Andy and Charlene “Charlie” McGee are a father/daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop. During his college years, Andy and his future wife, Victoria, participated in a Shop experiment dealing with “Lot 6”, a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave Andy and Victoria telekinetic and pyrokinesis abilities. Charlie was born with enhanced abilities taken from both parents and as a result, The Shop want to take her back and study her abilities.
After a short break reading a couple of non-Stephen King books, it was back on the chronological red-through, with book 9, Firestarter.
Looking at GoodReads, it would appear that I read this book a few years ago, there were parts I remembered from then, but mostly it was like reading the book for the first time.
The main elements of the story revolve around Andy trying to protect his daughter (and to some extent, himself) from being caught by The Shop, who organised a medical trial a few years previously which caused Andy, his wife and Charlie to develop some special powers.
Stephen King is quite well known for creating strong female characters throughout his universe (people such as Carrie, Beverly from IT and to a certain extent, Wendy from The Shining) and Charlie is no different, despite her age, she is very aware of both the good and the bad that can come from using her abilities, throughout the book she is tortured about having used the ability in the past or using the ability in the future. I guess it’s just one extra element that a child of that age would have to deal with as part of the growing up process.
For some reason, I struggled to get into this book, normally if I am really entertained by something I find myself counting the time until I can next pick up the book and find out what happens next, but with this book, I didn’t get those feelings.
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a very strong story and each time I did pick the book up, I found my self lost for an hour or so, but it always felt like it was a chore to pick the book up.
Maybe it was just the mood I was in this month, or the pressures of deadlines at work and I just needed to do something totally different.
Overall Rating 3.5 / 5.0
