Review: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (no major spoilers)

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

I’m not a very fast reader, but I’m going to really quickly list my summer reading for 2019:

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Hmm. I thought I’d get more word count from that list.

Interestingly, the timeframe of “The Tommyknockers” takes place mostly over the course of one summer, and since it took me July and part of August to read it, I almost read it in real time.

My favourite author is Stephen King. I probably got that from my dad. My dad reads faster than I do though, so my dad has read everything Stephen King has written that he has access to. Because my dad is such an avid reader of Stephen King, I once asked him what his least favourite book by King was. He responded “The Tommyknockers.” In this way, I maybe went into the book expecting to be disappointed.

It was good overall. It has an imaginative concept, and mostly reads well. My basic problems with it, and these were real problems for me fully becoming invested in the story, are the two following issues:

I wasn’t emotionally invested in the main characters – The story revolves around two main characters, a few secondary characters, and a large number of background characters. Stephen King is a master of developing characters. Even the background characters are mostly 2-dimensional. The main characters are well developed, so that’s not a fault of the book. I personally wasn’t emotionally invested in what they experience, so it’s possible that a reader who is invested might enjoy the book more than I did.

 

There was a side plot that was interesting, but took place mostly “off screen” – One of the strong points of “The Tommyknockers” is that when King starts to tell tales of what’s going on with other nearby characters, some of the tales are really good. Some are dramatic. Some are comedic. Some are horrific. Many of them are good stories on their own. One such story becomes a secondary plot that is always present in the rest of the book, but isn’t treated as a secondary plot in some ways. It felt like more should have been done to stress the importance of the plot.

I’m reading more or less in order of release, though through the years I’ve certainly jumped around. I’ll talk a little about one of the more modern King books I’ve read below. I want to mostly say that if you were arranging your King reading experience by overall review quality, my vote would be that you put “The Tommyknockers” lower on your list. It doesn’t need to be removed from your list, because it is worth the read. I’m just not telling you to rush out and read it before other books. King does have a tendency to refer to other books he’s written in his books, but it doesn’t mean you have to read them in any given order. Besides, the books he references (The Dead Zone, It, and another that I’ll discuss below) are all books that are better reads anyway, so even if you’re reading by order of quality, you’ll have read them.

Now, I’m going to get into some details about the book, so if you’re like me and really don’t like knowing anything at all going into a book then don’t read any further than this paragraph. I’m not getting into any major spoilers here though. I’m going to be talking in some vague terms that may hint at the plot, so it’s up to you.

I play a game called “Ingress” that is what’s known as an augmented reality game. The most well-known augmented reality game is “Pokemon Go,” but the “Pokemon Go” engine was built on the “Ingress” game. The basic idea of “Ingress” is that there are these beings that shape our reality, known as Shapers. There are two factions: The Enlightened, (which is pro Shapers, and is the faction I play) and The Resistance (which is anti-shapers).

There are players who have told me that they only joined The Enlightened because it’s what their friend played, but that they would be Resistance if the game was real. My response has always been, “I would be Enlightened, because I’ve read Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Childhood’s End.’”

“The Tommyknockers” is like the opposite of “Childhood’s End.” And both share elements with the “Ingress” backstory. This is not to say that either is a direct rip off of anything else, but rather that if you play “Ingress,” you should read both of those books, because they sort of show what kind of effect that the Shapers in the “Ingress” backstory could have.

I want to talk about “Under the Dome” by Stephen King real quick, so again no major spoilers, but a little hinting as to the plot. King has said that the idea for “Under the Dome” existed for a long time, and if you’ve read “Under the Dome” before you read “The Tommyknockers,” you’ll see a number of similarities of things done in not exactly the same way. I get the impression that King was experimenting with some basic ideas here that he ended up doing better in “Under the Dome.” The books are not the same by any means, just odd similarities. Also, the TV show for “Under the Dome” is not good after the first season. It goes way off in another direction. I had to stop watching, because I was so apathetic. Read the book. If you’re at all interested in the show after that, watch the first season of the show, but then tell yourself that the show ends after that exactly the way the book ends. That’s just my opinion.

Chris McGinty is an Enlightened Agent who finds it interesting that it was green light in “The Tommyknockers.” N’Zeer Technology Perfection Truth. Help Enlightened Capture All Portals. Begin Journey Breathe XM Evolution. He’s also a blogger.