s I've taken to doing when writing reviews, I first checked out the reader reviews on Amazon.com.

Overall there are 159 for this book, and the average is 3.5/5 stars.  The reviews seem to be a pretty mixed bag, with a few 5 star raves, and a lot of 2.5 or 3 star "ehhh's".  Very few 1 or 0 star pans, but you can usually disregard those as being from jealous or bitter haters.

My reaction?  I'm in the middle, one of the 2.5 or 3 star people.  I of course have more to say about it than most normal reviewers.  Which is true of pretty much everything, as anyone who reads this site regularly probably realizes by now.

Go check some of the reader reviews there if you like.  I read about eight and that was sufficient for my needs. Just for the sake of comparison, I checked a couple of King's recognized classics, It and The Stand.  Both of them have 4.5/5 ratings, and I'd say those books deserve it, so I'll trust the fan review consensus, at least so far.

Okay, so Buick 8 (as I'll be calling it for the duration of this review, when I can be arsed to call it something other than "the book") is about a weird, spooky, demon-possessed, alternate-dimension, spaceship, miracle, etc... which looks like an old Buick.  It's held in the impound garage of a state police barracks for about 30 years.  The novel is largely a flashback, narrated in a sort of tag team by half a dozen of the main characters, who are all cops working at the station.

The car isn't actually all of the things I said in the first sentence of the last paragraph, but it's at least two or three of them.  It is never entirely explained, which I think was a good move on King's part.  Explaining the magical mystical contraption almost always ruins things, since it gets too scientific.  Readers can easily suspend their disbelief for pseudo-science or magic or outright supernatural causes.  But when you start trying to mix them, describing wonky science and mechanical possession and working in vengeful spirits, it just gets ridiculous.  Better to leave things unexplained.  Weirdness and supernaturalness just are.  Explain the consequences, don't waste time trying to explain the weird thing itself.

King is smart in this novel, and does just this.  The car (which isn't really a car) just is.  There is no explanation of any type for how it appeared or where it came from or how it works or how it does the things it does.  There are even great inconsistencies in how things work, but you probably won't notice them, and even if you do, you'll just overlook it, since nothing else is being explained, so why worry about one more bit of confusion. It's very Lovecraftian for much of it, with weird and inexplicable things occurring, and creatures from another dimension (or somewhere) showing up, and no way for mortal men to explain it.

He also never makes any effort to tie up all the loose ends and summarize things either.  There is a conclusion, but no real climax. No money shot/event that is built up for for 300 pages, and then all the more satisfying for the long foreplay. This is not an especially good thing, but at least he's consistent.

The immediate parallel is to Christine, which also had a weird and evil car, but this novel has nothing whatsoever to do with Christine.  It's like comparing Pac Man to The Matrix since they both involve computers. And actually that's a much tighter comparison than Buick 8 to Christine.

Buick 8 is most like a Lovecraft story, where men are confronted with an inscrutable object that's demonstrating properties they can't possibly begin to understand, and the inexplicable creatures that appear to be associated with it. Not that the tone is anything like the gothic creepiness that is Lovecraft, but it's similar in plot, at least early on, when all is an unexplained mystery.  Later on it becomes an explained mystery, and is less interesting, and the last 50 pages or so are pretty boring/slow, and serve as a long resolution, of sorts.

Okay, that half-assed plot summary aside, I'll do some analysis of what I find most interesting, and that's how it works as a novel.

I wasn't very impressed, to be blunt.

Buick 8 is basically a very long short story, one that he dressed up with just enough characters and side stories and dragged out flashbacks to get it over the 300 page mark.  Much like his other recent novels (Bag of Bones and Dreamcatcher are the two I've read) the writing is sound and it's a relatively enjoyable tale, but it's very sparse on imagination or inventiveness.  And basically nothing happens.  The scale is small, I guess is a way to look at my complaint. Not much time passes in the course of the book, (though there may be flashbacks) the characters are essentially static, and it's a relatively small cast.  Technically a "novel" but not really, at least not a quality one. Nothing to hold a candle to the inventiveness and depth to his best work, such as It or The Stand, or even shorter stuff like Christine or Salem's Lot or Pet Semetery.

