I'm trying to remember the last Stephen King book I actually finished (and liked)... it honestly might have been the late 1990s or early 2000s. Of all the things he's written since, I remember reading (and not really loving) Cell, Under the Dome, and maybe Joyland. I'm not 100% sure about that last one. While I think Stephen King is an excellent storyteller, there are three problems that keep me from enjoying his work on the regular.

First, I think he tends to overwrite his books. Other than his pulp crime/horror novels, he hasn't written a book less than 400 pages long in well over a decade, and I think that's to the detriment of his stories. Many of them just go on too long, and this book had a bit of that going on. At nearly 600 pages, I found myself skimming parts of the book (especially between pages 200 and 400) where it felt like the narrative was just spinning its wheels and the story wasn't really moving along. This book was a compelling 576 pages, but it would have been a riveting 400 pages.

Second, it feels like his work is a bit stuck in a bygone era, with certain references and quirks of the writing feeling like they're getting older and more detached as time marches on. While it wasn't a dealbreaker by any means, this book has pre-teen kids snacking on candy cigarettes (which, while still sold in some places have been out of the mainstream for decades), calling each other nicknames and using slang that feels like it hasn't been updated since the 1980s, and barely makes any mention (let alone use) of modern technology from the Information Age, with vague references to using "the internet" and "cell phones." There were definitely some parts of this book that I found myself shaking my head at and thinking, "This sounds like an old man who hasn't been out in society in twenty years wrote it." And, to be fair, I suppose that's somewhat true at this point given that Stephen King is in his late seventies and largely reclusive.

Third, King has often touted his writing process of being a "pantser" (someone who discovers the narrative as he goes, rather than plotting out the narrative in advance). In the past, it's led to some real random endings of his books, including actual "WTF" moments where I'm into a story up until the very end where the story goes off in a seemingly random direction that comes out of left field. This book honestly didn't have that problem; the narrative felt like it progressed toward an ending that was still pretty out there, but it wasn't completely unexpected or random.

Overall, this was one of the better Stephen King books I've read in recent memory. Aside from some of the criticisms above, he is an excellent writer who is able to tell a compelling story with interesting characters, and this book kind of spurred by interest in reading more of his work again. Maybe I'll finally finish up The Dark Tower series, or Fairy Tale, which I already have on audiobook.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 6:52pm • Submit your own review...