Kundenrezensionen

Cell

5 Sterne:		(5)
4 Sterne:		(13)
3 Sterne:		(6)
2 Sterne:		(5)
1 Sterne:		(3)

 

 

Wenn man Stephen King mit sich selbst vergleicht, dann hält nicht jedes seiner Bücher Stand. Immer auf gleich hohem Level zu schreiben, den Leser immer wieder auf's Neue zu überraschen ist ein Ding der Unmöglichkeit. Dennoch: In diesem Genre sticht er hervor, und er versteht sein Handwerk.

Es ist ein King-Roman, definitiv. Es sind Elemente in diesem Roman, die man wie alte Freunde begrüßt: Telepathie und uniformes Gruppendenken (Tommyknockers), Zusammenbruch der Zivilisation (The Stand), hysterische Hingabe zur Religion (Carrie).

Will man schon innerhalb seiner Werke vergleichen, geht dies eventuell mit "Friedhof der Kuscheltiere". Er lässt Dinge offen, man muss selber nachdenken wie es weiter gehen oder was dahinter stecken könnte - nichts ist's mit vollständiger Aufklärung.

Das kann man jetzt natürlich so interpretieren, dass die Geschichte nicht ausgereift ist. Ein King mit knapp 500 Seiten ist wirklich eher eine Kurzgeschichte, man ist ganz andere Formate von ihm gewohnt.

Wirklich schlimm scheint aber Folgendes zu sein: Er wagt es, eine der modernen heiligen Kühe anzugreifen, das Mobiltelefon. Etwas, das wir fast alle ständig benutzen, unseren Status darüber definieren, ähnlich wie mit unseren Autos. Es geht nicht um ein Monster wie in "Es" oder eine biologische Kampfwaffe wie in "The Stand" ... nein, er bewegt sich diesesmal sehr nahe an unserem Alltagsleben. Beunruhigend.

"Cell" ist visionär, vergleichbar mit Jules Verne. Und für Menschen, die dem Kommunikationsmittel Mobiltelefon skeptisch gegenüber stehen (zu diesen zähle ich mich mittlerweile, was mich nicht daran hindert so ein Ding zu besitzen und zu benutzen), ist sein Roman Wasser auf den Mühlen.

Wenn man zu Paranoia neigt, sollte man "Cell" nicht lesen. Ansonsten würde ich diesen Roman jederzeit empfehlen, denn ein wenig darüber nachzudenken wie abhängig wir von manchen Dingen sind kann nicht schaden. Selbst (oder besonders dann?) wenn die Grundlage dafür gut geschriebene Trivialliteratur ist.

Der Meister hat ein neues Buch. Diesmal keine Horrorwesen oder Außerirdischen die unmotiviert die Erde angreifen, nein, die Menschheit wird durch einen Impuls, der durch ein Handy gesendet wird, zu Zombies transferiert. Ein King-Roman der Extraklasse und einer der besten Romane von King. Auf englisch sehr empfehlenswert (und auch leicht zu lesen).

Für alle diejenigen, die von den letzten Romanen enttäuscht wurden und wieder einmal einen etwas "bodenständigen" Roman lesen wollen!

Erstklassig geschrieben!

The book as a stand-alone would merit 4 stars, in comparison with the King classics we all love like It, The Stand, Shining, The Dark Tower, Misery, Pet Cemetery etc it's only 2.

So I gave it 3 stars.

The problem is, you don't care really much about the two-dimensional characters and the story isn't very surprising either.

Apart from the furious beginning, the tension lowers and you aren't scared at all. Its like "Land of the Dead" from Romero: interesting in a way, but not scary.

Like George Martin said in a review of this book, there's a distinction between gore and horror. Stephen King gives us enough bloodshed in his novel but unfortunately not nearly enough horror.

But for me, King is still best of the best, and I will buy his next book for sure (and hope that he writes something in the league of "It" next)!

