The dead zone
Genre: Mystery, Fantasy
Original publication date: August 1979
Book description: Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers that he can see people’s futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems.
When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future.
Thoughts:
Johnny is the one we follow mainly, he has a very regular life and is interested in a young coworker, they're still at the beginning of stages of their relationship. At Halloween, they go on a date, and he has a huge hit of luck, or that'ss the way he sees it then. But one day after a date, he leaves her house and on his way home he gets into a car accident. He is in a coma for a while, the family, the girlfriend, everybody continues their life and give up on him ever waking up.
The real story is after he wakes up and he discovers he has a certain ability to know things about people he gets in contact with. This part is where I have a few issues with, the fact that he has a certain ability to discover hidden things of people make people "fear", I mean they are afraid of him, that is the first reaction people have when h manages to prove he really is not scamming people.
I have enraged by the way some people behave and think about abilities they can't explain. Johnny wanted nothing more than to lead a normal life and yet he continues to publicly use his ability and he can't keep quiet about what he sees. so bad choices, he will not keep his power secret if he continues to announce to the whole world what he sees coming.
It is understandable that he wants to pick up his life where he left off, but his girlfriend is happily married and they can no longer continue to be close as he can't convince himself to let her go and she has a soft spot for him.
There are a few annoying and yet very fitting situations, people pulling away from him due to his newfound abilities, people who are very confident and grateful to him, people who go crazy and just plain stupid as well. Again a very realistic portrayal as people will react differently to the same events.
The climax of the story is when Johnny finally manages to convince the popular opinion of his power to be destroyed, people think he is a fake. Now he sees a very bad future all thanks to a specific political figure that people don't really see as anything other than a good opportunity for the people in power to step up and get their act together. No one else sees this individual as dangerous or takes him seriously, but then things change, the person suddenly becomes a public favorite, and Johnny is alone on what he knows and fears so he needs to decide what to do to stop it.
The book felt to be dragging in the middle, and then it picks up all of a sudden, the last 100 pages of the story everything happened too fast.
It was a great story overall just the pacing was a bit off, but I still enjoyed my time reading it very much.
Ok so this is another book I finished last month but I just was not able to post it before, so sorry about it. But hopefully, this week I'll catch up and just post the reviews for the books of this month after the 12th. I really need to work on scheduling those and be sure to get ready.
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