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Riding the Bullet,
the tale of a terrible encounter near a
lonely graveyard, is, as the narrator points
out, the kind of ghost story told around
campfires. It's no surprise that no one
tells such a story as well as Stephen King.
From the moment Alan, a college student,
decides to hitchhike to see his mother in
the hospital (his car is out of action) and
further decides to avoid the main highway
where police might ticket him, you can
imagine what's coming, and this makes what
does come more awful and delicious. Josh
Hamilton can't do a Maine accent (as who can
not born to it?), so it's too bad he tried;
everything else about this reading is
delightful.
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Raymond Sokolov - Wall Street
Journal
This is a classic King contrivance, matter-of-fact about
everything from the phantasmagorical to masturbation, so
insidiously normal and easy-to-read that it draws you into
its little down-home chamber of horrors before you know it.
This makes it an ideal vehicle for enticing neophytes into
reading their first e-book.
Publisher's Weekly
E-publishing takes a giant step with the release of this
grandly entertaining ghost story. Not only is it the first
original e-publication by a megaselling author, but it may
be the most accomplished work ever to appear only in
cyberspace--and it's available through an unprecedented
number of vendors and platforms. The story is vintage King.
Narrator Alan Parker, 21, learns that his beloved mother has
had a stroke and hitchhikes through rural Maine to see her.
On the way he's picked up first by a horrid old man, then by
someone far more awful: a dead young man who offers him a
terrible choice. The simple, potent prose skims along
spurred by high suspense. The atmospherics roil like a
classic nightmare: a moonlit graveyard, howling wind, rising
mist; but King spins them with a wicked modern touch--the
dead man drives a Mustang, and as the corpse pulls on a
cigarette, Alan sees "little trickles of smoke escape from
the stitched incision on his neck." When Alan makes his
choice, the story deepens as King taps horror fiction's
particular ability to illuminate the terror of the human
condition. Anyone concerned about King's writing abilities
after his near-fatal accident can relax. This genuinely
chilling, haunting tale finds his talent--and the state of
e-publishing--in the pink. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business
Information.|
Library Journal
Riding the Bullet was originally published in March 2000
exclusively as an e-book and has now found its way to print
and audio. It's a classic King ghost story/urban legend
about a college student who hitchhikes across Maine to visit
his hospitalized mother and gets more than he bargains for
during his rides. Film and theater actor Josh Hamilton
provides an excellent reading, with a promising command of
pace and characterization. However, for many libraries, the
economics of buying an audio version of a single, extremely
short story may be questionable. Recommended with that
reservation only.-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib.,
Dubuque, IA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
AudioFile
Riding the Bullet, the tale of a terrible encounter near
a lonely graveyard, is, as the narrator points out, the kind
of ghost story told around campfires. It's no surprise that
no one tells such a story as well as Stephen King. From the
moment Alan, a college student, decides to hitchhike to see
his mother in the hospital (his car is out of action) and
further decides to avoid the main highway where police might
ticket him, you can imagine what's coming, and this makes
what does come more awful and delicious. Josh Hamilton can't
do a Maine accent (as who can not born to it?),
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