Rating: 
Summary: One of King's Best--In the Same Vein as Green Mile
Review: King's newest is closer in style/tone to his nostalgic books, like _The Green Mile_ or novella _Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption_. The book concerns a weird car-like thing that is discovered outside a gas station and then moved into one of the garages behind a Pennsylvania state trooper barracks. It looks like a Buick, but it won't hold mud, the wheels don't keep gravel in the treads, and scratches and dents disappear overnight. And then there's the occasional "light storm" followed by strange creatures which appear out of the "car's" trunk. And the occasional person or creature that seems to disappear while in the "car's" presence. The book chronicles the experiences that the troopers in this particular station have had with the car ever since it was first discovered some 30 years before. The son of a trooper recently killed in the line of duty has been hanging out at the barracks, doing odd jobs and learning to be a dispatcher, when he convinces the troopers to tell him the story of the car, which was a topic of particular fascination to his dead father. This is a very entertaining novel, told from multiple points of view and a variety of different narrative voices, and ultimately, it seems to be about the difficulty of finding meaning in life. The troopers never do discover the secret behind the car (is it a lost/displaced piece of alien machinery?) and the story doesn't really seem to have a climax or denouement (although, ultimately, the novel does).
This is a great book and will make a great movie, if the right person picks it up (I can see Frank Darabont being drawn to this material).
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: This is the worst book Stephen King has written! The plot, if there was one, is silly. He continually leads up to something exciting about to happen which fizzles out to nothing. The terrors are something a small child might dream up. Total waste of money and I was very disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Somehow goes too long!! Even though it's short!
Review: okay, finished this book last night...... took forever. because 150 pages of it [are bad]. . . very repetitive, very boring, all in the past, all stuff we know will not lead to a spectacular outcome. . . could've been summed up in 2 paragraphs but takes 100 pages ... . .
BUT. . . the beginning is great. . . the beginning is so good. everything about the discovery of the Buick and the set up of the police station . . . great. . . the middle drags and drags and drags and drags. . . then there's an incident towards the end where two things happen at once and it's masterfully suspenseful. . . and then it flashes back to the present, has a boneheaded & simple momentary conflict, which gets resolved then flips ahead and has a really really really terrible cheesy plot device , or gimmick you might call it, and then it ends. The first part is sort of like The Green Mile with a modern police station and a car instead of John Coffey. . . so that's what it's about. . . it's okay, but he's done better books. If this were trimmed down to the size of Tom Gordon it would've been classic.
Rating:
Summary: Framing device damages narrative
Review: Stephen King chose to write his latest novel as a story within a story. The framing story--a group of Pennsylvania state troopers telling a story to a deceased trooper's son--dictates that virtually all the action takes place in the past. The framing story is of no interest within itself, serving only to pad out and slow down the "real" story.
For quite some years I have read King only because I am afraid of missing something. You won't miss much if you skip this one. The horror effects are more gross than frightening. One of King's weaknesses has always been that he usually can't come up with any explanation for the events he describes. The best horror writers do provide the reader this closure. King's affectation, and crutch, is his folksy style: when his characters speak in cliches you are supposed to attribute the triteness to realism, not lack of skill or imagination in the author. But when he repeats the tired phrase, "there's never a cop around when you need one" on two pages in a row, it becomes clear that King's writing, not his characters, lacks depth and insight. Two of his best books are Thinner (written as Richard Bachman) and The Dark Half. From a Buick 8 is a book every horror fan can afford to miss.
Rating:
Summary: STEPHEN KING IS STILL THE MAESTRO OF HORROR!!!
