SHORT BOOK REVIEW

   

STEPHEN KING

THE INSTITUTE.

I'm happy to confess that I am one of Mr.King's 'constant readers'.  His books have played a huge part in my life for about as long as I can remember.  For me, the man is a genius and one of only a few authors whose new books I will buy in Hardback as soon as they are released.

But.  And it's a big but..recently he seems to have lost something?   Maybe it's age or a reaction to the awful accident he had a few years ago or something else but his last few have left me with a distinct disappointment.

This one I'm sorry to say is another one of those. 

No spoilers as per usual but the plot involves a secret organisation who are kidnapping kids with latent physic abilities.  They are being taken to 'The Institute' where these abilities are being enhanced and are then used to carry out various nefarious tasks including murder.  Needless to say The Institute isn't the most pleasant place to reside and the kids are routinely tortured and discarded once their usefulness is over.  One group of kids decide to rebel.

You may think it's all very Firestarter   and you'd be absolutely correct.  It is VERY Firestarter.  

He always writes children well and does here to but there is just something missing.  I'm usually gripped by a new SK from paragraph one on page one but here I wasn't.  I found myself not really caring about any of the main characters and some of the others like The Institutes 'ferocious' head was about as threatening as a bowl of vegetable soup.

It all ends very much as expected.

I didn't enjoy it.  It was a chore to read.  I've felt a similar way to his last few I'm extremely sad to say.  He just seems to have ran out of ideas?

Still be a 'constant reader' and will still read everything the man ever writes but I can't really recommend this one at all.  Go back and re read 'The Stand'.  You'll be glad you did. 

 

SHORT BOOK REVIEW

 

12 MONKEYS 

ELIZABETH HAND.

Movie tie in.

12 Monkeys (The Movie) and 12 Monkeys (The Series) are two of my favourites.

This one is based on the Movie only as it was published at that time when the TV Series was only on someones 'what if' wish list.

Written by someone called Elizabeth Hand who i'd not heard tell of before or since. It's pretty short at just over 200 pages for this paperback edition.

It doesn't veer too far from what occurs in the Movie at all and that would be a pretty huge problem for anyone reading the book without first watching the film.

It's not the easiest movie to follow.  Full of time travel puzzles and paradoxes that require the watchers full concentration.  The book is similar.  You won't have much of a clue of what is going on unless you've watched the movie.

It's fairly typical for a tie in Novel.  Nothing special but reasonably well written. 

I finished it fairly quickly which is unusual for me.

Hard to recommend if you don't love the concept of the film.  If you do you may get something out of it or you may not.

That's about all I can say about it really?