Firestarter (Signet)
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Firestarter (Signet)
by Authors:
Stephen King
Released: 02 December, 2003
ISBN: 0451167805
Mass Market Paperback
Sales Rank: 69089
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List price:
$7.99
Our price:
$7.19
(You save: $0.8)
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| Book > Firestarter (Signet) > Customer Reviews: |
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Average Customer Rating: 
Firestarter (Signet) >
Customer Review #1:
 Firestarter, Disproportioned But Still King Worthy
"Disproportioned" is the only word to appropriately describe this story. This word fits the story for many reasons. Although it contains many excellent points, it should have been organized better.
The pace at the beginning of the story is grand. It jumps right into action as the main character Andy McGee and his daughter Charlie are running from a government branch known as, "The Shop." The Shop has been sent to track down Charlie and her father. The first 100 pages keep you wondering just why they are after Charlie, which makes the reader more apt to read on. Eventually, the pieces fall together as it explains that Charlie has the ability to start fires by simply thinking about something. The book calls this ability Pyrokenesis. Charlie is able to do this is because her father and mother were injected with a drug, lot 6, back when they were in college. This gave them supernatural powers. The mother has the ability to move small object by thinking about doing so. Andy, the father, has the ability to control peoples minds and tell them what to do.
Like many other Stephen King novels there is a complex storyline, where the characters are developed very well. As Andy and Charlie are escaping upstate to flee the shops agents, Andy has flashbacks of what happened before. At this point the reader discovers that the Shop has killed Charlies mother in order to find Charlie. The book goes into great detail of how the Shop tortured the mother by pulling her fingernails out.
Next the story discusses the background of the shops agents. One of Stephen Kings major strengths as a writer is his ability to develop characters. In this way he gives the reader a sense of empathy for the good guys as well as the bad guys in the story. The other main character is Cap. He is in charge of the shop and has ordered the capture of Andy and Charlie.
The problem with the story is that there are too many climaxes. First the Shop meets Charlie and Andy at a local farmers house. This was built up through the entire story and then it slows down totally after Charlie lights up the whole farm. This makes it seem like the story should be over but still it continues when the Shop catches up with the family later on further upstate. This time a new character appears who is an Indian by the name of John Rainbird. Rainbirds described in great depth as a lover of death. His major goal is to murder Charlie. He wishes to do to this because the look in his victims eyes in the past has always looked the same. This makes him believe that a young girls eyes may look somewhat different. This becomes his obsession. King builds up John Rainbird as the villain very well in the story. By the end of the story the reader has developed a true sense of hatred for Rainbird.
Again I believe that the ending itself was very disproportioned. Seventy pages from the end of the story, the end climax takes place. The climax was done adequately but nothing amazing. One of the main characters died which should have signified the end, but the story was far form over. The last 60 pages could have been summed up in a simple 3 or 5 pages. Kings major downfall in the book is his failure to end the story quickly yet with an impact. Instead he chooses to drag it on without another climax or anything leading up to anything!
All in all, the story was done very well. The action was built up nicely. The weakness was that there were too many slow parts. Though Stephen King is noted for being a great writer because of his details, there should have been some significant editing. Also if it were not for the weak ending this story would have received a very high rating. So Ill rate this story a 7 out of 10, and I recommend it to any Stephen King lover who is looking for an action packed book. Matt Otis
Firestarter (Signet) >
Customer Review #2:
 As fast paced as a brushfire.
Firestarter is a fast paced read. It is a story of desperate people on the run from the government told from the perspectives of an adult (Andy McGee) and a child (Charlie McGee). I saw the movie awhile back, but the book goes into greater detail of character development, particularly the thought processes of the various characters. I was pleasantly surprised that the original experiment (performed on Charlies parents) was described at length. The experiment gone wrong and the subsequent cover-up was probably the scariest part of the book. Firestarter feels more like a government conspiracy-techno thriller than a typical King horror novel, but somehow the formula still seems to work very well.
Firestarter (Signet) >
Customer Review #3:
Firestarter by Stephen King
Do you enjoy thrilling, horrifying, and exciting novels? I know I do because of a man with a mind that has no limits for creativity and horror, Stephen King. The catchy hardcover of a pair of eyes in a flame and the title, Firestarter, in huge bold letters caught my attention. From that very instant I knew I had to read this novel that had me under a spell already.
Firestarter starts out with Andy and Vicky McGee meeting each other at a drug testing job offer known as "The Shop". Andy and Vicky fall in love and end up having Charlie, which I think is a boy name but surprisingly Charlie is a girl. However as the story of this family goes on Charlie, only 8 years old, becomes aware that she posses extremely strong mysterious powers due to the combination of the drugs that both Andy and Vicky took. "The shop" turns into a secret Federal government that kills Vicky to try to get to Charlie. After every failure to capture Charlie, "The Shop" chase both Andy and Charlie isolating them from mankind taking them to the border of insanity. The fact that the drug agents make Charlie angry it also encourages her to release her powers against evil. Now the question throughout the novel is the following: "Is Charlie really evil or good?". To make things more exciting a hitman is introduced to become Charlies friend. The Hitman begins to learn more about death than any of his killings he had throughout his career. The story has so many blasts and excitement its hard not to go into further details. I will leave it up to you to discover those details.
The novel has so much intensity that the author goes deeply into the mind of the main characters and puts the reader to the tip of their shoes cheering for Andy and Charlie. The book made me think that if such people existed with powerful powers such as pyrokinesis how would the world be today?
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Firestarter (Signet) >
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