Stephen King
What might be done to human beings by the "Other"--whether the "Other" be vampires, demons or creatures from outer space--is always in competition for absolute horror with what we do to ourselves. Stephen King has, in his time, played with both sources of the nightmarish and in Dreamcatcher, the first complete novel since his near-fatal accident, he gives us both.
Four childhood friends, united by secrets, are caught in the quarantine zone when something crashes into the remote forests of Maine; and the question becomes who will avoid being eaten alive by alien fungi, torn from the inside by alien ferrets, possessed by alien minds or menaced by a psychotic military commander to whom ruthlessness has become a macho ego trip?
The Earth is in peril as well, needless to say, but most of our attention is taken up with a few men caught on the edge, and where the most important thing in the world turns out to be the fact that four small boys saved a fifth from a beating.
This has the hall-marks of a good King novel--memorable catchphrases whose meaning we only gradually learn and a sense of how it feels to be human. --Roz Kaveney
Ken on Goodreads wrote:It was decent but developed very slowly and to me there was a lot of confusing parts. I'm not saying it's awful just not a favorite.
Minor spoilers
So it's a book about 4 very close friends that go hunting and find themselves in the middle of a bizarre occurrence. They soon find out it is supernatural in origin and it may have some relationship to their past
It is a touching story of their friendship and their bond to a boy with Down syndrome and how that relationship saves them at the end.
The military involvement is interesting and he ways the other being communicate is interfering and humorous.
Not at a bad book but for a book that is nearly 1,000 pages I generally expect to be more satisfied
A group of friends on their yearly hunting trip stumble on an alien crash coverup in the Derry woods.
Dreamcatcher had so much potential to be a great King, during the time of writing he was taking painkillers after recuperating from a car accident.
It explains why this novel is slightest misguided and in a way I’m more forgiving that it’s quite muddled.Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, a down syndrome boy typifies this the most.
The first half of the novel is truly great, there’s some really good set up.
The body horror is great, especially the bathroom scenes are truly horrific.It’s by no means a bad novel but it took me a while to get through this one, it’s more of a frustration that with a great concept it ends up misfiring.
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