 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another Stephen King review. I'm going back through and reviewing all of his books that I have not yet reviewed on the channel. Today, we are talking about Firestarter. This is a book that doesn't get talked about a whole hell of a lot. I'm not sure why. It was made into a very popular movie with Drew Barrymore and the movie follows the book close enough. There's been a lot of discussion about the use of the Native American character in this one. I'm looking forward to the reboot to see how that's handled. I believe what was a George C. Scott played him in the original movie, which of course doesn't fit whatsoever because George C. Scott is a white man. But today, we're going to talk about the book a little bit. It is a hidden gem in my opinion. It's probably one of his best fully realized novels early in his career. It is also nothing that I would consider horror. So when people ask me how can you like Newer King more than the old horror king? I think this book is a perfect example where the action or maybe anything that would be considered horror takes a back seat to everything else. I think that's the first of his books to really do that. I'm trying to think Kerry, Simon's Lot, The Shining. If you take away the plot or the supernatural aspects, are any of those books interesting? That's a broad swing too because The Shining is a really good character piece also. It's not that I like Firestarter more than The Shining. I think they're on par with each other. I tend to think that people who are on the fence about these things. I tend to feel like the reason why The Shining is held in such a higher regard is because Kubrick's movie. Not saying the book's bad or anything like that. But with Firestarter, Firestarter doesn't have the movie that huge blockbuster name behind it. Whereas I think the books are pretty on par. The Shining is significantly longer. I think it's like 200 pages longer. But in this one, I liked how small the cast was. You just had even more so than in The Shining because in this one, you focus a lot on Charlene McGee and her father. I can never remember the guy's name. But you focus really, it's very close up of this relationship with these two people. That's probably the aspect that I enjoyed the most. It's also one of the few single father books that King has ever written or tackled. In this one, I like stories about a single father. You just don't get them as much as you do a single mother. In this one, I think it worked really, really well having a father and a daughter. More so than I feel it would have been had it been something like later where it's a mother and son or even a father and a son. I think it worked really well there because he's out of his comfort zone. He's raising Charlie and it's mentioned in the book. He doesn't know a thing about raising a girl. He knows very little about... I think there's also some parts in there where he misses his wife because he doesn't know what to do in any given situation. Then the ending of the book is all the more poignant and sad because of that. Even though... Well, let's not go into spoiler territory. There's long been discussion about whether or not we should get a sequel to Firestarter. I think Charlie's story is done, although I would have loved to have seen her pop up in books like the Institute would have been a perfect place for her to pop up again. It's alluded to that in the Institute that this has been going on for a while and they've been collecting kids with supernatural powers. So is Charlie a part of that? Was Charlie ever a part of that? I like to think that she was. But this one not only are the characters so good, but the story and everything else around it. Everything about this book is terrific. It doesn't hang around too long. I think it's... I don't know. What is it about 400 pages? I want to say I could be completely wrong. Yeah, it's 420 some pages. And of course, that's very short when it comes to Stephen King works. You have the, you know, like Carrie's like 250 pages, the Gunslinger's about 250 pages. Then you have Misery, which is like 300 cell. Oh, we don't want to talk about cell today. But yeah, this is one of his best books. And I wish more people would read it. In fact, I started telling people when they asked me, where should I start with Stephen King? This is one of the books that I point to. This one in Pet Cemetery, some of his shorter works that I think really capture what makes him so good at what he does. And I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people upset that I put the shining on level, you know, the fire starter on level with the shining. But that's just my opinion, man. The book is fun. Just the concept alone. I feel I know I said I don't find this book to be horror. I find the movie to be more horror than I do. It's just the overall tonal quality of it. I feel the movies more horror than the book is even though it follows it about the same. He gets a lot done in here in a very short amount of time. And it never and I remember putting this in my written review, there's never a dull moment. The story never lulls whatsoever. It's just one scenario after another until it just escalates to the point to we get to the climax. And I feel it's one of his best endings that he has ever written. Whereas with the shining, I think there's maybe, if I'm going to weigh him against each other, since I was bold enough to come out and say I like them equally, I think in the shining, there was not that we needed less of anything that was in there. It's just the story ends up feeling not so much, you know, less big. I don't want to say that it's a smaller story, that the shining is a smaller story. But it feels like a much smaller story that should take place over a shorter period of time. It's over books over 600 pages. And with this one, he gets the same amount of work done. And the same conflict, the same issues with raising a child, all that stuff that Stephen King really nailed early in his career, he nails in this one. I would I would like to know if you do not my question for you guys today, if you do not like Firestarter, I want you to tell me why you don't like Firestarter. If you disagree with me that the shining and Firestarter are equally good, I would like to hear from you also, if you agree with me, because I don't I don't find too many people, you know, that that love this book as much as they love say like the shining. And I bring up these two books because that you know, they focus a lot on a father and a child. I think that's even in the shining, you know, Wendy is a part of the story. But Wendy also is like a big supporting character. It's really more about Jack and Danny. In this one, it's hyper focused on even though you get other POVs, it's still hyper focused on the story of this father and this little girl. And I love that about it. That's what I like about the shining also. But yeah, so if you agree with me that they're on par, I'd love to I'd love to hear from you. Not just to stroke my own ego, I just want to know if there's other people out there that feel the same way that I do. At the same time, I want to hear from anybody who doesn't like this book. I would love to hear from you and explain why you don't like it. Give me reasons down there in the doobly-doo, you know, this felt wrong, that felt wrong, maybe you found some plot holes, whatever. But yeah, let me know. And I mean, you really didn't like it. Not you're on the fence or man, it's like a three star read or whatever. You really don't like it, like you would give it a two or one star even. Yeah, so that's all I have for this week's review. Firestarter, one of my favorite Stephen King books of all time. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U, this has been another Stephen King review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.