Review: As a long time reader of Stephen King's fiction (I started in 1977), this is the one author who I treasure more than life itself. I personally think of him as the "Charles Dickens" of American Literature for the 20th Century and would gladly argue the case with any critic. With Mr. King's newest novel, FROM A BUICK 8, he once again proves that no one can do it better. This is the story of Troop D of the Pennsylvania State Police and the 1954 Buick that they've kept hidden for twenty-two years in Shed B behind their barracks in the rural community of Statler Township. It begins in 2001, the year after Trooper Curtis Wilcox is killed in a terrible traffic accident. His eighteen-year-old son, Ned, begins to hang around the barracks in an effort to keep the memory of his father alive. In time, he discovers the Buick in Shed B and questions Sandy Dearborn, the commander of Troop D, about it. Sandy decides to tell Ned the background history of the car and the part his late father played in it-from the discovery of the abandoned Buick at a gas station by Troopers Curtis Wilcox and Ennis Rafferty in 1979, to the disappearance of Rafferty a few hours later, to the stark realization of just how dangerous this oddity of a vehicle was, and to the hideous other-world creatures that occasionally popped out of its trunk. Twenty-three years later, however, the car is still hungry and decides to go after the son of the man it could never catch unaware. FROM A BUICK 8 takes us into the small family of Troop D and the secrets they kept hidden for over two decades. It's about a car that may be a portal to another dimension...a car that's always waiting patiently for someone to get too close to it at the wrong time. But more than anything, this is a story about friendship, the curiosity that people have for the unknown, and the journey an eighteen-year-old boy has to take in order to become a man. Only Stephen King could write a book in which the characters don't just come alive for the reader, they become your friends in every sense of the word and you care about what happens to them. That's the power of Mr. King's storytelling. You're not reading a novel; you're living it! This book grabbed me in the first few pages and didn't let go till the end, when I felt a deep sadness in my heart for a past that can never be relived. The other night, after I'd finished reading FROM A BUICK 8, I saw a GM commercial on television about the legendary car designer, Harley Earl, and guess what he was standing beside-a 1954 Buick Roadmaster! The whole thing gave me goose bumps. Thank you, Mr. King, for doing it again.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad King turns good King
Review: After the catastrophic "Dreamcather" I must admit that I actually thought that it was a good idea that Stephen King retired. It had been a long time since he had written a really good novel on his own(Black House was excellent, but that was partially thanks to Peter Straub!) But as an old fan I of course picked the book up and started reading. By the time I emerged at the last page, I had a big smile on my lips! This is truly "vintage-king".Reading this book really brought back memories of the time when i would spend all day at school or work, thinking how great it would be to get home and start reading the latest kingbook.
The story is not in anyway highly original, but it is told so masterfully that its impossible to put the book down. There are moments that are truly scary, and as with all other kingbooks, there are also moments that are touching, funny, well you name it. So King still has it, but we just have to admit that there are long intervals in between, and maybe it is a good idea that he slowed down or started writing in ohter genres. But King still has the talent for scaring people and this book certainly proves it. As a sidenote, it should be mentioned that Scribner has done a fine job in producing this book. The cover is a bit boring, but the text and typography as well as printing looks really good. On top of that the book has a smythsewn binding, which secures many reading without the book falling apart.
Rating:
Summary: Zzzzzz
Review: I've read everything Stephen King's published, and if it has come down to mediocre stuff like this then it is probably best that the rumors are true and Mr. King isn't going to write any more stand alone novels. It's sad in a way...like Michael Jordan getting to the point where he is no longer able to hold a basketball. I'm looking forward to the last Dark Tower books (which have been his strongest recent stuff and excellent - including the short story in his recent collection of short essays), but I have to say that for a dyed (or is it "died"?) in the wool Stephen King fan the current book is better suited to putting you to sleep at night than keeping you up turning pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost...Almost...Not Quite
Review: "From A Buick 8" is a novel that we cannot admire as much as we want to (or thought we would, even well past its midpoint). Which is not to suggest there is not an abundance of riches for us to enjoy. As others have noted, there is a "campfire story" quality to the narrative(s) that is both engaging and effective. King has occasionally and very successfullly utilized this variant of the "Oral Tradition" before: most notably in "The Green Mile" and, to a lesser extent, in "The Body" and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." You remember the Oral Tradition, right? Our Engish Professors treated it as a genuine genre of literature: a passing on of stories, lessons and truths from generation to generation. I've always felt that was a bit of a stretch: I argued once with a Professor that such a view suggested Homer rallying the crowd to listen to his telling of The Iliad or The Odyssey: "Come on, now, listen to this. We haven't yet invented writing or ink or paper or binding, so until then this is as good as it gets." But of course there is an oral tradition, just without the capital letters. Families and friends tell stories because it is in our nature to tell stories: be they brief anecdotes or deteailed, comprehensive histories. When King uses this device, the reader is not the audience, but an interested eavesdropper: a priviledged interloper who learns indirectly from a tale meant for others (and of which there will be no written record: no "paper trail," as Sandy makes clear). The essence of this