"Cell" by Stephen King

Not what I expected. -- 4 Stars (Originally written February 20, 2006)

I am not the world's biggest Stephen King fan. Nor am I a fan of the zombie genre (what could be less scary than a monster whom you can escape with a fast walk?). So when a friend of my son's insisted that I borrow his copy of "Cell," I was humoring the young man more than anything else.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. This story is brisk and gripping, and not bogged down with a lot of the overly heavy details to which King is often prone. It is also shorter than many of his opuses, which pleased me.

But most importantly: This is NOT a zombie novel! Sure, the victims of the Pulse share many of the violent characteristics of zombies, but like the movie "28 Days Later," they are more like RABIES victims than the undead. And that's just the beginning. They quickly begin evolving as a group, making them more and more interesting than "regular" zombies with each page.

I was a HUGE fan of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" from all those years ago, and was disappointed to see the theme "devolve" into the zombies we are familiar with today. So it was nice to see King return the genre to the greater potential it once had with Matheson's vampires.

My biggest complaint would lie in the ENDING. As other reviewers have commented, the book feels incomplete. With Gary Brandner's "The Howling," I felt that we were missing an epilogue - in "Cell," I felt as though I were missing an entire final chapter, maybe TWO. Is King planning a sequel to "Cell?" I hope so; I will read it. As it stands ...

But again, overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and I would recommend this book to fans of "I Am Legend," "28 Days Later," and (to a lesser degree) the "Dawn of the Dead" 2004 remake. If you are a hard core fan of the George A. Romero zombie genre, you probably won't like it.