07/30/2005 10:6 AM
Posted by VeggieSteph

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

I picked up a copy of Dreamcatcher at Half-Price Books after seeing the movie version. I knew that Stephen King had to have written a better book than what was shown in the movie. He says in his afterward that his wife used to say this book was, “the one about the shit weasels.” I have to admit, that was my first impression. Then I thought more about it.

Stephen King writes horror novels and his plots and scares may make him seem to be a lower level writer in some people’s eyes. He’s definitely not in mine. I love his books, and everything I love about the way he writes was present in Dreamcatcher.



I love that when he writes, it may seem to be just a scary story, just a book about aliens, shit weasels, fungus, telepathy, and crazed army guys fighting the baddies. But what it is really about is something deeper; it’s about four men and the unusual man they helped that changed their lives forever. They called it their finest hour, the day the met and helped Duddits. Duddits, in return, changes them as teenagers and changes who they grow up to become. He gives them a bond that survives, and when they meet in the woods for their hunting trip and all hell breaks loose, they have a link that helps them fight the unexpected. Duddits helps them fight, and in a way, helps them live.

It’s not just that King can develop characters and places in a few sentences, even when they are minor to the plot. King is still able to tell a well-rounded, well-plotted story about aliens and the fear we have of the unknown. He is able to disturb the reader with images of fungus that spreads like wildfire all over your body, mental possession, group fear, and gestating beings that explode out of your bowels a la Alien. (The creep factor of that fungus really got to me. I itched for days while reading this book.) He is able to write a disturbing series of pages on a car accident that is so realistic it makes your skin crawl. (You can definitely tell he wrote this after his terrible accident.) He is able to create the sadistic General Kurtz, and make you understand how he became what he is. He is over the top, but not so much that he is unbelievable. He is an excellent parallel to Mr. Gray, the alien inside Jonesey’s head.

I liked this book a lot. It creeped me out, it made me pay attention to the characters, and it gave me just a little slice of that Maine atmosphere you can always count on in King’s books. It’s not the best he’s written, but it is up there and true to form. If you like aliens, good characters, and Stephen King’s humor, you’ll like this one.