(Warning!!! This does contain some spoilers!!!)
I recently found out about a website called Goodreads.com. For those of you who do not know about it, it is a website where you rate books that you have read and after rating 20 books, it begins to customize your reading list based on what you have read in the past.
I just finished Stephen King's next to last book, his take on the JFK assassination, titled "11/22/63." Below is my review:
This book was truly amazing. I had read a teaser for it on the Barnes and Noble's website while browsing for something else (can't really remember what now, shows how important it was in comparison), but the thought of a story by Stephen King centered around the assassination of JFK definitely got my attention. I am definitely a conspiracy theory nut (third gunman on the grassy knoll, the faked moon landing, silent black choppers, you name it, I would read it, just to see where the person is going and to see if the guy or girl might be considered a certifiable whack job or not), so I wanted to see where Mr. King was going to go with this book.
I always have a stack of "To be read" books, so when I got 11/22/63 on Christmas morning from my mother in law, it got placed in line behind the Harry Potter series that I was currently working on. But as the days wore on, the thought of a Stephen King just lying there not being read just began to eat at me. I have been a King fan since I was a freshman in high school, nearly devouring every book that the Handley and Lord Fairfax library had to offer by the man in a summer. So, I finished the third book of the Potter series and picked up 11/22/63.
Now, as I said, I am a King fan, but have had some problems with some of his later works leaving something to be desired, like the last Dark Tower book, and Under the Dome (which is still about a third completed). 11/22/63, on the other hand, was not like this. King took a few pages to bring you in to the story, but he did it with characters that seemed somewhat familiar (Jake Epping, was, after all, in the "Dark Tower" series). By the time that I put the book down for dinner the first night, I was over a hundred pages into the book. That was the way it was with the entire book. "Oh, I'll just pick it up for a few pages." And then, before I know it, fifty pages have passed, and I am putting the book down.
King pulls no punches with his blood, guts or profanity, some of which did make me wince a bit, even though you know that when you pick up a Stephen King book you are not going to get a "G" rated book from page 1 thru to the credits.
The only drawback to the book was the "harmonics" that Jake was afraid of. After Sadie was killed by Lee, instead of going back and not messing with Oswald, which caused the alternate future, why not just go back and live in the past with Sadie or bring her to the future with him? Both were viable options, especially since he already knew he loved her. King did such a great job of weaving a love story that I wanted the guy to get the girl in the end, not to have the book end the way that it did, but I guess letting her have her future the way that she did was all right as well. It just seemed a little disappointing given what "might have been."
King's mastery of the suspense genre has definitely returned with this book. I look forward to his future books as long as they are written like this.
Overall rating: 4.25
Until we meet again, remember, two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.
I welcome your feedback on this or any of my other blogs. Please use the comments button below or shoot me an e-mail at childofking88@aol.com.
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