Given that I've now read about 30 Stephen King books, I have some sense of the full spectrum of his abilities. I've read some great ones (Misery, The Long Walk, Wizard and Glass), as well as some crap (The Gunslinger, Insomnia, Black House). King also knows he's written some great ones and some not-so-great- see Stan's Song of Susannah post that posits his self-insert in the Dark Tower series as a pseudo-apology for how weird and sloppy that series got sometimes. Here's The Tommyknockers, a book King himself called "awful". Yet, I was a big fan! It dragged a little towards the end, but there were a lot of great ideas here. It's a bit more science fiction than usual, as a huge piece of metal is discovered buried in the backwoods of Maine, and as it's slowly un-earthed, the whole surrounding town appears to be falling under its spell. This is one of those grand, town-wide epics King likes to write up sometimes where he can bounce around and focus a chapter or two on a few minor characters just to see their reaction to an apocalyptic situation- a few chapters about two young brothers performing a magic show were more creepy than anything else I've read of King's. The book is also a bit more coherent thematically than usual, with the buried metallic structure's effects a pretty clear allegory for nuclear fallout; this is all combined with another protagonist struggling with addiction, a topic King always seems to do well with, likely due to his personal experience. Maybe the nuclear waste metaphor was too obvious, or maybe King agrees that he should have cleaned up the ending a little, but for whatever reason, he didn't like this book at all. I did. Your results may vary!
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