The Tommy Knockers Hardcover

The story starts off slow as the author develops the characters. Then starts to really pick up steam as the effects of what is happening to the town and the people gets more weird. I found that the further I got into the story the more I wanted to continue reading as it really caught my attention and imagination.

In what amounts to his version of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers", Stephen King takes readers on another horror/fantasy thrillride.
Whilst not quite up to the standard of his classics, thanks to his consistently high-quality storytelling and pungent imagery, this is nonetheless a real page-turner. I guarantee that the scenes where the protaganist discovers what's in the shed will stay with you for a long, long time.
If you've read and enjoyed any of Mr. King's other novels then I'd recommend that you give this one a go.

A huge fan of Stephen King. Unlike many other reviewers, I don't expect the entire book to be perfect. This is my favorite one. I don't know why I haven't read this sooner, but sure am happy I finally did. There were times I wondered why he went on and on about Gardner, but then at the end realized why he put so much effort into this character over Bobbie. I feel this story hits on a lot of what humans are about deep down, flawed yet kind, week yet strong.

Most alien invasion science fiction stories have a hard time seeming believable. However Stephen King seems to have pulled it off in The Tommyknockers. He definitely thought this through long and hard, evidenced by the fact that he took at least five years to finish it.

The Tommyknockers is one of King's best books. The ending was not anti-climactic, like several of his other books. The only downside was that there was no explanation as to where the ship ended up in the end, but this was a minor detail. The Tommyknockers is still definitely worth the read.

This book was far too long and convoluted. In the end, I really didn't care what happened to the characters. I felt like the whole "Book Two" was filler. I finished hoping that I at least the ending would be worth it. It wasn't.
Although I will say that I wanted to read this for a long time, but now do not really have any desire to read more by this author.

I had never read anything of Stephen King before attempting Tommyknockers. I suppose I chose the wrong book to start with because after 150 so pages I was ready to bite my tablet apart just for an excuse to give up. I'm sure it is a great book for some but I couldn't handle all the material which seemed to be just gratuitous rambling filler. A real shame because I was told this book would scare the hell out of me. The mystery of the buried object couldn't keep my attention. I'm just going to assume it is a septic tank or something and call it a day. Perhaps I'll try again in the future.

The general consensus has always seemed to be that The Tommyknockers is King's worst book. As such, I left it unread for years while reading his other books. I finally gave it a try and was surprised to find it an enjoyable read. I liked it! Give it a try. It might not be Misery or The Shining, but it's still pretty enjoyable.

While King's career blew up to massive popularity in the eighties with such hits as Pet Semetary, It, Cujo, Christine, and Misery, one has to believe, based on this book alone (not to mention to Un-cut version of The Stand three years later) that Stephen King was allowed more and more say into the final story in his novels. While he is an incredible writer, and although I'll always take a little extra reading rather than a skimpy story, King is still human and prone to human mistakes. What I'm getting at is simple: this book is heavily overwritten. It's slow, veryyyy slow. It is never a good thing when the reader (myself obviously) turns to a chapter entitled "Tales of Haven" and thinks: "Oh God, this is gonna take a while . . . " Ignoring the fact that this particular chapter turned out to be surprisingly engaging, the dread I felt at having to slog through more background and more tedious details before the story got moving forward again (and trust me, it wasn't exactly going to get pulled over for speeding before this point) is a hard thing to bounce back from. To sum it up, I feel like many of King's books could be cut by 10% or so and still be great. However, the Tommyknockers needed to be edited down twice that amount to have any chance at being the well-paced and breathless tale it could have been.

So, what did I like about the book? Well, even though I just ranted on King's heavy-handed prose, I had not read one of my favorite author's novels in quite a long time. Only one man can write so naturally and with such wit, and the fact that his fresh writing was something I looked forward to and enjoyed, it helped the book not be a complete bore.
Also, there is a good atmosphere, a hot and humid Maine summer, not to mention the sense of dread and doom slowly (and yes, I mean slowwwwwly) building up. Anyone who loves King because the man can think up some of the most incredible circumstances will certainly find those weird, and oddly awesome moments scattered throughout . . . even if I did happen to find the notion of a flying soda machine (seriously) to be far to silly to ever be scary.
Lastly, Stephen King excels in building and developing his small towns. Castle Rock in Needful Things, Derry in It and Insomnia, and now Haven in the Tommyknockers once again shows that King is up to the task of bringing an entire fictional town to life.

