Zombies spawned from cell phones, what could be cooler than that? The action starts almost immediately, and is violent, bloody, and fast. Before you know it, the zombies are everywhere. I couldn’t put this book down.

The story line is a simple one. Clayton Riddell is coming back home from an interview, which went well. He stops for a moment and gets in line to buy an ice cream. Then, all hell breaks loose. People go from normal to psychotic in seconds flat. No one sees it coming. All Clayton can figure out, at first, is that everyone who has gone crazy and homicidal had a cell phone. The people are still alive, but are suddenly acting more like zombies. They aren’t the slow, stupid, lurching zombies, either. No, they are fast, as in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” kind of fast. Perhaps because they are still alive?

From there, the story is about survival. What do you do, when surrounded by what is basically a pack of zombies? Where do you go? Clayton must make some quick decisions. Cell isn’t simply about avoiding death by fast moving monsters. It also touches on what happens to people’s minds when they are dropped into this horrific situation. Who do you trust? How can you tell who is safe, and who is going to become violent? How do you figure out what caused this, so it doesn’t happen to you? Makes for a tense story. King excels in mixing psychological and physical horror. Just when his characters think they have things figured out, the zombies change. They act differently, and seem to be getting “smarter”.

Then there’s the moral dilemma. Is it right to kill off these zombies, in order to save not only yourself, but also the other, still unaffected, “normal” humans who are left? I mean, they are still people, right? They are alive, aren’t they? Or, have they stopped being “people” once they lost their minds and got all bloodthirsty? Staggering.

The only thing I didn’t absolutely love about this book was the ending. King doesn’t simply tell you if a particularly important action by the main character worked, or if it didn’t work. The book ends just as Clayton is doing the action. I was kind of mad, because I wanted to know for certain one way or the other. Instead, King has left it unclear. Either he wanted the readers to decide for themselves what should happen next, or, he is leaving room for a sequel to this story. I’m hoping for a sequel, but not exactly holding my breath.

The back of the book says that Stephen King does not own a cell phone. Neither do I. I hate them. I hate when people use them while driving, as they swerve into my lane and almost hit my car. I hate when people come into my retail job, ask me to find them something, and can’t manage to stop their conversation on the cell phone long enough for me to figure out what exactly it is they are looking for. I hate that they force me to be rude, and interrupt their conversation just to provide the help they asked me for in the first place. I hate the T.M.I people, who shout “too much information” across stores and restaurants, because the person on the other end of the cell phone has a bad connection, or is in a noisy place, forcing us all to hear about someone’s surgery, or the night someone drank too much. But mostly, I hate that we have become a nation of people who feel the need to isolate ourselves from the possibilities of having a random conversation with other passing humans. People now seem to feel like they must be constantly connected to this security blanket that “wireless” provides. It sickens me when I see a room full of people out somewhere for a night, all chatting away… to people who aren’t even in the room, instead of with someone who is actually standing next to us. Perhaps, King felt some of the same things I do, and that’s what inspired this book.

If you are a Stephen King fan, you will love this book. It’s just that special. If you are a fan of zombies, and like stories that include them, don’t pass this one up! If you hate, hate, hate cell phones, as much as I do, you will get sadistic pleasure from this book. I highly recommend it.

This book is one weird Fairy Tale, from start to finish.

Lisey (which we learn right away rhymes with Ce Ce), is a widow. Her husband, Scott, was a super popular writer of scary and strange fiction books, who had millions of fans, many of whom were insane. Remind you of any real life writers? At the beginning of the book, Lisey is just starting to go through her husband’s things, deciding what to keep, what to send away, and who to send these important things to. Its been two years since her husband died, and Lisey is being bothered by fans, colleges, and anyone else who feels they are deserving of Scott’s papers, awards, etc. There is also a madman who couldn’t care less about Scott’s things. He just wants to cause Lisey pain.

There are at least three timelines running through this story. One is the present, where Lisey is at now. One of her sisters has gone crazy, and Lisey and the rest of the sisters are picking up the pieces of that. At the same time Lisey is dealing with and running from the madman who is after her. Another timeline is Lisey remembering moments she spent with Scott, both good ones and bad ones. At first, its difficult to keep track of how all these memories fit into the story. There is a specific memory involving a shovel that becomes very important. I don’t think I am giving anything away there. The dust jacket of the book has a cut out in the shape of a shovel, after all! There is a third story line that tells some absolutely horrifying things that Scott went through as a young child.

