He is on his way home to Maine, eager to break the news to his estranged wife and son Johnny when the Pulse hits.

The novel begins in Boston with Clay Riddell, a struggling freelance comic book artist who just caught his big break by landing for a graphic novel. Note, although the film adaptation was not as terrible as most critics claimed, the less said about Cell (2016), the better.

Meanwhile, complete strangers band together to deal with a suddenly dangerous world.

Rather it’s more comparable to Romero’s film The Crazies or 28 Days Later where civilized society is turned upside down when formerly normal people become raving murderous lunatics. But that isn’t necessarily the case, it follows the spirit of those zombie films but there aren’t any zombies in Cell. On the surface, one might want to compare this to a flesh-eating zombie movie and the book’s dedication to George Romero (and Richard Matheson who wrote the classic post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend) adds to that comparison. In the book’s case this virus is not biological but technological with devastating results. Oddly enough the novel has some new relevance in today’s world in showing how society has abruptly been turned upside down by a “virus”. At the same time was a tribute to the horror sub-genre of lone survivors coping in a world overrun by maniacs, monsters and other terrors. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question 'Can you hear me now?' It answers it with a vengeance.Stephen King’s Cell was written in the post-9/11 world and published in 2006. There are one hundred and ninety-three million cell phones in the United States alone. But for Clay, an arrow points home to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction: KASHWAK=NO-FO. There's really no escaping this nightmare. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature.and then begins to evolve.

The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay's feeling good about the future. He's already picked up a small (but expensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. He's just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston.

Stephen king cell book review