Huge King fans will want to read this, as there is just barely enough Classic King to make the long journey from beginning to end. Those who are new to King should definitely NOT read this as their first experience with a great author. At the end of the story King gives the time frame in which he wrote the book, which was almost a five-year period. Unfortunately it shows, as it seems at times the story loses its focus, unsure of how to reach the end so instead sidetracks and drags the reader along with it. The end, when and if you finally get there, is quite exciting and makes slugging through the book to get there, but just barely.

The idea to this book had always intrigued me. After twenty-some odd years, I finally bought it and read it and really enjoyed it. I know a lot of people had issues with it and said it was dull or stupid or too long, etc... but I never found this to be the case. Then again, there are King books others love and I hated (Dark Tower, Bag of Bones).

It is about a woman named Bobbi Anderson who finds a spaceship buried in the woods not far from her house. As she begins to dig, bizarre things begin to happen. She acquires the power of telepathy, she builds things out of Radio Shack parts that she has no way of knowing how to build. Well, the further she digs, the more powers she finds she has. Soon, the whole town starts feeling the same way, and are able to read minds and create strange objects aren't quite of this world. The sake of the town--maybe the whole world--rests on Bobbi's friend Gard. See, he has a plate in his head; this plate prevents anyone from reading his thoughts. And he's here to make sure the "Tommyknockers" don't conquer.

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.

While walking through the wooded acreage of her Haven, Maine home, novelist Bobbie Anderson stumbled across something very interesting. Literally. After picking herself up off the ground, Bobbie looked back to see a thin piece of metal jutting out of the soil. Letting her curiosity get the best of her, Bobbie began to dig, in spite of the strenuous protests of her faithful dog, Pete. Bobbie doesn't know it yet, but she is about to unearth something never before seen on this world. Let's hope the world survives it.

Bobbie's best friend, Jim Gardner, was in the next state when Bobbie made her big find, but he began to get the nagging feeling that she was in trouble. Having fallen on some hard times himself, Jim decided it was time to return to Maine. He arrived, some two weeks after Bobbie's discovery, to find that his friend, and her familiar old house, had undergone some big changes. Bobbie, a lithe woman before, was now almost grotesquely thin and on the verge of collapse. Also, Bobbie was never very handy, but Gardner finds that she has rigged up her old water heater with some kind of new power source that is like nothing he has ever seen, her old typewriter hacks out novels while she sleeps, and her old farm tractor has a new gear that reads "up."

Unbeknownst to Jim, there are strange things going on all over Haven. Spreading out from Bobbie's house, in an ever widening radius, people have begun to change. They know things about each other now, deep, dark secrets that have never been discussed out loud. And it seems like everyone in town is inventing gadgets that defy the laws of science. Well, earthly science anyway, and they all use power sources, tangles of wire and D-cell batteries, just like the one in Bobbie's water heater.

As days turn into weeks, the townsfolk of Haven resemble human beings less and less, and their collective mind powers grow stronger. Gardner has been immune to the effects so far; he believes the metal plate in his head may be the reason for this. Jim knows he must get out and tell someone what is happening in Haven, but he also knows that he is only safe as long as he is helping Bobbie dig. Time grows ever shorter as more and more of the artifact is uncovered, and Gardner has no idea what to do about it.

On the surface, The Tommyknockers is a pretty good science fiction tale, and pretty creepy too. A whole town full of people slowly turning into something alien, "becoming," as they say in Haven, while a few regular folks are caught in their midst, forced to play along. In that regard, this story reminds me a little of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find something that's a little more down to Earth, although no less terrifying. There are all kinds of horrors in the world; sometimes they lurk beneath the surface of the Earth, and sometimes they lurk beneath the surface of a human being. Both of King's main characters, Bobbie and Gard, have terrors hidden within them. For Bobbie, it's an over-bearing sister who wants to run her life. For Gard, it's the bottle.

Stephen King spent five years writing The Tommyknockers, an unusually long time for one book. In his foreword, which is included in this audiobook, King says "this book was not so much written as gutted out." The sentiment mirrors the overall theme of the book itself: demons must be exorcised, sometimes forcibly, like a rotted tooth. This coming from a man who has fought a few personal demons in his own life. Jim Gardner eventually comes to the realization that in order to save Haven, the artifact must be dug out and removed, just as his own demon must be removed, and that of his friend Bobbie, for them to be whole again.

Just as with authors, narrators can sometimes grab me right away, and sometimes they take a little while to grow on me. Edward Herrmann was of the latter variety: I was dubious at first, but over time I began to appreciate his style. He doesn't really do voices very well, but he has a relaxed style that feels very natural.

