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The Word 11
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The Word 11 (Disk 2 of 2).adf
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06-Book-Insomnia.txt
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06-Book-Insomnia.txt
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1996-08-01
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$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