Mass Market Paperback, 747 pages
English language
Published Nov. 7, 1988 by Signet / New American Library.
Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson's idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in town powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for all outsiders. Something that came from a metal object, buried for millennia, that Bobbi accidentally stumbled across. It wasn't that Bobbi and the other good folks of Haven had sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell. It was more like a diabolical takeover...an invasion of body and soul--and mind.... (back cover)
Far more to chew on than Carrie or Pet Sematary—and not just because it has too many characters and asides that, hey, maybe should've been edited down or removed. It's strange and angry, goofy and horrific, like a Coke machine flying at your head at 80mph.
There's a good book somewhere in these ideas, but it's not this one. It's bad! Even King says so, and he's correct. Deeply and inexplicably misogynist. Edward Hermann did a good job of reading it though.
I for one like the slow build-up phase of this book. What I don't like, however, is the way King once again has to describe the monsters and therefore kill all carefully created atmosphere in the last 100 pages. Nice try, but it just doesn't work that way.
