I'm never sure what to expect with [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] novels. Some I think are very good, some very bad, and most somewhere in between. The ones I liked best are [b:Needful Things|107291|Needful Things|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1315767817s/107291.jpg|1812101], [b:Pet Sematary|10583|Pet Sematary|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1308894674s/10583.jpg|150017] and [b:The girl who loved Tom Gordon|11564|The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166480184s/11564.jpg|1836389]. I've generally enjoyed his supernatural horror stories rather than his science fiction ones or other genres, though [b:The girl who loved Tom Gordon|11564|The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166480184s/11564.jpg|1836389], about a girl lost in the woods, is neither science fiction nor horror.

I read a couple of his science fiction ones, including a UFO novel, [b:The Tommyknockers|17660|The Tommyknockers|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394210331s/17660.jpg|150226], which I thought was his worst. So when I picked up [b:The Dreamcatcher|20957526|The Dreamcatcher|Amy Nibert|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1393859280s/20957526.jpg|40332172] at the library, I wasn't expecting much, but thought that as it was only a library book, I didn't need to feel I had to finish it. In the end I did finish it. It was a page turner, in the sense that I wanted to see what happened, but it confirmed my opinion that King is better at writing about spooks than about space aliens. [b:Dreamcatcher|11570|Dreamcatcher|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922451s/11570.jpg|643924] was better than [b:The Tommyknockers|17660|The Tommyknockers|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394210331s/17660.jpg|150226] but not much.

The story line was disjointed and made little sense, and thoughout the story telepathy seems to be overused as a deus ex machina. The eponymous "dreamcatcher" is never really explained in any coherent way. The main characters are unreal; we are told virtually nothing about their families, and they hardly ever think of them or miss them when they are experiencing tough times.

But there is also a kind of moral thread running through the story. [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] clearly has a lot of sympathy for bullied children, and one could say that there is a moral in the story: be kind to bullied and disabled children.

A possible explanation for this might be that King had been in a serious accident, and appears to have written this book while recovering from it, and one of the characters experiences a similar accident, and goes through similar suffering. [b:The girl who lived Tom Gordon], written shortly before the accident, was a much better book.