That book broke me. Absolutely destroyed me.
It wasn’t scary, it was… I was heartbroken.
The story centers on a town that inexplicably is cut off from the rest of the world and normal people are turned into monsters by a charismatic man who thinks he knows best.
And it didn’t take too much effort.
It’s the fact that the people were so easily turned that hurt, sure, but King is REALLY good at writing humans and I could see it happening in the real world. I could see some charismatic ass-hat basically giving permission to let peoples’ worst selves out for the world to see.
And hey, what do you know? Look what happened a few years later.
Anyway, I mostly stayed away from King from then on but I got a wild hair and decided why not give this a shot.
I did, and fell in love with it. It’s not perfect, but it’s really good. It’s got a lot of heart.
Two things:
1) This series ties into the Dark Tower
2) Both authors made a big mistake with the man’s name. They didn’t think anything of it, finished the story, it went to print, and not a single person along the way said “hey guys, why did you use the initials that are always used for a big bad in the King multiverse?”
So chalk it up to coincidence when you read it and try not to get too upset that it doesn’t play into fan theories as well as one would initially hope.
It’s a short, fun book. I’m a huge fan of this era of King’s work.
Pretty sure I’m going to need to read more.
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