Cell - Stephen King

Disclaimer: No spoiler-checks in place.

"The king of macabre" is what he is called and this chilling tale proves he still is the best writer of fantasy/horror fiction ever.

The book is simply titled "Cell". Yes, Cell as in mobile phones. The story, like most of King's works, is set in a contemporary current-day setting. What better represents the modern society than a cell? Mobiles phones have become the backbone upon which communication rides all over the world. In the story, this ubiquitous gadget is the carrier of the Pulse - the Pulse that churns the world into chaos in the matter of a few minutes.

The book contains all the trademarks of a Stephen King work - it's well paced, it scares you, it has gore and it makes you wonder "what if". No, the story is not about demons or ghosts. The main characters, both the good and the evil ("the normal and the abnormal" would be more appropriate), are biologically humans. They start out as everyday people. It's the pulse that changes a majority of them into the 'phone crazies'. Ofcourse, the pulse is only the facilitator of the story and is not the story by itself.

The words lend themself to visualization, often just enough to scare the wits out of you. The narrative is explosive to say the least. The best thing about the book is that no matter how much you contemplate, you will not want to predict the exact end. The story is told in such a way that, you can visualize a number of different endings to the story. This book is definitely not about mere suspense, yet it has all the ingredients to keep the suspense at near-boiling point.

Don't mistake the book to be just about blood, horror and gore. King quite masterfully expresses the emotions that we feel and the way we behave under certain situations. Not just the common emotions or characteristics, often the more primitive ones. We do know what these emotions are and how they manifest themselves but, we cannot express them as words. King's telling of it makes us go "That's exactly how I would have felt". That's the power Stephen King has over words.

The story uses the concept of the human brain as a computer hard-disk. What will happen if the current programming on the disk is fully erased? What happens when this erasure leaves only the 'primary directive' behind? How will humans regenerate or reprogram themself from scratch, if given a chance? "Cell" does not pretend to be a sci-fi book with answers. It merely uses a hypothesis and weaves a story around it. The result is a massively addictive book. Like every other Stephen King book I have read, the "Cell" made me curse the need to put it down at night. Given the chance, I would not want to move until the book ended...

Links:
Cell - the website
Stephen King