Hermann is widely known for his role as Richard Gilmore on The Gilmore girls, and as Max the head vampire in the film The Lost Boys. He has also done voice work for The History Channel, PBS, and a lengthy television ad campaign for Dodge throughout the 1990's.

Yes, Stephen King knows about personal demons, and I can see where The Tommyknockers might have been difficult for him to write, but I'm glad he did. This is one of my favorite King books.

This was a foray into science fiction for Mr. King, but he did take his horror writing tendencies with him. I appreciated the political issues of the time that he captured and brought to my attention. The Gardener character he created was one of the most flawed I’ve read lately, rendering him entirely sympathetic. It’s thought that this was written during one of his most difficult bouts with substance and alcohol abuse. Gardener could be a reflection of the writer himself, but perhaps not. He seems to have few of the qualities I would generally attribute to a decent human being, but he ends up being a genuine hero when he sacrifices himself.

As far as King goes, this was not my favorite. He does science fiction just fine. I love the way he handles explaining strange technology and otherworldly biology. There’s just too much detail where detail is not needed. I’d like to figure out exactly when he stopped writing well trimmed stories and started writing these colossal novels, because it would be best for me to read everything prior to that point.

This book is a frightening tale of humans being changed by an outside alien force--literally. King knows very well how to pinpoint and draw out exactly what is so horrifying in a concept, and one of the scariest nightmares humans can experience is the idea of metamorphosing into something "other." This is actually part of what makes this book awful for me--that he did that so well, so excruciatingly accurately--but what I admire about it is that he does this in the name of realism. King writes about absolutely unreal and unlikely things, but his characters remain realistic enough to react the way real people would. And that's, again, what made this story so scary--not so much what was happening, but that because of the way it was written, you could imagine it happening to you a bit too easily. . . .

Much like other King books('Needful Things','It','Under The Dome'.),this story is based in a small town,this one happening to be Haven,Maine. Much to my liking this is not altogether just his typical horror read, but a science fiction book as well. Sure there are scenes of exploding heads and popping eyeballs but there's a alien spacecraft involved that is making the citizens of Haven stone cold crazy and others sick as hell.

The story follows mainly two people. Roberta Anderson,the owner of her Uncles farm and a country western novelist. And James Gardener, poet, activist, loner and a drunk. The only friend he seems to have is with Bobbi, a old college buddy. Stephen King always writes his characters extremely well and thought out, so much so that you feel like you know them. And we learn of the townspeople as well, as the story is based in a tightly knit small town where everyone knows everyone's business.
The story starts off with Bobbi(Roberta)and her dog Peter as they take a walk out back of her farm, when she stumbles on something and falls to the ground. It's not a root or a rock but something else. And suddenly Bobbi begins to dig up that spot as if it was the most important thing. Thus the mayhem begins, the more she uncovers what she is sure to be a spacecraft, the more poisonous alien energy it gives off which begins to fill Havens atmosphere, making her and the citizens not so much themselves anymore. Townspeople are having migraines, nosebleeds, vomiting, losing teeth and on top of all that, moments of genius. Jim Gardener has had a lucid feeling that he ought to get too Bobbi and see her, he himself sets out towards the toxic town, where even drunk, sick and on the edge of suicide, notices something very wrong is happening.
Jim and Bobbi meet up and suddenly they both are digging like crazy, only Jim is immune to the ships fumes because of a steel plate in his skull.
Everyone in town begins to feel the effects and has bouts of sudden inspiration and invention(at one point a toy gun hooked up to Walkman radio becomes a raygun), and people know that Bobbi is in charge, "The Becoming" will come. And Jim will not let this happen. At this point the book really takes off, twists and turns, cringing moments and excillerating characters and dialogue make this a rewarding yet not life changing read.

I have had most of Kings books on my shelf and have yet to read them all. And while feeling like getting into a King story I finally decided on 'The Tommyknockers'. And despite some of the reviews posted here and my friends who read this as well, I actually thought this was a well thought out story that always kept me entertained and turning the pages and wanting to know more. I gave it a try and liked it. I'm not saying this is one of his best works but it does keep you coming back for more each day until the end.

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King is about Bobbi Anderson, who unearths an alien spaceship in the woods near town. It’s also about Eric Gardener, an alcoholic poet who is immune to the effects of the alien spaceship because of a plate in his head. It’s also about 50 other townsfolk, each of whom is affected in different ways by some kind of psychic energy given off by the ship.

My main complaint with The Tommyknockers is that there were too many characters. As a result, Stephen King gives a brief glimpse into the lives of many. This made it difficult to not only keep straight who was who, but also feel any real empathy for them. I didn’t get the usual sentimental attachment that develops from following the main characters throughout the course of the book.