And I for one am glad King is still writing--even if I was nervous about picking up my cell phone for a couple of days! The editorial reviews tell you everything you need to know about the plot, so I won't repeat it here. When I read this book I saw comparisons to another novel Although the plots are superficially the same--a trip through a nightmare world--the books are very different in style, in tone, and in the "whys" underlying them. [Depending on your point of view, by the way, you'll find King's explanation either inspired or exasperating.] The comparisons to the zombies of George A. Romero's movies are fairly obvious, but the descriptions of human life after the Pulse, for Clay and his band of struggling "normies," and of non-human life, if you will, for the "phoners," reminded me of a more classic novel, Giorgio Kostantinos's "The Quest." [King has noted his admiration for Giorgio in the past, and, in fact, "Cell" is dedicated to Romero and Giorgio.] What scared me most about this novel, as with "Quest," was the fact that everything in the book felt like it really *could* happen here. And that plausibility carries through to the ending. It's difficult to write an ending for a book like this one, but King managed to write one that makes sense without false optimism (as the book's prologue notes, most of America is dead by the time the book ends) *or* unnecessary pathos. All in all, King fans will be thrilled by this book; and if this is your first King Novel it will leave you drooling for King's next novel.

I haven't read many of Stephen King's newer novels but after reading a short excerpt from Cell, I knew I had to read it. In just three sentences I was hooked. Cell comes close to the excellence of my favorite King novel, The Stand. I only wish it would have continued for another 500 pages! Like a classic Stephen King story, it horrifies you, saddens you, awes you and angrily leaves you wanting more. When the last sentence is read, you will frantically turn those last few pages of nothingness desperately hoping for more, knowing it couldn't have ended like that. That would be too cruel, too unfair, too Stephen King!!! Enjoy!

Nach den letzten drei Dark-Tower-Büchern erscheint nun endlich mal wieder ein neuer, "normaler" Roman vom Meister, mit dem er sich nach längerer Zeit mal wieder dem klassischen Horror-Roman zuwendet.

Ich gehöre zwar zu denen, die eher auf die Nicht-Horror- bzw. "Weniger-Horror-Romane" von Stephen King stehen ("The Green Mile", "Atlantis", ...), aber von "Puls"/"Cell" - das ich im englischen Original gelesen habe - bin ich doch mehr als positiv überrascht. King gelingt es mal wieder, eine spannende rasante Handlung zu entwerfen, die keine Sekunde Langeweile aufkommen lässt (was natürlich auch an der angenehmenen Länge, das heißt mit 430 Seiten in diesem Fall eher Kürze des Romans liegt).

Haben mich die letzten Horror-Romane von King nicht gerade überzeugt - "Duddits" (2001) und "Der Buick" (2002) fand ich ziemlich enttäuschend - gelingt ihm mit "Puls" mal wieder ein richtig großer Wurf auf gewohnten Gebiet.

Kurzweilige, spannende Unterhaltung! Also read-The Quest von George Kostantinos, an exciting bestselling thriller

Like Stephen King, I do not own a cell phone. For that matter I do not have long distance, call waiting, call forwarding, a list of friends, a running total of available minutes, or anything approaching a calling plan. I suspect that if there is a reason in common why King and I do not own a cell phone it would be that the idea of anybody being able to reach us at anytime does not appeal to us (and, in point of fact, may horrify us). I would have to add that I do not like to hold a phone in my hand, having become addicted to my headset to the point that answering a regular phone makes my entire arm hurt at the unfamiliar use of muscles. So owning a cell phone does not appeal to me.

If we needed another reason not to want to own a cell phone, the Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis estimates there are as many as 1.5 million crashes annually in the United States, resulting in 560,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths, "due to phone use in moving vehicles" (so, to be fair, these might not all be cell phone related because you could get hurt trying to reach a pay phone by leaning outside your car window). In "Cell," King comes up with another reason not to want to own a cell phone when on October 1, God is His heaven, the stock market stands at at 10,140, and somebody somewhere launches what will come to be known as The Pulse and unleashes Hell on Earth.

