- Mass Market Paperback: 896 pages
- Publisher: Pocket; 1 edition (Feb 25 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743467523
- ISBN-13: 978-0743467520
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 10.2 x 17.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 399 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (664 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,719,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Stephen King fans, rejoice! The bodysnatching-aliens tale Dreamcatcher is his first book in years that slakes our hunger for horror the way he used to. A throwback to It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher is also an interesting new wrinkle in his fiction.
Four boyhood pals in Derry, Maine, get together for a pilgrimage to their favorite deep-woods cabin, Hole in the Wall. The four have been telepathically linked since childhood, thanks to a searing experience involving a Down syndrome neighbor--a human dreamcatcher. They've all got midlife crises: clownish Beav has love problems; the intellectual shrink, Henry, is slowly succumbing to the siren song of suicide; Pete is losing a war with beer; Jonesy has had weird premonitions ever since he got hit by a car.
Then comes worse trouble: an old man named McCarthy (a nod to the star of the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers) turns up at Hole in the Wall. His body is erupting with space aliens resembling furry moray eels: their mouths open to reveal nests of hatpin-like teeth. Poor Pete tries to remove one that just bit his ankle: "Blood flew in splattery fans as Pete tried to shake it off, stippling the snow and the sawdusty tarp and the dead woman's parka. Droplets flew into the fire and hissed like fat in a hot skillet."
For all its nicely described mayhem, Dreamcatcher is mostly a psychological drama. Typically, body snatchers turn humans into zombies, but these aliens must share their host's mind, fighting for control. Jonesy is especially vulnerable to invasion, thanks to his hospital bed near-death transformation, but he's also great at messing with the alien's head. While his invading alien, Mr. Gray, is distracted by puppeteering Jonesy's body as he's driving an Arctic Cat through a Maine snowstorm, Jonesy constructs a mental warehouse along the lines of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Jonesy physically feels as if he's inside a warehouse, locked behind a door with the alien rattling the doorknob and trying to trick him into letting him in. It's creepy from the alien's view, too. As he infiltrates Jonesy, experiencing sugar buzz, endorphins, and emotions for the first time, Jonesy's influence is seeping into the alien: "A terrible thought occurred to Mr. Gray: what if it was his concepts that had no meaning?"
King renders the mental fight marvelously, and telepathy is a handy way to make cutting back and forth between the campers' various alien battlefronts crisp and cinematic. The physical naturalism of the Maine setting is matched by the psychological realism of the interior struggle. Deftly, King incorporates the real-life mental horrors of his own near-fatal accident and dramatizes the way drugs tug at your consciousness. Like the Tommyknockers, the aliens are partly symbols of King's (vanquished) cocaine and alcohol addiction. Mainly, though, they're just plain scary. Dreamcatcher is a comeback and an infusion of rich new blood into King's body of work. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
If you're ready to commit virtually a whole day of your life to this unabridged version of King's latest blockbuster, this is what you'll get: some of King's best storytelling, beautifully read by DeMunn, an actor of great skill and subtlety who knows that less is more especially when it comes to this book's ample blood, horror and ferocious little aliens. DeMunn quickly and expertly creates four very distinctive characters to fit the quartet of Maine men boyhood chums who gather for their annual deer hunt as their lives seem to crumble around them. One of them, the history professor Jonesy, is recovering from a serious accident an event on which King dwells heavily but which DeMunn downplays as best he can. The Maine accents are perfect: working-class for the Beaver, who does menial work; a slight overtone of aspiration for Pete, the car salesman; slightly more polish for Jonesy, teaching in Boston; and a definite aura of erudition for Henry the psychologist. Even the aliens are distinguishably different testimony to the skills of both writer and reader. Simultaneously released with Simon & Schuster hardcover (Forecasts, Feb. 12).
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
And people don't think Harry Potter 5 drags on???,
By RICK "rdthomp17" (Somewhere) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dreamcatcher (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is simply astounding. I see a ton of reviews here stating this book drags on takes a long time to read blah blah blah. I stayed up for TWO HOURS reading this book! It is astounding! The characters are totally realistic, the aliens are scary, and, even though the aliens come out of people's rear ends, it is even realistic (At least in a sense) because the aliens wouldn't understand that it is gross! Sure, people also complain that the aliens live inside people's bodies is an idea already used, but this movie makes Alien seem like Winnie the Pooh.Like my title, people say this book drags on, at least it has a purpose. Sure, some of the parts in this book are insignifigant, but at least it's fun to read. Harry Potter 5 dragged on and had no purpose. One of the chapters were entirely about homework at Hogwarts, but here, it would usually be about Duddits and, in the end, it actually had an impact at the end of the story. I simply love this novel and I'm going to recommend it to everyone I know. And, I say, give it a shot. This book is simply astounding.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Long live the King!,
By Babyblue Kelly (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dreamcatcher (Mass Market Paperback)
This book came out after King's accident and he wrote it by hand, which goes to show his dedication since the book is over 800 pages. I really did enjoy this book, it's pretty fast paced, especially in the begining. Maybe towards the middle it slows a little, but not enough to take away from the books merit. The story is about 4 friends who grew up together (they're from King's uber creepy town Derry) and once helped an autistic boy from bullies back in their childhood. This event forever changed their lives and from on they had psychic abilities. When the 4 are on their annual hunting trip all hell breaks loose when aliens arrive and they have to deal with both them and the government trying to stop them. Very creepy and descriptive, one of the better sci-fi books I've read, especially about the "byrus" an organic alien material that gets on everything and continues to grow. This book is a little better than King's earlier attempt at a UFO/alien story (Tommyknockers) and is much faster. I would highly suggest you read this, even if you're not a King fan but more of a sci-fi fan, you won't be disapointed.
3.0 out of 5 stars
C'mon King...I know you can do better than this,
By
This review is from: Dreamcatcher (Hardcover)
I'm the kind of person who would not be able to go to sleep for days after watching a scary movie (hence I haven't watched one yet), so I felt pretty brave when I picked up Dreamcatcher from my local library. It was my first foray into horror literature. I had read King's less spooky books (The Long Walk, The Green Mile, etc.) before and found them very good so I was expecting to be scared out of my wits. I was sadly (and maybe luckily) disappointed.In the beginning it starts out promising. Beaver, Jonesy, Henry, and Peter are all lifelong friends who come together once a year in northern Maine to go hunting. However their friendship is more than what it appears to be. They all share the special gift of 'seeing the line' which they acquired after saving a boy with downs syndrome many years ago. Their fairly normal lives are shattered during a hunting trip, when a lost hunter comes in to their camp muttering about lights in the sky and strange sounds in the night. Soon they are fighting against extraterrestrial beings who have come to take control of earth and their only hope lays in their special gift. Sound interesting? It is. There are definetly some spooky parts when the friends first encounter the aliens and some typical bloody King violence. However the plot takes a dive for the worse as the story becomes increasingly metaphysical and less and less to do with aliens. As the book progresses King seems to be writing off the top of his head and changing the story as he goes. Although on the surface it melds perfectly on closer examination the plot seems a little clunky and stupid. The book also ends up dragging on way too long. I know King can do better than this. This book scared me less than The Long Walk. He is the numero uno horror writer and one of best writers of all time in many people's opinion. He can definetly do better.
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