Customer Reviews

One Past Midnight: The Langoliers (Four Past Midnight)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Langoliers is a good story. I can't put it any other way. This is the nearest I've seen Stephen King come to science-fiction (The tommyknockers was also kind of Sci-Fi'ish). I loved the Idea of the time rip being mistaken for the Aurora Borealis. The Langoliers had a lot of good Ideas and developed them nicely, keeping the more outlandish ones within the realm of possibility. The plot was smooth (not any jerky transitions) and was very fun to read. It was also intelligent. It's one of those books you can't stop reading, it hooks you and doesn't let go. There was also less profanity that most of Stephen Kings books. I would reccomend this heartily to any stephen king fan, fans of Science fiction, and anyone who wants to have a smart, fun read. Happy reading!!

If you are a fan of the Twilight Zone this is great stuff and I highly recommend it! Shame on the one review where the person slams the characters. Guess what these characters have faults and the book draws them out! AND yes if you needed to save yourself you too might use a toaster for defense.
I didn't read the book BUT as you listen to the Audio Book tape
you can truly visualize the characters, the scenery and what is taking place. Actually if you pictured yourself in this type of scenario the fear would be much grander than what is displayed in the tale. Willem Dafoe does a great job as a Reader.

This book showed more economy of writing than any other King book I've read, yet neither the prose nor the story suffered from incompleteness. Absolutely a great plot, built upon a great premise, which I'm afraid to describe lest I give too much away. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is that the characters seemed built upon cliches.

The Langoliers is my favorite novella so far(I've only read 4 novellas). The plot is great, and the characters were vivid to me. I read this and could not put it down. A shame they disgraced it with the film, but awesome book. I thought this tale was very creative because I could never think of a story like that. This was a great story because it had a lot of action, but there was a little love story in the mix of things. I always have liked stories that have a romance story. This kept me glued to the end, but the ending was kind of rushed. They should have had an epilogue or something. This is King at his best, and I think FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT is his best collection.

All in all it is a good book. I love the Mr. Toomy in this book, he is cool. I think that this book would apeal to most people so wh not check it out?

Willem DaFoe does a fantastic job reading this book. He uses a unique voice for each character. He kept me company on a very long drive, and I was happy to have him with me! The story was light and enjoyable.

"The Langoliers", by Stephan King is about an airplane red-eye flight who goes in to some mystical dimension. All of the passengers and pilots are having a wonderful time. It is your typical airplane flight where something drastic goes wrong. Sometime during the night, the plane passes through some weird warp that transports only the people who are asleep on the plane. Once through the warp, the people wake and find that only a few people were still alive. The pilots are also killed in the transport but luckily there is a former pilot that is asleep on the plane. Once in the new dimension, the people have to get fuel for the plane. The group lands and walks around the airport to find food. This is when the Langoliers come in to the action. These things were eating the dimension that the people were in. The book ended by the Langoliers chasing down the plane back through the warp.

This book was an easy read. There were no extremely large words except terms that the pilots would use to contact the towers. He did use great syntax though. With the easy words that he used, the syntax was perfect. So perfect that you would know what the next sentence would say. This leads to another downfall of the book.

I read "The Langoliers" several years ago, and while I didn't think it was one of King's stronger novels at the time, the images have stayed with me. Flying in fog invariably brings back disturbing images of the desperate passengers who had shifted dimensions. King's descriptions of the sense of nothingness packed such a wallop that long after I'd forgotten the characters themselves, the eerie atmosphere of "The Langoliers" has embedded itself in my imagination.

Are you into a good, sci-fi book that makes you feel like you are right along with the characters. Well this is one, and one of the best! If you like movies like Cast Away and Back to the Future where every scene leaves you wondering what you would have done differently or how you would have acted, things of that sort, well this is the book for you. This book brings together a bunch of characters who are all different and you get to see what happens when they are introduced to a problem, a BIG problem.

It's almost as if this is a Stephen King Survivor! All of these people are all different, but they find a way to try and bond together to solve the problem. Will they bond together and help solve the problem, or will they all go crazy and die out with everything else. You'll find out when you get The Langoliers!

Normally I could say I like Stephen King's works, but this is downright awful. An airplane flies through a time rip and only a handful of passengers survive, including some of the most idiotic characters I have ever read about. A Jewish violinist who kills a man with a TOASTER?? A drug addict on her way to rehab? And a businessman who rips paper to shreds to relax? I have to say that "The Langoliers" is a completely dimwitted book, and I don't see why this would interest anyone.