The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Pages: 300

This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own.  A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations- The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages from ancient myth to frontier western legend.  His pursuit of The Man In Black, his liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, his friendship with the kid from Earth Jake, are part of the drama that is both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, an alchemy of storytelling sorcery.  Complete in itself, THE GUNSLINGER is the first novel in an epic series. 

Review:

The characters in this book are The Gunslinger, The Man In Black, Jake, and Alice. Alice is The Gunslinger's lover, she helps him through sex, odd I know but you have to read it in order to get it. Jake is this adorable little 11-year-old.  He helps The Gunslinger through several situations and the Gunslinger  develops a soft-spot for him which could be dangerous.  The Man In Black is the person that the Gunslinger is after.  He is this creepy man, who wears a black robe which covers his face.  He turns people to his side, brings people back from the dead, your average creeper.  The Gunslinger is the main character (obviously his name is on the cover) He is very closed, even though he's the main character we don't know much about him other than the fact that he got to be the Gunslinger by killing his old mentor, (which was the passage from boys to men back then) and he is on a journey to find the dark tower, (Not sure why yet).

The plot of this book was kind of confusing actually, I wasn't exactly sure what he was doing till I got about halfway through it. It kind of switched back and forth from his childhood to the present.  You had to be careful or you'd miss the switch and be sitting there with this blank "wtf" look on your face. (trust me, I know, I did it.) But the plot is basically about the Gunslinger following the Man in Black to get answers, and hopefully to kill him.  But when he finally catches him, he finds out that what he wants to know isn't exactly what he wants to hear. Good plot, can't wait for the next book.

It took me about a day and a half to read this book because it was quite short (300 pages????), and it wasn't too deep.  Which is quite odd for Stephen King.  This is such a good book, kinda boring at first, but don't let that stop you. I would definitely recommend starting this series!

~C~

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

 Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Pages: 338

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release Date: November 15, 2011

Rating: 3/5

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

Review:

WARNING: This review contains major spoilers. Read at your own risk. Thank you. :)

Juliette hasn't seen the outside world--or what's left of it--in almost a year. For almost a year, she's been in a cell, caged like an animal. Dirty. Starved. Untouched.

Until he arrives.

Her new cellmate won't tell her why he's there. Of course, neither will she. But she knows him from somewhere.

Adam Kent.

The little boy with the deep, alluring midnight-blue eyes. How could she ever forget those eyes? Those eyes that watched her suffer all those years ago...

This book has a writing style that starts off very creative, but quickly turns into nothing but a distraction. She seems to have an obsession with numbers, too.

"I've been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in the alphabet I haven't spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I've touched another human being."

As well as the numbers, she has a way of striking things out, giving you an insight of what Juliette is really thinking, but isn't supposed to think.

"'You're getting a cellmate roommate,' they said to me.

'We hope you rot to death in this place For your good behavior,' they said to me.

'A psycho just like you No more isolation,' they said to me."

She also likes to repeat things three times in a row. For instance, reminding us for the upteenth time about Adam's "blue blue blue eyes."

It would bother me less if there were commas in there.

But, to make matters worse, she likes to do this two things AT THE SAME TIME.

His hands on my body his hands on my body his hands on my body his hands on my body

Mafi's writing style consists mainly on metaphors and analogies. Every time it gets a little steamy, you are going to read about the "fire and honey exploding in her mouth" or some other fire analogy.

There are only so many ways you can describe fire before it gets old.

What I'm saying is, her style seems too forced. It works some of the time. Mostly, it's just a mess. :(

Now, onto our characters~!

Juliette is our main protagonist, our heroine (and I mean that in the loosest way possible). She is basically shunned for her gift. She is able to drain a person's life force simply by coming into contact with them (Rouge, anyone?). It's cool, in a sense, but Juliette isn't very happy with it. She has a completely pure heart, and doesn't want to hurt anyone, despite other people's beliefs. Unfortunately, it got really annoying.

Adam is our second part of the love-triangle. He is bland, for lack of a better word. He has loved Juliette ever since the third grade, and is always there to defend her. Also, he is immune to her touch. Just. Great.

Our last part of the triangle is our main antagonist, Warner (<3). Warner is the leader of a sector of The Reestablishment. He is a gorgeous, power-hungry, sadistic man (nineteen...man-boy). He is by-far, the best, most well-rounded character in the story. 

Warner will do anything to get what he wants.

Oh, and he's also immune.

This book had a very X-Men feel to it towards the end. It's not a bad thing, really. I'm just not the biggest fan of superhero stories. I came into this thinking it was just a distopian novel. Oh well. I will be picking up the next book when it comes out, because I just NEED more Warner. :D

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (#1)

Pages: 505

This is going to be a weird book review because it’s not A BOOK.  It’s a bunch of Stephen Kings’ short stories’ all in one book.  I’m not going to do a full out review on every story or the whole book, I’m going to give you the synopsis of every story and the point it was trying to make, and how I liked it.

