CELL reviews -- will contain spoilers

jhanic

Literary Guild

Stephen King is back with his first stand-alone novel since his mega-selling From A Buick 8. This terrifying tale is already being compared to The Stand: Mayhem is unleashed when a pulse from an unknown source turns all cell phone users into murderous psychopaths. This is classic King.



Walking along a busy street in Boston, Clayton Riddell is euphoric, having sold not one, but two novels to a publisher. But he’s stunned out of his reverie by the sound of a ringing cell phone and the unimaginable sight of its owner, a businesswoman, viciously attacking the ice cream man inside a Mr. Softee truck. She’s not the only one to suddenly go berserk. Looking around, Clay is horrified to see people attacking each other with savage intensity.



Desperate to escape the madness, Clay takes refuge in his hotel with Tom McCourt and Alice Maxwell, a teenager they rescue from the clutches of a knife-wielding maniac. Are they the only ones still sane? Worried about his wife and son, Clay is determined to get home. At nightfall, when the “phone-crazies” come together in snarling packs that retreat into the shadows, their small group gathers anything they can find to use as weapons as they make their way to Tom’s nearby hometown.



What happens next is what makes Stephen King the master of horror. For while Clay, Alice and Tom try to sleep, the crazies infiltrate their dreams. And what they see brings forth a fierce determination to survive, even if it means becoming killers themselves…. Explicit violence and language.

jhanic

Bev, does this mean that preliminary copies of Cell are being issued? I heard (from you, I think) that no Advance Readers Copies are being done, but that "review copies" of the book are to be sent out.



John

BevVincent

The Literary Guild is like the Book of the Month club, so they probably received a manuscript or some other early form of the text to prepare their own edition.



My contact at Scribner tells me there will be a limited run of galleys. I have not received my copy yet, though.

BevVincent

Publishers Weekly:

What if a pulse sent out through cell phones turned every person using one of them into a zombie-like killing machine? That's what happens on page six of King's latest, a glib, technophobic but compelling look at the end of civilization—or at what may turn into a new, extreme, telepathically enforced fascism. Those who are not on a call at the time of the pulse (and who don't reach for their phones to find out what is going on) remain "normies." One such is Clayton Riddell, an illustrator from Kent Pond, Maine, who has just sold some work in Boston when the pulse hits. Clay's single-minded attempt to get back to Maine, where his estranged wife, Sharon, and young son, Johnny-Gee, may or may not have been turned into "phoners" (as those who have had their brains wiped by the pulse come to be called) comprises the rest of the plot. King's imagining of what is more or less post-Armageddon Boston is rich, and the sociological asides made by his characters along the way—Clay travels at first with two other refugees—are jaunty and witty. The novel's three long set pieces are all pretty gory, but not gratuitously so, and the book holds together in signature King style. Fans will be satisfied and will look forward to the next King release, Lisey's Story, slated for October. (Jan. 24)