In summary, girl finds alien spaceship in woods near town. Townsfolk are possessed by some psychic energy given off by the ship and go through some creepy changes. A man who is immune to the effects because of a plate a plate in his head, must do something about it.

I would rate this near the bottom of Stephen King’s novels and don’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it before.

This is probably the first Stephen King book I picked up, having seen my father read it.

There are many who would criticize King for his writing style. Whilst I am the first to acknowledge that he is not Hemmingway, equally I'm not reading his work to learn new words and explore arcane ideas.

I am reading him for a well told, original story, that has an element of pace and subversion.

In that respect, The Tommyknockers delivers and delivers well. In case you don't know the story, there is an ages old crashed UFO in Maine and it is slowly turning the locals into aliens so that it can be flown back home. Of course there are lots of other little stories going on within the main narrative... and that is why I love King so much. He does not tell a single story but weaves together a whole universe.

Even more so, this book is massively influential and the amazing The Call of The Black River (The Spirals of Danu) is often interpreted as an unofficial prequel.

Stephen King is an amazing writer with an unfortunate need to include WAY too much back-story and information than any reader will ever need. So, I have developed a way to read his books. Whenever he starts to go on a rant or a new character is introduced I scan-read until I get back to the meat of the story.

And the 'meat' of Tommyknockers is definitely worth it.

Set in the small town of Haven, Maine, the story slowly descends into an eerie reality. The townspeople start to go mad, making alien machines out of ordinary electronics and batteries, while not really understanding what is happening to them. And it all started when Bobbi Anderson unearths a UFO in her backyard. The slow pace of the story, I think, served this story well. It's not really a scary book, it's not meant to be I don't think, more creepy than anything. Showing how people can act and what they are willing to do when they lose their humanity. The way they slowly change and go crazy over the course of the book. And lose their teeth no less-- that may be the scariest part of the book, really...

We get to meet multiple characters in this book, though not most of them really important. But each of their stories somehow relate or interconnect with one another at some point. Similar to his later novel Under the Dome. Like others have said, it's the last half of this book that really takes off. King is done introducing his characters-- and the town, which gets its own agonizing chapter by the way-- and lets the story shine. They ending is gray and not entirely happy, and that is awesome and refreshing after getting tired of reading so many happy ones.

If you are looking for a more down to earth sci-fi book, then definitely check this one out. Just learn how to scan read certain parts and you;ll be fine!

The structure of The Tommyknockers is a bit different than any other Stephen King novel that I've read. Basically, it's King's take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. More Sci-Fi than horror. I'm on a bit of King marathon right now and this is the fourth one I've read in two months. The first three being The Stand, It and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. The first 200 pages deals with the development of the two main characters before he takes us anywhere else. Quite unlike The Stand or It or any other I can remember from my youth. I agree with the most popular review for this title in that, if you can stick with it, you'll have a good time. Not that I felt like I was trudging through the beginning but the likability of the two main characters (Bobbi Anderson and Eric "Gard" Gardener) isn't as great as one like Stu Redman from The Stand. Bobbi and especially Eric have quite a lot of flaws and you have to accept that or you just won't care. In a way it makes them quite real to me. I enjoyed the book and didn't mind many of the left wing views of "old Gard" concerning nuclear energy or the "Dallas Police." It's just part of his character and I accepted that. On a side note, I loved the little references to It, The Dead Zone and Firestarter as well as King himself that were scattered throughout the book.

I thought that this book overall was much better than I had remembered from my first read of it. What I find odd is that the parts of the book that dragged for me were the end of part 1 and the beginning of part 3. The part of the book that most people have complaints about, part 2, was actually my overall favorite section of the book. I rather enjoyed the little vignettes through this section going from one character to another and seeing how things were affecting them.

I did find the early mentioned parts of the book to drag a little. I think that my main reason for feeling this way was that these parts of the book took the focus off of Haven and put the attention directly on characters who were doing other things but were compelled to return or travel to Haven. This in itself was fine, but I felt that he took too much time to give us a blow by blow on their journeys to Haven when he could have skipped a lot of that and focus more on the events surrounding their actual arrival.

This is not among King's best by any means, but the strong characters, storyline and concept carry it pretty well and make it worth reading.