I am envious of King's ability to take the smallest of plots and fluff them up with characters and dialogue and minor events, and somehow turn what could have been an 80 or 90 page short story into a 350 page novel.  Thus increasing its marketability by about 5000%.

There is some nice writing though. One thing I noted very early on, on page 14, (and never thought was surpassed in the rest of the novel):

"At least you're honest," he said.

But was I? Or was I begging the goddam question? I didn't feel particularly honest right then; I felt like a man who can't swim looking at a boy who is floundering in deep water.  And once again Shed B caught my eye.  Is it cold in here? this boy's father has asked, back in the one-upon-a-time, back in the day.  Is it cold in here, or is it just me?

No, it hadn't been just him. 

Probably not very useful to you out of context like this, but it's early on when they're investigating the Buick, which emits cold when it's in a weird mood.  I liked that last line, "No, it hadn't been just him."

So why isn't it a better book? It's not just because Buick 8 isn't as interesting or exciting (though it's not) but it's the fact that there's just not very much too it.  You will not find your mind expanding or being blown at any point, and there is no big exciting conclusion.  There is basically one medium-sized action scene, and then a few other smaller ones, but since all the smaller ones are in flashbacks, and we know that all of the principles are alive 5 or 10 or 15 years later to tell the story, there's no suspense.  At least not for me, but I've long been a non-fan of flashbacks, for this very reason.  Where is the suspense if you know that the main character turns out alright?

The main writing technique in Buick 8 is to tell it entirely from the PoV of various characters.  The narrator voice alternates from chapter to chapter, though one male cop is the main character/narrator. It's not really a gimmick, it's just a more formalized roving 3rd person narration.  King usually goes for full out omniscient, which is the easiest way to write since you can just drop in any details you like at any time, leap into any minor character's head for a few paragraphs or pages to get the reader info that only that character knows, etc.  It's a very lazy and easy way to write.  Sticking to one narrator is the hardest, since then they only know and the reader only knows what they see, and the reader gets it as they see it, which opens the door to an unreliable narrator, which is a concept that usually confuses readers, and has to be written very carefully.

What King does in Buick 8 is to have the characters tell a story that most of them know, and he just alternates who is doing the telling, usually switching to the one who plays a pivotal role in the flashback to narrate that chapter. It's not a bad gimmick, but all the male characters have entirely interchangeable voices, and you'll probably not bother to pay attention to who is talking now/next. I didn't, I'm never good at names in a novel, and I had no problem following along even not knowing who was talking all the time.  It doesn't matter.  There is one female character and her narration portions are very distinctive, but King goes way out of his way to make them that way.  She's always thinking about how foolish men are, in a good natured "women know best" sort of way, and gets to narrate the emotional and scary parts, since she's able to be in touch with her emotions.  All the other guys are much more neutral about everything, showing at most some anger or regret.  The woman gets all the tragic death scenes, and sorrow.  Which works pretty well, but it would have been nice if the guys were at all distinctive.  Or memorable.

Overall, I'd give it about a 3/5 rating, simply because the first 100 or 200 pages are very good.  Not great, not large in scope, but the unfolding mystery and continual revelations of the weirdness of the Buick is a good, engaging plot device. It's very reminiscent of a couple of Lovecraft stories, with utterly unexplainable phenomena, and men of science putting around, trying to figure out what they are dealing with, while not really appreciating the dangers they are facing.

The lack of a big climax is a weakness.  The lack of any overall explanation is also a weakness, though there is enough hinted at to make it interesting, if less than satisfying. There's also not much of a building towards any sort of climax, so there isn't that much to pull you along, other than being curious to see what happens next.  Nothing all that much does happen next, but the minor stuff is pretty interesting.

I don't know where I would rank it amongst all the King titles, but like most of his long time fans I think everything he did before about 1990 is better than anything he's done since.  It wasn't the worst thing I've read from him, but it wasn't much.  Maybe just behind Dreamcatcher but a little better than Bag of Bones, but way behind the stuff he did in his prime.  Worth a library read, not worth buying.

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