The Mist:

The mist is about a city in Maine that got hit with this terrible storm. And the morning after the storm there was this thick white fog that covered everything. But it wasn’t just fog, there were things hiding in the fog.  This is a story about a group of people that were in the super market when they got stuck in this death trap.  It was very interesting and it held me through the entire thing. The only thing that I don’t like about it is that it had an ambiguous ending.  I hate all ambiguous endings because I like to know what actually happens because then I’m not sitting there trying to figure out if one thing or another ended the story.  But overall it was very interesting.

Here There Be Tygers:

Yes for the record, that is how he spells the title. Tygers with a “y” not an “I.” This short story confused me quite a lot actually. It was only about 6 pages, but I had to go back and read it three times before it actually clicked.  This story is about a little boy in kindergarten who really needs to go to the bathroom (or basement as he calls it) and he is too scared to ask his teacher, and when he does he enters the bathroom and finds a tiger lying on the floor.  A friend of his come in and tries to get him to come back to class, but the little boy has still not yet gone to the bathroom because of his fear of the tiger.  The boys’ friend goes around the corner and unfortunately gets eaten by the tiger, and then the teacher comes in and sees the boy still too frightened to go to the bathroom, and the teacher in turn, gets eaten by the tiger also.  Soon after, the boy returns to class as if nothing happened.  The theory that I came up with is that Stephen King wrote this short story to show just how overactive a young child’s mind is.  The tiger represents the deeper part of our minds that truly hates other people and wants them to be destroyed. The boy created the tiger (metaphorically or not is still a good question) from his mind to unleash his anger on the people he disliked. It also leaves it open to whether or not the reader believes that the tiger is real or not.  And this brings me also back to my statement of, I HATE ambiguity.

The Monkey:

This was a super creepy story. It was about this boys’ childhood plaything, a monkey with cymbals that was evil. It seemed broken, but really it wasn’t.  It wouldn’t clap the cymbals together when you wound it up, but on its own, and when it clapped the cymbals you knew that somebody was going to die.  In the end he got rid of the monkey with his son. This story actually creped me out a lot. I mean there wasn’t much killing in it but the way it was told…..*shudder*

Cain Rose Up:

This story actually took me about three times to read it because I didn’t understand it the first time. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dorm room. It is the end of the school year. Curt talks frequently about how people should either do the best they can with their life or die. And it’s interesting how King worded this story, because you didn’t know what he was going to do until it happened because Curt didn’t show any emotions to wanting to do that. But it was quite good.

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (#2)

Pages: 505

Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut:

This was a story about a woman who lived her life trying to save time.  Finding as many shortcuts as she possibly could.  Till one day she just disappeared.  I honestly just thought that this was a pointless story.  This was the first story that I didn’t like that Stephen King wrote. I have nothing more to say about it.

The Jaunt:

The Jaunt is about a man telling his kids a story, and the story is about a man who created the first portal, to travel from one place to another.  This is actually a really hard story to explain, it’s one of those books that you just have to read it in order to get it.  This story shows just how mysterious the mind really is. And how seconds physically, could be an eternity mentally.

The Wedding Gig:

This was an interesting story on Revenge.  A 350 pound woman, is getting married to her 90 pound husband, they are ridiculed, and are the laughing stock of the town.  Her brother doesn’t like that so he kills anyone who laughs at her.  Soon the Greeks (a mafia) shoot him down, and the sister has a shocking rise to power, and kills anyone who wronged her or her brother and she becomes the most powerful and most feared person in the world.  It was a very good story, pointless, but good.  Moral: Don’t mess with the little guys because they’ll get you even though you least expect it.

Paranoid: A Chant:

This is about a schizophrenic man telling about his hardships and everything that people have done to wrong him.  It’s a 100-line poem and extremely hard to interpret.  I ended up, (after reading it 3 times) going online and looking up the meaning and plot of it.  When I knew what it was about I went back and read it for a fourth time.  The fourth time made the most sense to me.  I wouldn’t suggest this if A) you don’t like poetry or B) you have a hard time interpreting things.  But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very well written Mr. King

The Raft:

This was a gruesome story about 4 teenagers who swim out to the raft that the owners of the beach have planted in the ocean, it was late October. Two boys, two girls.  But when they got there they noticed this black thing in the water.  It would catch them and painfully eat them alive, although they had no idea what it was r where it came from, and it didn’t seem to have a face.  One by one the thing killed them all off.  It wasn’t a very deep story, but it was really good. It reverted back to Kings’ normal way of writing.