Weaving through all of these timelines is a connection to…. well, I guess it is another world. Scott can go there, but he’s not the only one. This world has wonderful things, and monsters, and some things that start out wonderful but become dangerous at night. It’s a fairy tale like world, that draws people in. I found a lot of it to be something a young child might imagine. Lisey must remember what she knows about this other world to not only save herself, but, to find her story.

I am a big Stephen King fan, but, I am not exactly in love with this particular story. It just didn’t do it for me. I don’t know exactly why that is. Perhaps it was because I could make out the path the story was leading the reader down a little before it got there. Maybe it was because I ended up wanting to know more about this other world when I got to the end of the book. I had all sorts of questions in mind, that won’t get answered. I think I also wanted to find some link between this book and some of his other books, since I know King has a tendency to connect characters and settings from his other work. If there is a link, I simply didn’t see it. King has a tendency to use made up language in his books sometimes, and I have come to expect that. In this book, however, he goes a bit overboard. I understand that most long term couples tend to have a few words of their “own”. Words that mean something different for them, or words that are completely made up. So much of that gets used in this book that I found it distracting! The use of the word “Smuck” instead of the similar sounding swear word was particularly vexing to me.

Then again, this particular Stephen King book was on the Barnes & Noble Bestseller list for a few weeks. So, what do I know?

I was a little surprized when this book appeared on the shelves at my bookstore. I mean, I’m a big Stephen King fan, and I hadn’t heard much about this book. Besides, I kind of thought he was done after the Dark Tower Series. I did remember hearing something a few weeks before about some book King was working on, and a contest that would allow the winner to name a character in the book, or something like that, but I didn’t hear anything beyond that.

And here was this little book. It has a pulp fiction like cover, with a girl in a red dress. It was small. Downright tiny compared to most of the rest of King’s work. It was even over in the Mystery Section! Could this really be the same Stephen King?

I started reading the book, and was pleasantly surprized to find that I liked it! Its definitely a mystery. In fact, it seems to be part of a series of “Hard Case Crime” with each story by different authors. I was certain it was the same Stephen King right away. It takes place in Maine, as did so many of his other stories, and there is just something about the characters and the writing style that had King all over it.

The story is basically one converstation between two old friends who run a small newspaper and a much younger intern who has worked with them for a while and wants to stay in town. The two older guys are teaching her the trade, and also teaching her about the instincts that a good writer needs when following a story. They bring up an unsolved case that happened in town many years ago. A man is found sitting on the beach, already dead, with nothing more known about him.

From there, it gets stranger as the plot twists and turns. I liked it because I like Stephen King’s work, and because the story keeps moving along. If you like to watch tv shows like CSI, you will like this book.

This was also a fun book to be reading right before and on Halloween. It has fourteen little short stories, all written by Stephen King, and all very much in his style. I happen to be a Stephen King fan, so I really enjoyed this book. Some of these stories link up with his other work,(some of the books in the Dark Tower Series), which is always interesting.

Even the cover is great! Its this pencil drawing of a table at a resturant. The water glass has a red drop of liquid falling down to the bottom of it, which just must be blood. The back cover of the book has the rest of the resturant, and has blood spattered all over it. This artwork is on the hard cover version of the book. Im not sure what’s on the paperback. This drawing is directly related to one of the stories in the book, “Lunch at the Gotham Cafe”, a really gorey story about a guy going crazy at a resturant.

Not all the stories in the book were wonderful, but most were good. My favorite is “Little Sisters of Eluria”. It is almost like part of the Dark Tower series, which I love, but takes place before the first book. Roland goes into this abandoned town, called Eluria, and things happen from there. Its just as captivating as the rest of the Dark Tower series. Also interesting is that this story seems to link up with something in the book “The Talisman”, (which King wrote with Peter Straub). Fans of King will enjoy this story.

The story that the book takes its title from, “Everything’s Eventual”, is a story that reminds me of part of the Dark Tower series as well. But, even if you have not read the series, you can enjoy this one. A teenager, whose life is going nowhere, finds he has a strange power, and gets offered an even stranger job. A good read on its own.

Overall, there were more stories I liked in this book than ones I didn’t like so much. This is a good book when you want to read a Stephen King story, but don’t have that kind of time. Bite sized horror, to be enjoyed like the little “fun size” candy bars one gets while trick-or-treating.