$ffa|1-Stephen King's


$aff|2-Insomnia







$fff                    Price     :       £5.00 (p/back)
                    ISBN      :        0-450-60848-4
                    Publisher :  New English Library
                    Reviewer  :            Freak/NFA

$ffaThis  is  one  of the newer releases from Funky old Stephen King, and is
based  -  going  back  to  one of King's trademarks - around the town of
Derry,  about  eight  years  after  it  was  wrecked  by the floods that
comprised the final chapters of the book "IT".  King fans will know that
the majority of his books are centred in Maine.

The story follows retired salesman Ralph Roberts as he starts to wake up
earlier and earlier each morning after the death of his wife.  His sleep
is  gradually  eroded to just a couple of hours a night and during these
months as the story progresses he starts to hallucinate, not really that
suprising!

The story - as with the majority of "big" King books (Insomnia weighs in
at  a  hefty  760  pages)  -  takes a long time to get started while the
author  takes  us  on  a  guided tour of the "Old Crocks" of Derry, Mike
Hanlon  and  Ben  Hanscomb  are names that "IT" readers will be familiar
with,  but  instead  of  boring  the reader to death it gived us a great
insight  into how they think, the reader has all the characters laid out
in front of him before things start getting heavy.

King readers shuold note that this story doesn't follow the well-establ-
ished  SK  pattern  of  dropping  a monthload of horror into an everyday
situation as in, for example, Geralds Game or Delores Claiborne, it runs
into the fantastical and is very similar in some respects to Hideaway by
Dean  Koonz,  although  if you've read that you won't be bored with this
one because they're not TOO similar.

I enjoyed it though, perhaps because this is the first Stephen King book
I've  read  in  about  a  year, and if it is then maybe it's coloured my
review a little, but I found myself being dragged into the story, having
started  reading  on  a  Monday afternoon and finished it about 24 hours
later  and,  although  I  hadn't  lost any sleep over it, it had kept me
glued to the page because it was so very involved.

It's  a  fascinating story, not a gore-fest, not a shocker, and when the
story  pads out you realise that it's a bit too unbelievable, but that's
okay  because  it's  very entertaining and a damned good read, and maybe
King  didn't  want to shock with this one?  All in all I though it was a
good story with some nice ideas, not the sort of thing you'd turn into a
film though, unlike Koonz's Hideaway.
$faf
|1-          8/10
                      Overall?  I'd say...

$fffend