Why Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers Wasn’t his Worst Book

A lot of people including Stephen King himself believe The Tommyknockers was one of his worst books ever written but was it really?

First, take a look at what The Tommyknockers is about:

Late Last Night and the Night Before …
… Tommyknockers, tommyknockers, knocking at the door.

Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson’s idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in town powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for all outsiders. Something that came from a metal object, buried for millennia, that Bobbi accidentally stumbled across. 

It wasn’t that Bobbi and the other good folks of Haven had sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell. It was more like a diabolical takeover…an invasion of body and soul–and mind….

Hmm, it seems more science fiction than horror I’d say and which is to believe why many of his fans so used to his horror fiction might be the reason why they didn’t like it. But for me, I am a fan of science fiction, so that might’ve given me a more likeness to it. I really enjoyed the alien aspect and how the entire town was starting to change and become into the alien themselves that were dead inside the crashed UFO hidden in the ground for so many years. I even wish we could have seen more of these extraterrestrial beings and about the planet they were from, but I think Stephen King wanted the story to tell more about how the town was slowly becoming.

Another reason why many fans didn’t like it as much because of the length. The Tommyknockers is over a 800 page novel. This book is one of his more lengthy ones. However, I always seem to enjoy reading his higher word count novels because I just love Stephen King’s writing and I can read on forever.

Being too descriptive was also one of the reasons I’ve read people found The Tommyknockers to be one of his less fond novels. Stephen King is known to be a descriptive writer, so I didn’t really get what was such the fuss about his descriptiveness in this. I love how descriptive he can get; it makes the story and characters feel more real to me. Like as soon as I was done reading The Tommyknockers, every single character he had written in it, I was tricked into believing they were real and not fictional at all.

In the end, in my opinion, I think The Tommyknockers was one of my favorite novels of his, and I enjoyed reading every second of it. I would rank it as number 3, being IT as number 1 and The Shining as number 2. So, what do you guys think? Do you believe The Tommyknockers was one of Stephen King’s worst novels?

❤ T. A. Nelson

I’m a writer who’s working on books and is in the query trenches. Make sure you’re following me on here as well as on Twitter @WriterInHorror

Review of The Road

The last book I had finished was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It had taken me about a week and a half to finish. At first, as I was in the beginning, reading through the first couple of pages, I felt a little hesitant to continue on. It seemed I couldn’t connect much to the voice and his way of writing style. I’d say when I read a book, the style and tone of it is what keeps me going on, but this seemed a bit flat and boring.

However, as I got passed I’d say about fifty pages I felt much more connected to the story and the characters. I felt entirely bad for the father and the son, and I couldn’t bear to think of living in a world like that. I thought the way the world had been described and how it went down hill was done well. I could picture the end of the world before my very eyes.

As I read through and through I was rooting for the boy and his father to live and find a way to live without fear in this new world. The relationship of the father and son was written just perfectly in my opinion, and I thought every father should act the way he had in any situation like it.

By the ending hit, I knew what was coming; I had seen the movie before I had read the book and I knew the father was going to die, however it still got me. I felt utterly sad and lost after, and it seemed I couldn’t do anything once I finished. The child losing the only person he had left in the world, a father who he had looked utterly up to, was full heart-wrenching.

Overall, this was a tragic novel, and I enjoyed reading it. Even as I felt hesitant, I still continued to read on, and I’m glad I did. It was a great post-apocalyptic story!

❤ T. A. Nelson

I’m a horror writer working on books who’s in the query stage. Follow me on here as well as on Twitter @WriterInHorror and Wattpad @livinginmymindgirl