patterson, and is highly pacey. Perhaps that is the reason why. I never felt another King work is so pacey. King usually writes with detail, not pace. He shows us everything in the best ways. But lags. That’s what he usually does. But not in this novel.
The Pulse will definitely chill your heart. Clayton Riddell, who doesn’t own a cell phone, but his son does, witnesses the cell phone’s mockery on the people’s brains when he is in the street, away from his son and wife. He sees people practically growing mad in the street after a minute’s talk on their cell phones and killing the ones beside them in cold blood. And he prays desperately that his little Johnny, who is very forgetful, forgot his cell phone today. He has to reach his son before anything goes wrong. That’s the story unveiled in the pages.
It is a very fast paced read, though, as I said, very unlike usual King. The novel would be frightful in some ways but not much. And the characterization was not up to the mark. It wouldn’t much compete with other King works in that department. Maybe the characters weren’t so much believable that the horror was not much appealing. Nevertheless, a good read, though I wouldn’t rate it more than two and a half.
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