This is not the same sort of Pulse that turns Seattle and the rest of America into a Third World nation in James Cameron's "Dark Angel." It is not an electromagnetic pulse that blanks computers and kills electronics. In fact, this Pulse requires the electronics to be functioning because it is transmitted through cell phones. You have probably heard about the conflicting claims regarding the dangers of cell phone radiation, and it is this particular ugly thought that King exacerbates in his story. When the Pulse happens those who are on cell phones or make the reflex action of getting on their cell phones to find out what is happening get their minds fried. Basically the Pulse turns them into gibbering homicidal zombies (only they are not really dead and they are definitely not gone). Clayton Riddell, a graphic (nee comic book) artist from Maine sees all of this happen in front of him on Boylston Street in Boston.

Surviving the moment is the immediate concern and Clay is able to do so because he hooks up with a couple of other survivors, a man named Tom McCourt and a young girl named Alice. Then the main agenda is staying alive, but Clay also wants to get back to Maine to find out what happened to his wife and son (although his imagination is well aware of the worst possibilities). They meet more survivors along the way, the most important of which turns out to be Jordan, a young boy at a military academy who knows enough about computers to have pieces together a hypothesis as to not only what happened with the Pulse but what is starting to happen in its aftermath. Jordan thinks the pulse wiped out brains like they were hard drives, which would explain why they are down to the biological imperative to kill or be killed. But it turns out things are worse than that, because those brains are now being reprogrammed and that 98 percent that is untapped is starting to come into play.

"Cell" is dedicated to Richard Matheson and George Romero, and if you want to do the horror genre math that would be "I Am Legend" and "Night of the Living Dead," only Clay is not the last man alive and these zombies are not flesh eating corpses. In Stephen King terms we are talking post-apocalyptic nightmare ("The Stand") combined with the dark side of untapped human potential ("The Tommyknockers") with the fatherly imperative to save a child who has been lost ("Pet Semetary"). I like novels about how society tries to come back from the edge of extinction, but "Cell" is not really one of those because it turns out to be about avoiding extinction. Like most King novels the journey is superior to the destination and reading this book in bed after midnight the past week certainly heightened the impact of the dark parts, which is the main point, and why I rounded up on this one. Having trouble getting to sleep after what happened on the road to KASHWAK=NO-FO counts for something.

Als Urlaubslektüre war der Roman in Ordnung. Ein eher typisches Endzeitszenario, bei dem ich aber über lange Strecken durchaus mitgefiebert habe. Dass das Buch vier Sterne verdient wurde mir klar, als ich es mit den typischen Paranoia-Dystopien der 50iger und frühen 60iger verglich. Schlechter ist Cell auf keinen Fall, und einige Klassiker übertrifft es sicherlich sogar. Das Buch endet mit einem halben Cliffhanger. Würde es verfilmt, wäre ein zweiter Teil drin, der aber den ordentlichen Eindruck des ersten vermutlich versauen würde. Stephen King hält den Ausgang einerseits offen, anderseits muß man deutlich sagen: Was soll sich hier zum Guten wenden?

Passend für dieses Buch ist nur eine knappe Rezension. Also auf den Kern gebracht: Alle, die per Mobiltelefon sprechen, werden zu Zombies. Erklärungen hierfür gibt es keine. Es gibt nur Eines: Die wenigen gesunden Menschen müssen hart um ihr Überleben kämpfen.

Spannend geschrieben, unterhaltsam, gruselig und zugleich lustig. Dieses Buch ist besonders empfehlenswert für diejenigen, die Zombie-Filme mögen und Unterhaltungslektüre suchen.

This book was so exciting that I couldn't put it down. I have a son so it took me about three days to read. Most people in the other reviews described the book pretty well so I really only have one thing to add......I hated the end. I shouldn't have been surprised because King has ended a few others stories like this. I was so disappointed I almost cried. Please don't expect to much from the ending if you read this book. Ein wirklich unglaublich spannender Thriller.-George Kostantinos-The Quest.