Cell
By Stephen King
Scribner
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
ISBN 0-7432-9233-2
$26.95, Hardback, 355 pages

Okay, let me say up front, I am an official cult follower of King's "The Stand". I absolutely love that book and believe its popularity stems from a very primary concept: good vs. bad; God vs. the Devil. When I began reading "Cell", I immediately thought, oh, boy, another Stand. Wrong. The premise is great: world-wide (I think - it's never actually explained) devastation which begins from what King calls a Pulse via cell phones. Those on the phones turn violent at first, then morph into zombies with a vampiric nocturnalcy and amazing telepathic ability.

The main protagonist, Clay Riddell, is an artist from Maine visiting Boston, where he's just sold a comic book deal he hopes will make his life more financially stable, return his estranged wife back to his arms, and in essence, make way for a better life. But Clay never gets to see that. Instead, the Pulse occurs and the world goes mad. Clay meets up with others who have not been infected by the Pulse - they call themselves normies - and begins a journey toward his hometown in hopes of finding and rescuing his son, Johnny. But the flock - as the crazies are called - use their telepathic abilities to "push" the group toward Kashwak, Maine, where they have other plans of a more gruesome nature.

The ending was disappointing, with no resolution whatsoever, as well as the fact that who or what created the Pulse is never explained. Of course, that well-used term, terrorism, is thrown into the mix, but that's the gist of it. King takes great liberties with computer and cell phone technology, and leaves the reader dangling, wondering, what happened?