User:Minecrafter0134/sandbox

Plot
"Charlene "Charlie" McGee is the seven year old daughter of Andy McGee and Victoria Tomlinson." The year is 1969, and Andy and Vicky are in an experimental light hallucinogenic drug test that is called "Lot Six". Andy and Vicky both get mind powers from the drug, even though they don't know it at first. Andy gets "the Push" while Vicky gets slight telekinesis powers. A year later, 1970, they marry each other and then then Charlie is born.

In 1972, Charlie is two years old and Andy and Vicky both find out one night that Charlie has an ability called pyrokinesis, or the ability to start fires just by thinking about it. The book starts five years later with Andy and Charlie on the run from a government agency known as "The Shop". The Shop has heard about Charlie's power, and they want to use that power for their own ill purposes, once Charlie fully matures. "When the government agents are discussing Charlie's powers, they wonder how much more powerful she might be once she hits puberty."

Andy and Charlie run from the Shop agents in Albany, New York, and barely escape with their lives. Throughout the novel, they are on the run from the Shop agents. Every time they hide someplace else, the Shop agents find them. Eventually, the agents capture both of them and bring them to Shop Headquarters, and to try to get Charlie to light fires for them, but "Charlie has refused to cooperate with the Shop." Later on, Andy manages to "push" a character by the name of Captain "Cap" Hollister into letting Andy and Charlie escape. A paid assassin steps into the picture and shoots Andy as Charlie and Andy were escaping, fatally wounding him. Enraged, Charlie then shoves all of her anger towards John Rainbird, the assassin, and kills him and then proceeds to burn down the entire headquarters. Charlie escapes then, and being very determined, proceeds to walk to the nearest library to expose herself (and the Shop) to the rest of the world. The novel ends off right with Charlie's getting ready to tell the story of what happened to her, and to expose the Shop for what it really is.

Style
"Much of the backstory is told through flashback and reminiscence," according to James Smythe of the Guardian.

Adaptations
"Firestarter, the most science fictional of King's suspense novels, spawned a flop movie" in 1984.

Reception
The Guardian noted that the book is "well written" though it also said "it's a very thin narrative stretched out over a pretty big book." Also, there is "thematic repetition" about mental powers that show up in Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, and The Dead Zone. All in all, "it's not a bad book." "Written in 1980, this is one of Stephen King's early novels, and one of the first in which a child is the protagonist."