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“...it was as if I could almost look through the world, and there was another world right behind it. A realer world.”
“Something happened,” Astrid said. “Didn’t it, Jamie? Something happened, and Mother will be here soon.”
To enjoy this book one must not be just a King fan but a King devotee.
As a King lover and being averse to DNFing ANY book...I don't care about all the specific visual imagery that takes up the slow parts of the plot. But I'm a sucker for a slow burn.
In the book, King uses the old saying of how to boil a frog. If you start the frog in a pot of cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog patiently welcomes its peril. The MC brings this up to compare himself to the frog and it is exactly the same thing King does to the reader in this book. Starting with cold water, the childhood and adolescence of the MC and methodically turning up the heat. That being said, the eldritch horror when everything boils over is underwhelming it serves its purpose, but it was a great thrill patiently waiting for it.
King uses the same snarky marker to color all his characters. I could feel the Dan and Jack Torrance in the MCs brain.
“Neutrons are sexy! Electricity is dull”
“I’m a little long in the tooth for the Bieb.
“I had no interest in being eye-to-eye with his elderly schlong.”
“I knew I was carrying something poisonous, and would probably carry it for the rest of my life. The last thing I wanted was to infect the people I loved.”