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (#3)

Pages: 505

Word processor of the Gods:

This is a fantastic story about how a little boy named Jon created a word processor.  He gave it to his Uncle Richard for his birthday.  But his Uncle Richard found out that it was actually more than just a word processor.  Like if he typed in “I have a bag of coins” a bag of coins would magically appear on his floor when he pressed enter.  His nephew Jon and his sister-in-law Belinda, died in a car accident that his drunken brother caused, and in the end he wished for them to be alive again and his son and wife, not his brothers.’  This was an intriguing story because when it comes down to it he only had a few minutes left before the machine broke, he wished for love and happiness rather than riches, and fame like he originally was going to type in.  It basically came down to what people find most important to themselves.  It was a very good story.

The man Who Would Not Shake Hands:

This is about a man who would not shake hands (obviously).  Actually he wouldn’t touch any living creature, because if he did it killed them.  We found out why later in the story.  He was cursed by a man after his son was killed in his truck. That probably makes no sense to any of you. But hey, it’s a 16-page story, go read it for yourself! It was probably one of the best ones in this book.  Very well done.

Beachworld:

I thought this was a dumb story actually.  No point whatsoever except to scratch your head and say to yourself “Now why did he write this again?”  Yeah, it was about a spacecraft carrying three men in it, 8,000 years in the future, that crashed on another planet covered in sand.  One of the three was killed and the other two decided to go check things out. Well they found it was just san and sand and even more sand.  One of the guys listened to it and became hypnotized, but the other one fought it.  Soon help came, but when they tried to get man #1 out he fought them, and they let him stay to die because he wouldn’t leave.  The other man was more than happy to get on their spaceship.  But when he got on a giant sand arm reached up and tried to grab him.  He got away, and so did the spacecraft.  Then Man #1 sat down and started to eat sand.  Yes, it is as dumb as you think. I have nothing else to say.

The Reaper’s Image:

This is a story about an ancient Elizabethan mirror that is said to bring destruction.  A man wants to buy it from an old antique shop, and when the shop owner tries to tell him that he shouldn’t, that bad things have happened because of it, the buyer refuses to believe him.  The story behind the mirror is that if anybody looks into it and sees the Reaper they’ll disappear without a trace.  This happened to several people.  The buyer laughed and looked into the mirror, he saw the Reaper and was filled with uncountable fear, he ran out of the room and down to the first floor to go to the bathroom, and the owner stood up on the second floor waiting, and waiting and waiting, but the buyer was gone, nowhere to be found.  This was an okay story, not much to think about, but it does bring up the thought of what EXACTLY do they see in the mirror, and where exactly o they go? But other than that it was a whatever story for me.

Nona:

This is a story about a boy who runs away from college and meets a girl, Nona.  He meets her at a truck stop and she gets into his head and ends up making him kill several people, and go on the run.  A killing rampage.  Soon he finds himself alone in a graveyard, she had left him.  This story was told from his perspective after it had all happened.  He’s in jail.  In the end he’s preparing to kill himself because he can’t stand being without Nona whom everyone thinks he made up.  This was a really good story. It was gruesome, and sick, and everything that a Stephen King novel should be. Very good.


For Owen:

I don’t really know what to say about this story.  It’s a poem that King wrote for his son Owen. It was cute????


Survivor Type:

This is an amazing story; I love this one so much. It’s probably my favorite one out of this whole book.  It’s about a man who goes on a cruise and gets shipwrecked on an island by himself.  He has no food so when a seagull comes around he throws a rock at it and kills it.  He starts to go crazy when no more birds fly around, and in the end he goes cannibalistic and eats himself until he dies. It was so intense; this story was the best one EVER. Holy crap.  It’s freaking amazing. Love, love, love, love, love. <3

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (#4)

Pages: 505

Uncle Otto’s Truck:

Uncle Otto crashed his truck while driving drunk. It kills his partner by rolling over him. He’s a millionaire so he builds himself a house across the street from the field that the truck crashed in.  He goes crazy, standing in his doorway watching the truck all day, and sleeping with one eye open all night.  He told his nephew, who brings him weekly groceries that the truck was getting closer to his house. The nephew laughs it off because it looks like the truck hasn’t moved.  Then one day he found his uncle dead in his house, and when he touches his face it starts to bleed oil out of his eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and he pulled a spark plug out of his mouth.  It looked to him like the truck had gotten him after all.  It was an okay story.  The ending was definitely the best but it was boring.

Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1):

This was an odd story at first. It was about a milkman who dropped off more than milk. Enough said.

Big Wheels:  Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2):

………………………….Don’t get drunk…………………………..

End of story.

I <3 the milkman.