Stephen King has found more ways than I can count, on how to scare the living hell out of anybody that opens the pages of his books. "The Tommyknockers" is no exception whatsoever. King took on the extremely difficult job of writing about alien invasions and body snatching, and finished smelling like roses. I never thought that I would be so disturbed by a subject so commonly written about. This book scared me stupid.
Although a bit on the long side, 748 pages, every single word has meaning to it. King's characterization is incredible. You get to know every single character that he names on a personal level, understanding exactly what that person is thinking and what he is trying to achieve.
Part one of the book is probably the most chilling. This is when we are introduced to the two main characters of the novel, best friends Bobbi and Gard. Friends to the end..... right? It is in this first part of the book that the terror and the "becoming" begins.
Part two of the book introduces us to the rest of the small town of Haven, Maine. The changing and "becoming" of the innocent country folk living up their summer. Although this part seems to drag on a little bit, each person in the town changes in a different way that makes you keep reading just to see everybody has their different way of "becoming".
Part three, the last part of the book is when things go crazy in Haven. This is when the terror begins. I was able to read the 300 plus pages of this last part in one afternoon only taking breaks to eat and use the bathroom. That is how good King has written this novel. I can say that by far this is in my top 10 favorite books by King.
Another great thing about this book is the small things he writes about connecting this book to a few of his other novels. For example: in one part a character drives through Derry, Maine and believes he is seeing things when he swears he sees a clown with white gloves in the sewer with ballons. Another is how he talks about a killer rabid dog that killed several people in a small Maine town.
The made for TV movie based on this book does no justice to the words in these pages. Dont judge this book by a bad TV movie.
This book is a King classic. Although on the long side, dont pass it up, you will be missing perfect vintage Stephen King

Normally, Stephen King's extensive detail appeals to me. Ithelps me to orient myself and to clearly picture the story as itunfolds. In many cases, it makes things clear that are not clear merely from understanding the basics of the story.
But there is such a thing as too much detail.
I can quite understand King's comment in the preface to the book: "This book was not so much written as gutted out." That's the way it feels to read it, too. Although I do love the characters, King's lapses into endless, droning detail about their history and surroundings becomes mind-numbing after while. The truth is, this book is not nearly as frightening as it could be. One senses that upon completion of the story, King breathes a sigh of relief not unlike the reader's... or a hiker who has finally crossed a long, boring stretch of monotonous countryside to arrive home, where he can take off his boots, stretch his feet out in front of him, and devote his attention to other, more interesting things.
There are, of course, more good points than bad. The fact that King seems to have edged over into the realm of science fiction for part of the story is one. And his characterizations of Jim Gardener and Ev Hillman as lone seekers of the truth are inspiring.
But overall, it's not a good enough story to warrant using up so much paper. The individual stories - Jim's journey to Bobbi, Ev's gradual discovery of the truth, Bobbi's excavation, Jim's alcoholism and his obsession with Seabrook and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island - are interesting in and of themselves, and one supposes that one or all of them could have successfully been made into a story of it's own. But to tie them all together with little green men, mind control, and some sort of bizarre Metamorphosis is pushing the limits of suspension of disbelief.
Perhaps it's necessary for a writer to publish a bad book every now and then, if for no other reason than to purge his mind of junk that may be collecting in there. I'm just not sure it's always necessary to publish it, too.

I'm currently working my way chronologically through the work of Stephen King, mostly in an attempt to observe and catalog the rate at which he introduced Dark Tower concepts into the rest of his writing. Right now, I'm not really sure where I sit on The Tommyknockers. I've certainly read worse books, that had the problems that this one purportedly had to much greater degree. Cujo, for example, didn't go much of anywhere but rather spun a tremendous amount of backstory for no reason, which is a problem this book tends to develop at points. Misery seems a little too close to alegory for comfort (and if it is, he really needed to get over himself at the time he published it). Little problems, nothing big. So what about this book in particular. Well, I think that this is probably one of the few books that I would classify as the personification of Stephen King. His style comes through quite strong in this writing, and I personally enjoy the short trips through the backstory that he takes at points. Reading it, I couldn't help but be reminded of 'Salem's Lot, which bears a lot of superficial resemblance to this book--perhaps this was his effort to clean up and make deeper a piece of work he wasn't satisfied with the first time around. Overall, I wouldn't call this a must read by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a fan of King (not of his horror or his fantasy or his Dark Tower books but HIM and his writing), and I'd recommend this to any other fans out there who have yet to read it. People who aren't too familiar with his work may be mildly annoyed by the references back to The Dead Zone (Johnny Smith) and It (the clown in the Derry sewers) and Firestarter (The Shop, and just as a side note, how is it that nobody in this story which supposedly continues in the same universe heard about a little girl who could basically destroy the Earth?), but it shouldn't get in the way too much for a determined reader. If you're looking for meaning, I don't think you'll find it. Even the material on nuclear power (which would have been a fairly obvious political effort, if that had been the motive) plays with the hollow emptiness of the zealot, probably because most of it is half true and melodramatically constructed. Fortunately, politics is not King's point in this book (I really don't know what that reviewer was talking about). As a fan, I'd give it four stars, as a casual reader, probably closer to two and a half.

