UR

A very enjoyable story, a clever and interesting twist on the Kindle paradigm from Stephen King. As other reviewers have mentioned, the college professor main character finds his new Kindle to be behaving differently than he was expecting; cameo's from characters familiar from other King novels are another treat that King fans will appreciate.

I also think it is worth noting that after the very first generation Amazon Kindle was released in November 2007, the second generation then came along in February of 2009 and this Stephen King story was released exclusively on Amazon and essentially concurrent with that new evolution of the Kindle. It was obviously a cooperative promotional effort with King supporting Amazon's Kindle franchise (not that it necessarily needed much help) in two ways, both by releasing a story just as the new Kindle model was being released, as well as making the Kindle itself the central character. Here we are now in 2014, and the Kindle along with Amazon continue to be a very disruptive forces in the publishing industry, with many authors and publishers having what seems to be a rather conflicted and antagonistic relationship with digital publishing. But King seems to have embraced it from practically the very beginning, no doubt taking some heat for doing so.

As a final comment, this story is more generous than many Kindle 'singles' to be found here on Amazon, many of which can be devoured in what seems like 15 minutes or so. Two of the Lee Child Kindle singles ran to only 40 pages equivalent, for example, so at least in a certain sense this is a reasonable value by comparison. Depending upon your reading speed this will probably give you one or two hours, more or less, of enjoyment.

Enjoyable and a worthwhile purchase, for King fans and others who might be interested in sampling his writing.

With King, the mighty, word-savvy, page-turning King - You get what you paid for.

The story follows a 35 year old lit professor who, out of spite, buys a kindle. The kindle arrives and looks like all the others expect for one thing. It's pink. And it apparently has a direct line to different, literary dimensions. What if Hemingway wrote just one more book? Or what if Shakespeare wrote five more plays before his death? Even though this title is a novella, it works at an even pace, getting you comfortable with the story as well as the new techno gizmo that is the Kindle. I could just imagine King tinkering with it, jumping from his seat and bolting to his writing den to pound out the story as he examines every button on the kindle. But that's the draw of King. He gets us where we live. He always starts fresh with what is new, foreign or, quite possibly, alien to us.

I mean, think of it. A plastic box which holds thousands of books that you can just have zapped to you every time you press a button? Imagine what it was like in that pitch room. Look out Radio and TV, there's a new revolution in town. But such is the Pop of King. He tackles the things of today, haunts them tomorrow then serves them to us thick with the aroma of mystery, intrigue and horror. Twice already he's terrified me with vintage cars: From a Buick 8, Christine. He's turned the common cold into a plague: The Stand. He's turned our phones against us: Cell. Our dogs are against us: Cujo. Any way you slice it; nothing is safe from King.

With UR (read in two sittings) I'm glad King has stuck to his guns when it comes to having story be the key driving point and wait for plot later. There were a couple of times where I thought I could predict the outcome, but he cornered me with my suggestions and addressed what we were all thinking in the story. Not only does the Kindle device have lost literary titles but it also has alternative newspaper articles...I'm going to leave it at that. One reviewer called it brain candy and I'm willing to agree with them. It was so intriguing I didn't want it to end. All I can say is that I can see a second part to this fantastic tale. But what would the title be? Kindle 2: UR IT? Or maybe Pinky's Revenge? In any case, this is one title I'm willing to re-read over and over again.

By the way, there were, in King's own way, hints of other books. I'm noticing a lot of connections and crossovers in his works. Most notably, the Dark Tower Series has some relevance to the plot. I guess there's never a stand alone work when you're as prolific as the master storyteller himself.

Thanks, King. I've had the Kindle for less than two days and already you have me edging away from it in some cases and watching it from a distance the next. Will I discover another, terrifying literary underworld? One can only hope.

"UR" by Stephen King is a novella that was written exclusively for the Kindle. Wesley Smith is an English professor that, though he isn't completely opposed to technology, adheres to the idea that there is nothing quite like a good book -- the look, the weight in the hand, the smell of the paper. His girlfriend doesn't understand his narrow-mindedness when it comes to his resistance to embrace e-book readers. After an explosive fight where she hurls his copy of Deliverance across the room, she walks out on him. When he catches a student in one of his classes reading the assignment on a Kindle, he decides out of spite to purchase a Kindle if for nothing else to make her mad. When his Kindles surprisingly arrives the next day and Wesley opens the box, he begins to realize that the Kindle he received is a special Kindle. The first thing he notices is that his Kindle is pink while (at the time the story was written) the only available color for the Kindle was white. The color was only the tip of the iceberg, though. When he finally explores the Kindle, he discovers a special UR menu that contains glimpses into books written in alternate universes. Upon further investigation, he discovers that he can also access copies of the New York Times from the various dimensions, each slightly different. When he investigates the UR Local menu (under construction) menu that accesses his local newspaper, he is notified that he can only enter future dates. What follows is a desperate flight to save the woman that he still loves from certain doom.

"UR" was riveting, fascinating, and fun all in one. Reading it on a Kindle added to the uniqueness of the novella -- it was fun as King talked about the various features and menus of the Kindle to be able to see what he was talking about while reading. I read the story completely in one sitting because I simply couldn't put it down. Although the story seemed reminiscent of other King works and other stories in the genre, it was different enough to stand on its own. It was also a little predictable in parts, but that also did not detract from the story. The only other negative was it felt a little anti-climatic in the end and open to interpretation, but that isn't always a bad thing. I found "UR" to be enjoyable and entertaining and would highly recommend it to anyone with a Kindle that is looking for a quick read.