Gramma:

This is a story about a boy named George who is terrified of his grandmother.  His brother breaks his leg and his mother has to go to him in the hospital.  George was left alone to take care of his grandmother.  Strange things start happening and by the end of the story the grandmother died but her spirit was possessing George’s soul.  This was a very disturbing story and it actually makes me kind of leery to be around my grandmother now, which means that Stephen King did an excellent job writing this story.

The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet:

This story was about a man named Henry, called (“the editor” in this story) Henry receives a short story from the novelist Reg Thorpe, and considers the story to be very dark, but also a masterpiece. As he keeps in touch with Thorpe, Henry learns of – and, due to Henry's own addiction to alcohol, eventually begins to believe in Thorpe's various paranoid fantasies. Henry and Thorpe believe that their typewriters are homes for their Fornits (tiny elves) who bring creativity and fornus (good luck dust). Henry told the story at a work barbeque that he went to.  He talked about his descent into Thorpe's madness, and how he recovered. It was such a good story. It was very interesting to see into the mind of a crazy person.

The Reach:

Stella Flanders, the oldest resident of Goat Island, has just celebrated her 95th birthday. She has never crossed the reach, the body of water that separates the Island from the mainland, in her entire life. Stella comes to the realization that the cancer that she's known she has, and kept to herself, is it its final stages when she starts seeing the deceased residents of Goat Island. Her visions start with her husband inviting her to "come across to the mainland." As her impending death draws near, Stella encounters more apparitions of the dead of Goat Island, and she makes peace with the knowledge that it is her time to go. Dressed in her warmest clothes, plus her son's long johns and hat, Stella heads across the frozen reach toward the mainland. Soon it starts to snow, and sleet, and she starts to freeze to death, and on the way she sees friends and family that have passed on.  Her hat flies off sometime in the middle of her trek, and her dead husband Bill is there to give her his.  Stella Flanders is found, dead, sitting upright on a rock on the mainland. Her son, Alden, recognizes his father's hat. He comes to believe that the dead sing and that they love those still living. I think this was an adorable story. Thinking that the dead are still taking care of the living, it makes me feel reassured.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Pages: 452

Publisher: Simon&Schuster

Release Date: September 27, 2011

Rating: 4.5/5

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.

Review:

This is one book I can say you either hate it, or you love it. I, for one, LOVED it.

This is going to be a short review, mainly because I don't want to spoil anything. Basically, Mara Dyer is suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) after her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's sister die. She cannot remember a thing that's happen. All she knows is that, for some reason, she survived. Most of the story is her regaining her memory.

Mara is downright insane. That's really all I can say about her--insane. Some of the thoughts she has were just...crazy! She belonged in the looney-bin.

Then there is Noah, the love-interest. He is a bit of a butt, and has pretty much slept with the majority of the school. Throughout the book, I was unsure on whether or not to trust this guy. Until the very end, it seemed his only goal was to take Mara's innocence. 

The ending of this book leaves you on such a cliff-hanger, and the next book doesn't even come out until next year! How will I survive!?

Christine by Stephen King

Christine by Steven King

Pages: 497

Christine is no lady, but 17-year-old Arnie Cunningham loves her enough to do anything to possess her.  Arnie's best friend Dennis distrusts her at first sight. Arnie's teen-queen girlfriend Leigh fears her the moment she senses her power. Arnie's parents, teachers, and enemies soon learn what happens when you cross her.  Christine is no lady.  She is Stephen King's ultimate, blackly evil vehicle of horror.

The main characters are Arnie, Dennis, Leigh, and Christine.  Arnie is a loser at first, and then he becomes a MAJOR jerk, and then you realize that it's not actually his fault because the spirit of the cars previous owner is possessing him, and the owner is an ass.  Dennis is pretty funny and a sex machine.  He made me want to get in the backseat of a car with him at some points.  Leigh is the beutiful girl who ends up being the strong-willed, stubborn girlfriend of first Arnie, then Dennis.  Christine is the possessed car, and let me tell you, Stephen King did such a good job creating this character, that it wasn't overdone and stupid sounding.  It was interesting to see how all the characters fit so well together.  None of them actually annoyed me in this book surprisingly.

The plot of this book was SO amazing.  Boy sees car, boy falls in love with car, car = possessed, boy becomes possessed, people are mean to boy, boys car comes alive and murders them all, car ends up being destroyed.  It stuck to that the entire time. But it was so much more than that. I grimaced several times in this book, and it takes A LOT to make me grimace while reading.  Stephen King did a wonderful job.

It took me about four days to read this book, not just because it's boring, but because it's one of the longer books.  It captivated me from the first page.  I love Stephen King, he's my favorite author, and he definitely kept up his image in my mind. If you want a book that keeps you interested, and disgusts you at the same time, I would definitely recommend picking up this book!