Bobbi Andersen stumbles on a buried piece of metal in the woods near her home in Haven, Maine, and does what any curious, red-blooded American woman would do - starts digging it out. Her old flame Gard, a burned-out alcoholic poet drowning his memories of accidentally shooting his wife, shows up in town about the same time, but fails to share Bobbi's enthusiasm in digging out whatever bizarre relic is down under all that dirt. Whatever it is, it makes the metal plate in his head hurt.
Bobbi isn't alone in her new pet project, however. Several of the local townsfolk begin sharing new psychic powers and expanded creativity with her, as a result of the buried object's emanations. It doesn't take them long to realize what Bobbi has found is a millennia-old crashed flying saucer, which piques their interest all the more.
Problem is, the thing's existence is sharply dividing the town. The gifted few begin physically as well as psychically mutating, and after a while begin looking on the unaffected as backward country yokels. Oh, well - maybe they could still serve in some way...as slave-labor, or even human battery cells, maybe.
In the end, as Haven becomes an insulated, alien-infested battle zone, it falls on one immune alcoholic burnout to find a way to save the world...
This is King at his best. It took him five years to write this epic, and the time and care show. He develops a great number of characters very fully, and manages to make even the progressively more heinous ones sympathetic, which adds to the fascination of the plot. The novel is better structured than most of King's works, with a more even dramatic flow leading to a satisfying payoff. And, for once, he doesn't belabor the epilogue - it plays no longer or shorter than it should. The suspense is steady and gripping, the dramatic revelations spaced properly for full shocking impact.
What works best in this book is King's counterpointing of Gard's alcoholism with the "drug" of the alien influence spreading across Haven. Bobbi's gradual disintegration is both terrifying and sadly pathetic, and Gard's equivalent struggle toward salvation - not only his own, but Bobbi's and the world's as well - is the more heroic, by contrast.
A definite must for King fans, or sci-fi/horror fans in general. Those who love a great sweeping, epic melodrama will enjoy it, as well. The miniseries, though different in some regards, is also quite good.

Bobbi Anderson stumbles across something in the woods behind her house one day: a piece of metal sticking up out of the ground. Slowly, obsession sets in, as she finds herself digging and digging to discover what is underneath the earth...never noticing the effects the object has on her until it's too late.

The object is a spaceship. And it is gaining control of the town of Haven, Maine, turning once-ordinary people into scheming inventors, curious psycopaths...and worse. Only Bobbi's friend, Jim Gardner--who has a few demons of his own to face--can stand up to the ordeal...if he has the courage, that is. And if it isn't already too late.

"The Tommyknockers" is a book about the discovery of an alien ship. At its best, though, it is a character study of a small town; the village of Haven is represented much as the town of Castle Rock in a few of King's other novels. Haven itself is a central character, as realistic as any of its inhabitants.

But don't let that fool you--this is still a great horror novel by one of the genre's masters. Stephen King never fails to prove his literary merits; "The Tommyknockers" is a prime example of his powers to give you nightmares.

Dear Reader,
Brace yourself in for this one. I did! This is truly a love story although it's diguised as science-fiction/ahem, horror. Don't be thrown off track by the techno-jumble, because the charactors really do shine at times at a human and romantic level. I think this novel is King's testiment that true love remains endurant even through the most "alien" intrusion even though the outcome may not be what we expect it to be. I really felt for both main charactors deeply. I thought they were heroic and tenacious. And, although Bobbi does "change," her wonderful human self is always recognized by "Gard ole Gard." Sweet Gard, indeed! Bobbi is the the heartbreaker though. She cannot break the "alien" grip taken hold over her and makes gross moral infractions while in this grip, yet we love her somehow along with Gard. King weaves more emotional enigma into the two main charactors as the story unfolds. On a nuts and bolt level, the story is long, but to my pleasure necessarily so. I've read a few of King's other novels, and find this to be on par with some of his best. I can almost stew in the details that he embellishes his novels with. They really make 'em sparkle. Upon describing his scenes, King engages my imagination to hyper-drive automatically. I'm seeing pictures that he lays out vividly and even can bring in smells and texture. Of course, this can work against the dear reader upon more frightening scenes. But, I take King with a grain of salt, which maybe he would say I shouldn't? The charactors are of the "aw-shucks" variety found in many a small town( or use to be found) and are given appropriate depth(don't overshadow the leading charactors.) So whether you are a King horror fan, want to read a decidedly different "love story" or just like plain ole science-fiction, pick this one up. solo.

