#64 – The Tommyknockers

Plot

The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.

Review

Normally I would say that even a bad Stephen King novel is still better than most. And that sentiment holds true for nearly every book on this list. Except The Tommyknockers. It’s awfulness stands alone. Bad writing, horrendous plotting, and zero-character development. Even King himself said, “it’s an awful book.” He wrote much of this novel while recovering from a near-fatal car accident and was heavily under the influence of Oxycontin. It shows.

As you will soon see in the bottom half of this list – Stephen King struggles to write aliens well. Part of what drew me to King’s books was his ability to write powerful prose from both the protagonist and the antagonist’s perspective. With The Tommyknockers – and other alien-centered novels of his – there’s no antagonist viewpoint that would have created much-needed balance.

This was a struggle to get through and took me most of two months to finish.

Details

Pages: 975

Dates Read: February – March 2021

Quote: “Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don’t know if I can ‘cuz I’m so afraid of the tommyknocker man.”

Best Part: Finally finishing and closing this book … forever.

Hint for #63: The Walking Dead meets Verizon Wireless.

 

Until next time, peace be the journey.