Customer Reviews

UR

5 star:		(116)
4 star:		(128)
3 star:		(89)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(53)

 

 

Stephen King has graced us kindle owners with a bit of surprise. Coming out a few weeks early, UR downloaded to my Kindle this morning and 90 minutes later I had devoured its 1737 locations.

UR settles into a space somewhere between a short story and a novella. The premise is simple but fascinating. After a mild mannered college professor orders a Kindle, he is met with a pink Kindle that downloads books not only from Amazon.com, but from Urs. Each of the more than 10 million Urs seem to represent a different reality where authors have written different books. Ever wanted to read the unpublished Hemingway book, or six Poe novels? King explores the possibilities and in the process makes every literary mind jealous.

Of course, being King, things start to go wrong and become disturbing when the professor finds out that the pink Kindle can also download newspapers from different Urs. I'll let you discover the rest on your own.

Ur moves quick and features some cameo appearances by past King characters that will leave the most cynical CR smiling. It falls short of five stars simply because it is measured against other great King novellas and novels, but UR is a great diversion for any King fan.

I usually don't even think of Stephen King when I go looking for something to read on my Kindle. That changed today. I'm sure you all remember the condition you were in when you walked out into the "real world" after seeing Star Wars for the first time... snapped-back from a total imersion, allmost dizzy from the exposure to thoughts and possibilities at the edge of your imagination! I have seen a few of the movies made from Mr. King's books and while intertaining, I never put too much thought to the stories involved. Perhaps I should -read- some of those stories. Another reviewer said this story, "UR" should be included with new Kindles. I say it should by required reading for anyone who reads from a portable device!
Well done Mr. King, I'm your newest fan!
And yes, I did press the "Next Page" key, both at the end of the story AND on the Experimental page :)
(review writen on a Kindle!)

A classic Stephen King tale, you start out walking in someone's ordinary, everyday shoes and before you know it you're tap dancing out there where the oxygen is thin.

When I was a kid reading comic books, I wanted to buy a box they advertised in the back pages, a box where you put in a dime at one end and take out a quarter at the opposite end. That is just what this Stephen King story does. It begins with an ordinary man doing an ordinary thing and then he misses the importance of the small clue that he has gone beyond normal until he is waaaay beyond normal. We've all done that, right? Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we get out by the skin of our teeth. In King's stories, you're never sure which it will be.

I really wish this had been a full length book, rather than a novella. The end left me wanting more.

I adore Stephen King and there isn't much he's written that I haven't read. That said, his UR novella is a huge disappointment because it lacks not only strong characters, but embraces pedestrian dialogue and a predictable ending. Clearly, King likes the Kindle; UR is all about it. And it would seem that he's enthralled with the emerging technology that one day will likely put nearly all books in some kind of digital format. I get all that, I really do. Those are some of the reasons I just bought a Kindle and made this novella my absolute first purchase. King! The Kindle! What I combo! At least that's what I thought. But I doubt Stephen King spent more than a day banging this story out and unfortunately it shows in the ways I suggested above. The problem with that? It makes me wonder whether e-book readers -- the Kindles and any others that grow with digital reading -- will become dumping grounds for just about anything. That would be a shame, and any kind of move in that direction, especially by a top-drawer author, does all readers and people who might one day tackle digital ebook formats a tremendous disservice.

I expected better of King.

Having been a Stephen King fan for years, I bought this already with an idea of what to expect, but thought I'd give it a go.

It's an easy, quick read that doesn't require too much. The premise is a good one, and although it does lack a lot of depth and detail you may experience in his other works, being a novella it is to be expected. So I can forgive this short coming. Had it had the chance to develop into a full length novel, then maybe a lot of the 'corner cutting' would not have been so prevalent.

I did roll my eyes quite a few times though at the 'product placement' throughout the story, especially in the early stages - 'Oh look it does this'. It made it at times feel like a television infomercial where an advertising plug is disguised as casual dialogue. Instead of getting annoyed with it, I laughed, shook my head, and carried on.

It's not his best work - not by a long shot - but people should see it for what it is. Merely a bit of celebrity endorsement.

I don't think Mr King took himself too seriously when writing it, and I suggest you take the same approach reading it.

A book commissioned by Amazon to do nothing more than promote their own Kindle reader.