The first time I read The Tommyknockers back in 1987, it left a strange taste in my mouth. The voice of the book was kinda wonky, not really Stephen King at all. I remember trudging through it because I would never, ever, never leave a Stephen King book unfinished. A few years later when I met my future wife (another King junkie like me) she simply ate The Tommyknockers up. I couldn't understand it. Why The Tommyknockers? I'd ask her. I love it! was her reply. I just couldn't fathom someone cherishing that book. IT yes, and Misery, and The Shining, and Pet Sematary . . . but The Tommyknockers. Years and year later, as my wife's tastes changed away from King and his genre, I stuck by the old wordslinger and one day I decided to give some of his older novels another go through. Eventually I stumbled back upon The Tommyknockers. I gasped. I took a deep breath. I remembered that I hadn't dug it way back when I was seventeen. I threw caution to the wind and delved into the world where Western writer Bobbi Anderson stumbles over the tip of the proverbial iceberg in her own backyard and starts an excavation to unearth something from beyond the stars. Things start getting weird from there and when the wild drunk poet Jim Gardner falls off the wagon and back into Bobbi's life, he discovers just what she has been up to while he has been off reading poetry and getting sh*tfaced and speaking out about the terrors of nuclear power. And by the by....where is Bobbi's beagle Peter gone to? Well....I gotta tell you, I loved it. Perhaps it just took some time to realize what my wife had known all those years ago about The Tommyknockers. It absolutely rocked. Talk about a sleeper. This is King in his prime. It just took some time to see it.

Dig it.

The Tommyknockers, by Stephen King, was released in 1987 and is a thick tome that keeps you enthralled throughout the whole novel. It follows Bobbi, a western genre novel writer, who trips upon a metallic object in the woods that she inherited. As Bobbi uncovers more of this mysterious object, the reader is directed to meet Gard, Bobbi's alcoholic former lover and poet. Gard travels a long and dark road to help Bobbi and they start to discover the truth about what was hidden in the ground. Sinister things start to occur as more is revealed and changes take place to the little town of Haven where Bobbi lives.

Stephen King is the master of character development; he draws the reader into his stories whether they like it or not. His characters are fully formed in this book, but I have to admit that I wasn't all that empathetic with them. I feel like I should have cared about them more in this book and I would have enjoyed the book more for it. As it was, I was rooting for the good guy in the end, but didn't really care what happened to most of the characters. Given that statement, I think that an emotional separation from these characters was fitting for this book. In essence, I, as the reader, was mirroring Gard's relationship with Bobbi by the end of the book. An emotional detachment from a person he's attempting to help. The Tommyknockers is about evolution and regression at the same time and maybe the reader shouldn't be empathetic to a character that becomes something new.

The Tommyknockers is a product of its time with a heavy hand on the topic of nuclear power and what Gard refers to as the "dallas police". I liked this book, but I won't read it 10 times like "It".

Personally I preferred all the other Stephen King Novels to this one, I must admit. I've read 5 now I believe and Christine is the only one that I don't think is obviously better than this one.
The best thing about the Tommyknockers is it places the main character Jim Gardner aka Gard in a very difficult position. He has to watch his best friend, Bobbi Anderson become obsessed with an object she trips over in the earth of her backyard and has really no choice but to help her dig it up. They believe it is a spaceship, so calling the authorities, (referred to often as the "Dallas Police" in the story) well that's out and Bobbi is protective of the ship. The more she digs the ship up the more the ship gives Bobbi crazy powers, where she begins inventing strange things like typewriters that write based on brainwaves, and she and other people in the town of Haven Maine find that they are able to read each other's minds.
Everyone in town starts changing or "becoming" thanks to the object in the ground except for Gard who stands by and watches the horror unsure of what course of action to take. And while Gard is trying to make his decision, the people of Haven are turning into short tempered monsters with the power to invent some destructive things.
The book was scary because it placed you in Gardner's situation, where you're surrounded by people who are turning into monsters all set towards one cause and have no regard for your life because you are not "becoming" what they are. Gard only stays on in the spirit of friendship to Bobbi, but even SHE isn't the same anymore. For me the idea of being the only sane and normal person in a town of murderous mind reading monsters is chilling, and if the premise is interesting to you then you should definitely check it out.
Only complaints is the object in the Earth's origin is never fully explained, nor is it's strange ability to change the people surrounding it. King attempts to explain it, but in the end he falls kind of short.

