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3.35 AVERAGE
3.35 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
DNF. From the get go I had my reservations (the first 100 pages are a fart joke) and then it became a military vs alien story. I was interested in the four friends and Duddits, but aside from that I just didn’t care what happened.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm a long time SK fan but this one was a struggle for me.
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
This book is an unstoppable trash machine in both a good and a bad sense.
On the good side, you get a very well-written thriller full of bonkers scatological body horror, juicy alien imagery, military drama, and telepathy (so much telepathy).
On the bad side, you get a well-meaning but deeply problematic portrayal of a character with Down's syndrome. And it's not just a case of "oh, there's this one scene that bothered me" – the whole story is constructed around this and leads to some of the corniest stuff King has committed to paper.
I feel like the people who most vocally hate this book have issues with the "good side" of its trashiness, and to me that just means that these readers can't match this book's freak. This is a novel that was written while fucked up on pain killers; it is bringing exactly the correct energy to well-established sci-fi horror tropes. But it's also very, very ableist.
In fact, this book is a constant struggle of good and bad trashiness: It has fantastic gross-out horror scenes but also protracted pointless chases where you can feel the novel being veeeeeery long. Much of it takes place, very impressively, on a kind of psychic mental plane, but then internal inconsistencies and daytime-TV-level discourse about disabled people come in. There are some genuinely interesting character moments, but there are also some of the worst sentences King has ever written.
In the end, I will admit that I was largely won over by the violent and trippy candy this book packs, and if it had taken a different direction thematically (say, focusing even more on pain and broken bodies rather than on humanity, cognition and telepathy), it would be a proper fave for me. Now it's more of a guilty pleasure, but it's just such a hot mess that I do recommend it for those looking for exquisite trash.
I don’t think many people would or should enjoy this book, but it’s a must if you’re a King fan and/or a freaky literary trash goblin
On the good side, you get a very well-written thriller full of bonkers scatological body horror, juicy alien imagery, military drama, and telepathy (so much telepathy).
On the bad side, you get a well-meaning but deeply problematic portrayal of a character with Down's syndrome. And it's not just a case of "oh, there's this one scene that bothered me" – the whole story is constructed around this and leads to some of the corniest stuff King has committed to paper.
I feel like the people who most vocally hate this book have issues with the "good side" of its trashiness, and to me that just means that these readers can't match this book's freak. This is a novel that was written while fucked up on pain killers; it is bringing exactly the correct energy to well-established sci-fi horror tropes. But it's also very, very ableist.
In fact, this book is a constant struggle of good and bad trashiness: It has fantastic gross-out horror scenes but also protracted pointless chases where you can feel the novel being veeeeeery long. Much of it takes place, very impressively, on a kind of psychic mental plane, but then internal inconsistencies and daytime-TV-level discourse about disabled people come in. There are some genuinely interesting character moments, but there are also some of the worst sentences King has ever written.
In the end, I will admit that I was largely won over by the violent and trippy candy this book packs, and if it had taken a different direction thematically (say, focusing even more on pain and broken bodies rather than on humanity, cognition and telepathy), it would be a proper fave for me. Now it's more of a guilty pleasure, but it's just such a hot mess that I do recommend it for those looking for exquisite trash.
I don’t think many people would or should enjoy this book, but it’s a must if you’re a King fan and/or a freaky literary trash goblin