Fairy Tale
I was away recently on holidays somewhere Dutch, and I searched out and paid for the hardback of this in English, on a day trip to Utrecht. The following day, I started and finished it. Now, I had a good armchair, a lake view, plenty of cigarettes and beer and a wife mostly willing to leave me alone but still. I can't remember the last time I did that, if ever. Not for a book of more than 500 pages, certainly.
It's a thumper. I saw someone on the twitter machine comment with desperation that there was "no good place to stop". There are echoes of The Hunger Games, King's own The Long Walk and 11/22/63 or Neil Gaiman's Stardust. There are strong whiffs of Narnia about the place, there are evil Kings and good but cursed Princesses, disfigured but kind loners, wicked dwarves and royal insects. The story starts with our almost adult hero dealing with loss, grief and danger in the real world before going to a different sort of reality, and there's a faithful dog who is actually a big thread in the tale. I suspect King had an old dog in the house when he was writing this, and I had one at home being minded by my college age son, so it was plinking a lot of strings for me.
As I've said before in this thread, King can be a bit hit and miss. I went through a phase of not finishing a couple of his books, I just wasn't that bothered, but this one I fucking devoured. He also tends to start big and trail off somewhat but this one keeps going like a train all the way to the finish.
His best in a while.
