Angela Montalbano

I'm working on my personal goal of reading every book by Stephen King. Cell is the thirteenth novel toward that goal. I could not help but notice that Stephen King loves incorporating telepathy and dream premonitions in an overwhelming majority of the books I've read from him. The Stand, The Shining, Insomnia, IT, Christine, Pet Sematary, The Green Mile - to name a few. That does not prevent any of them from being excellent books, but I have to admit that I was hoping for something a bit different in Cell, since it seemed to revolve around technology and programming. I felt this premise could have taken a much different direction. The Pulse and its origin could have been explained and expanded upon much more. I very much enjoyed the novel, but I don't think it was his best work. It was hard not to think about how the characters in The Stand were drawn to Randall Flagg (The Walkin' Dude) in nearly the exact same manner as the characters in Cell were to the Raggedy Man, being visited in their dreams and experiencing a sort of gravitational pull. Both novels also mostly centered around the characters traveling across states and encountering human remains and scavenging for resources. The Stand is one of my favorite novels, but I felt Cell borrowed too much from it. Additionally, I think Cell spent too much time on the characters moving from place to place and growing close rather than exploring the actual Pulse event and its effects. All in all, it was a good book that could have been better.