
On October 1st, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He's just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He's already picked up a gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay's feeling good about the future.
That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature...and then begins to evolve.
There are one hundred and ninety-three million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance.
©2006 Stephen King. All rights reserved.; (P)2006 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Audioworks is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division.
"King's imagining of what is more or less post-Armageddon Boston is rich, and the sociological asides made by his characters along the way...are jaunty and witty." (Publishers Weekly)
Campbell Scott's measured pace leads the listener through this updating of King's 1978 bestseller, THE STAND, with the earlier novel's apocalyptic super-flu replaced by a cell phone pulse that renders anyone with Motorola to the ear a vicious zombie with indiscriminate eating habits. As a band of ragtag survivors staggers north from Boston to Maine, Scott does a smooth, subtle job with the challenging Yankee accent in all its urban and rural permutations. Poorly adjusted editing does pitch Scott's voice eerily deep at times, but the story is entertaining overall. And if you're a cell phone user, you're guaranteed to hesitate the next time you prepare to punch "Send." (c) AudioFile 2006
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