The reading isn't bad, but this certainly was written to promote the device which I already own. This book is more suitable as a free book preloaded onto every Kindle reader.

At this price ($2.99) this book is not worth it.

I guess this is as good a place to say HOORAY for the move by Amazon and Apple to make all the Kindle books also available on the iPhone.

I just came back from a hospital visit where I was all set to start Steve's (King) "UR" novella, when I discovered that the juice had just run out on my Kindle. So I played a game instead on my always topped-up iPhone.

Back at home my mail informed me that Steve (Jobs) had opened up the iPhone through a brand new app to permit reading of all the 240,000-plus Kindle books. Three minutes later I had "Ur" on the screen of my mobile phone.

Now how incredibly cool is THAT!!?

I will append a comment on "UR" itself later, but consider it totally apropos that this tale has something to do with the Kindle starting from the very first page.

Thanks to both Amazon and Apple (as well as to both Steves and Jeff Bezos) for the perfect union of technologies and talents that made this modern-day Gutenberg feat possible!

***

"UR" -- which I surmise is slightly odd shorthand for "universe" -- is a delightful little gem that is King's welcome to E-books, with his own patented way of turning an object into a source of fantasy or terror. It's also his take on the parallel worlds idea that advances that there is an infinite number of universes. One version is that every action splits off THIS universe into the next one.

To those who complained "UR" was too short, too Kindle-promotional, or too esoteric, consider this possibility:

You invested/wasted $2.99 on about 4 hours of reading time. You did NOT invest/waste $5 on a movie at the theater. You did NOT get in your car. And therefore you were NOT killed in a fiery crash with a drunk. You are now in a different Ur and have 20 or 50 more years to invest/waste.

THAT was the message from this first E-book on a fictional E-book. Naturally, it came from Stephen King. Who else?

Incidentally, I found on the Net that "ur" is of German origin, and refers to "original" or "very, very old", and is the root for the German term for the Big Bang -- the start of the physical universe, and thus, one might say, the "Mother of all Urs."

I read a lot of the reviews here before deciding to buy this book to read on my new Kindle 2. There were some bad ones, but also some 5-star reviews so I figured, hey, it's only a few bucks, why not?

This book was awful. The only thing that kept me reading it was comic relief and pointing out to my boyfriend how many times I found marketing drivel on a page. The lead character is a 35 year old professor yet says things like "Newfangled cellphones". Uh, what? Numerous times throughout the book the professor is told to "Just read books on the computer like everyone else" as if he is way behind the times for reading paperbacks. King also goes into lengthy detail describing Amazon's super-fast shipping when the professor ordered his kindle, how awesome all the Kindle features were, the "smiley" in the Amazon logo, the long battery life, and on and on and on. You cannot get through more than 2-3 paragraphs without feeling like you're reading an infomercial for Amazon.

The plot is ridiculous as well. It revolves around a magical Kindle that can access books from different versions of our reality (e.g. it finds an extra book written by Poe) and eventually, in the "Experimental" section is also finds articles about the future, a week in advance.

The only reason I'd suggest buying this book would be to make a drinking game out of every time King uses the word "Kindle" or "Amazon". Bottoms up!

I was thrilled today to finish "Under the Dome" and started browsing other Stephen King titles to add to my young Kindle collection. I selected "UR" thinking it was the obvious choice for any Kindle owner who is a Stephen King fan. After knocking this one out in less than 2 hours, the one word summation that I am left with is: FORCED. As the story is building, it seemed like several references to Amazon, the Kindle and it's features were forced into the story. How many people with a Kindle are in need of an advertisement for one? I was very put off, but continued with the story. Once the cheap plugs seemed to pass, I really started to enjoy UR. But that oh so uncomfortable feeling returned as characters/elements from other realms of King's universe seemed to be forced into the conclusion.

Overall it really doesn't make sense to have a commercial for the Kindle, then have it be exclusively available on the Kindle. That almost ruined a pretty good short story from a favorite author.

I havent read and enjoyed a King thriller in a while but this story is so fresh and real that I couldnt put it down. King writes like he has finally returned from that scary universe that has kept him from engaging younger readers. Welcome back, Mr King...please surrender your passport and stay awhile.