The Tommyknockers is best described as an interesting book about the unknown, specifically alien artefacts, but also happens to be a bit of a let down in certain departments, namely the conclusion and some plot development that goes a bit stray. The Tommyknockers is certainly his most original work and is a cross between "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Salem's Lot".
Basically a woman discovers a crashed UFO in the woods, digs it up, becomes hyper-intelligent and this "alien virus" spreads to others in the town who find themselves up to all sorts of good and bad things in very peculiar ways.
When all is said and done the characters are interesting and it has its moments as you would expect from this author, but ultimately it is a bit of a letdown and doesn't really finish quite like it started. King has done better but then again a lot of other authors have done worse. This is only really for the King lover. Go elsewhere if you want a good King book.

What a Ride!! Really picks up speed near the end. It's very similar to Needful Things because so many malicious things are happening at once, hinged around the huge UFO. Wouldn't we all want to find a one in our backyard? That aside, the nuances of a less than perfect community were hysterical. Stephen King's books are considered horror, but life itself is horror enough at times. someone goes into a business (or a high school) with a firearm and starts taking out people. The nightly news, and local news--now that's real horror. At least Stephen King intertwines a sense of humor to lessen the fictonal horror. Even so, as the book progresses, the horror factor escalates too. (shades of Alien). I really enjoyed the flying Coke machine. That just blew me away.

P.S. I needed a root canal after reading it.

In the small town of Haven, Maine, Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson unwittingly awakens a buried spacecraft. She and others in the town start to slowly undergo a transformation into alien lifeforms. As she loses her humanity, the world at large starts to notice that all is not right in Haven, but once the alarm is raised, there is serious question as to whether the alien threat can be contained.

To me, this is the worst Stephen King book in the world. I've read pretty much everything he's published, and no other book turned me off like this one. I read it as a teenager, and I had just discovered how magical King's books could be. I was struggling to find something to bridge the gap between young adult books and grownup books, and King was pretty much the only author that I was excited about at that stage in my life. So imagine the bitter disappointment I felt when Tommyknockers went from bad to worse.

The writing is no different from most of King's work from the same period, but the story itself was just so monumentally depressing that it brings no joy into the reader's lives. It just kind of sucks the life out of you while you read, by giving you more and more to be disappointed in.

Imagine a book in which you are presented with ten or so characters with whom you can feel some amount of emotional attachment. And then imagine every single one of those characters slowly succumbing to some horrible medical condition, like cancer, and then dying. This book was kind of like that, except it has none of the literary aspirations or sweetness that might make such a slog worthwhile.

Or consider the case of "Monster Dugan," an enormously strong and able law enforcer who rides to the rescue towards the latter part of the book. After pages of buildup in which his strength and determination are put on display, he just kind of fizzles out, succumbing to the aliens and conditions in much the same way as everyone else.

King has identified "Dreamcatchers" as a somewhat depressing book written during a difficult period of his life. I can't help but see some connections between that book and this one, and both end up with the same type of unavoidable, predictable conclusion.

In short, I would only recommend this book to a die-hard King fan. At 747 pages, it's not going to endear itself to the casual reader.

Who hasn't heard of Stephen King? Not many people right? But what do people think when you say his name? "Oh, he's just too scary for me!" An unfortunate misconception that keeps many hardcore book readers away from King's writings. So here is a story that isn't too scary that might interest people into checking out his work. It's a little sci-fi, a little horror, a little mystery all wrapped up in one big package! Stephen King is more of a writer of the sinister, the possibility of treachery and maddness in each of us. A true sense of horror, of that slight jolt of electricity that for a second makes you just want to drop the book, really wasn't present here. But there sure were some cool ideas! The way people pay for new found abilities with the blood of the not-so innocent was a somewhat humorous twist in this book (all though I did start to feel kinda weird at some of the stuff I found myself laughing at). That is one of Stephen King's greatest achievements in his writing, his ability to take something that in any real circumstance would be deemed a great and terrible misfortune and make his audience laugh (maybe more appropriate to say snicker, somewhat devilishly)at these unexpected turn of events! For the most part Mr. King doesn't fail to entertain his massively loyal audience, and The Tommyknockers is no exception. If you haven't read it yet and you are not particularly a Stephen King fan go check it out at your library, it can't hurt. If you do call yourself a Stephen King fan and you haven't read this book yet, well shame on you!