approach is captured by King early in "Buick 8": "Go on," he said to me. "What happened next?" "Oh boy. Who can resist that?" Certainly not us, casual yet involved witnesses to this story. The story itself is clearly one of Rite of Passage (it can be argued convincingly that most of King's books are). Even in his most explicit tales of horror ("Salem's Lot," for example, or "Pet Semetary"), the supernatural is always a means rather than an end. King's horror is a cataclysmic catalyst that separates the young from the old, the courageous from the cowards, the wise from the foolish and the good from the evil. Those who complain that King has deserted his roots as a terrormeister and become something of a faux literateri miss this point, I think. King has written achingly of the Rite of Passage for the old ("Insomnia," for example) and the young ("IT") and those caught in between ("The Stand"). King's extraordinary gift to capture the sounds and smells and memories of humankind are what will, over time, set him well apart from his contemporaries. In "Buick 8" it is only superficially the Rite of Passage for Ned, and more profoundly a Rite for the PSP Troopers who share the task of continuing the story of the Roadmaster. In fact, Ned's role in the book is not to be a fully realized character but to be a remembrance (or cause of remembrance) of things past. Those dis-satisfied with Ned's character may perhaps not fully appreciate this. So, yes, there is much to enjoy in "Buick 8." As others have well noted, there is a special pleasure in reading a King book: we know we will be in the sure hands of a master craftsman. Hell, I feel a tingle of anticipation just driving home with the just-bought book. So what's the problem? A rather major one, I'm afraid. It seems to me that there is an implicit contract between author and reader (particularly so in the case of King, who courts his "Constant Reader" with apparent affection). In "Buick 8," more than in any of his other work, King violates that contract. The terms of that contract are straightforward enough: we, the readers, do not demand answers, but we have a right to resolution; or, at least, accountability. In "Buick 8," King has written an inconclusive book in order to describe the inconclusive and indecipherable nature of our lives and our world (or is that worlds?). Sorry. Not fair. Breaks the rules. Violates the contract. If you would write of an unknowable world, be it ours or some other, then follow the example of religious, humanistic and atheistic existentialists: discover the order underlying the apparent chaos, or find order (or at least meaning) in the chaos itself. But King takes unfair advantage, equating an incomprehensible world with the right to litter his story with a trail of loose ends and unanswered questions. For example, is the Roadmaster just "forgotten?" Is it some sort of portal? A breathing reed in a swamp or an oxygen valve on scuba gear? Do we see the Buick as a car because we "have to see it as something"? Was the Roadmaster deserted by design, or according to some purpose? Was the mysterious driver an agent of another world, or a victim? It is easy enough for a writer to distribute red herrings when
none will be called to account. "I woke up and it was all a dream" is likely the most dishonest ending to any story. In "Buick 8" King has not crossed that line. But he's come much, much too close. It may be that all of these issues will be addressed in the final volumes of "The Dark Tower" saga, but that is of little comfort. It is a virtue of King's work that his books and stories intertwine; it is a vice that he may use that as a "wait until later" rationale to write a book with no ending: a cracked windshield does not resolve the story, it merely provides a means of escape.
Rating:
Summary: The wrong Buick on the cover?
Review: So the story is about a 1954 Buick Roadmaster. But that's a 1953 Buick on the cover!
Rating:
Summary: Comfortably Numb
Review: A devilish temptation in reviewing a novel by an author such as Stephen King is to make comparisons. Several professional reviews indicated that From a Buick 8 could be compared to The Green Mile. Maybe. Both books study what amounts to a Gordian Knot of tangled mystery and the people who attempt to solve the conundrum. That, however, is where the similarity takes a hard left into hitherto unexplored King territory. King has had similar characters and another book about an old car rolled off a Twilight Zone assembly line. Probably the work that comes the closest is an old short story called "The Mist" in that King shows a propensity towards unique worlds and dimensions walking uncomfortably close to our own. From a Buick 8 is a story that centers around Ned Wilcox and the rural Pennsylvania state police of Troop D. Ned Wilcox is a boy confronting the ambiguous and amorphous change from teenager to man. To confound his journey to manhood, Ned's father Curt Wilcox (a member of Troop D while alive) is killed by a horrible auto accident somewhat reminiscent of King's own misfortune in Maine. (There are differences. Thank God, King survived his own brutal brush with death.) Determined to help the boy understand what happened to his father, Sandy Dearborn and other troopers tell Ned about the mystery lying inside Shed B. King adopts the posture of several different points of view in painting the narrative of From a Buick 8. He weaves a tightly woven tale that relentlessly yanks the reader bodily by the neck into one of King's most macabre and entertaining roller coaster rides. From a Buick 8 is about as addictive and hypnotizing as truly great fiction can be. One can almost hear Sandy Dearborn spinning Troop D's incredible tale as a whispering mental tug draws the reader helplessly in front of Shed B to take his or her own peek. For me, the release of a new Stephen King book is an advent reminiscent of discovering the value of a library card and all the wonders it can unleash. From a Buick 8 is a gift from a well-seasoned writer who seems to have his own unlimited universe through which he unselfishly leads readers much like an old-fashioned theater usher using a flashlight to take a willing ticket holder through the pitch dark theater to his or her seat. "There are things," can't you hear him say, "that occasionally move in the dark. You really don't have to worry. Much." Then, as he walks away... "Enjoy the show."
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