Nick

This was a pretty long book, but I feel like it kept up the pace pretty well. However, the first and second halves kind of felt like an exquisite corpse exercise, let's say pre/post Duane's death as a good dividing point. The first half is more a town mystery with kids banding together to face it head on. The second half becomes more of a supernatural/demonic battle and that's why so many have compared it to King's IT.

I did thoroughly enjoy this book. Simmons is a great writer. However, I did have some issues with it that keep me from giving it 5 stars. If I could do halves, I'd give this a 3.5. The first issue I had was one character's gratuitous use of the n word. Now, I know that this type of language was probably pretty common in the time and place, but it does nothing for the plot or exposition. The story the character tells essentially goes nowhere and isn't brought up again until one of the kids 200 pages later mistakes another character for being black. That leads into my next issue with the book which is that the conspiracy plot essentially goes nowhere. It builds up and then immediately goes in another direction. We're led to believe that there's this deep-seated secret society and then find out there's like a mold that can bring people back from the dead and...worms? And the worms go from like small and ingestible to 20' long for some reason?

My other huge issue came in the second half and it involved a sexual encounter with one of the main characters. Keep in mind, these kids are like 10-11 years old. Now, a lot of the theme of this novel is growing up, but this particular scene just felt unnecessary and creepy. Kids are at a birthday party, they get a bit touchy-feely. Way too much description of the kids' body parts. The female involved is barely mentioned before or after this. The entire birthday party could've been erased from the story and wouldn't have had the slightest impact.

So yeah, having said all of that, I get why people compare it to SK's writings in that he loves gratuitous racial slurs and sex scenes involving children. Both of those things are my biggest criticisms of King's works. But I will say this: Simmons was a lot better at delivering dialogue and sticking the ending.

This was a very fun romp overall. I definitely enjoyed the first half more. I wish Simmons would've went more one way or the other when fleshing out the story of the “Bell.” Its mystery just kind of went away but it wasn't even really that necessary to begin with. The kids were all great and had their own distinct personalities. The adults were all dumb and useless. Sandlot meets Night of the Comet meets IT yadda yadda yadda. Thanks for reading all of that (or skipping to the end).

In 2016 I picked up [b:Finders Keepers 23492589 Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2) Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469092087l/23492589.SY75.jpg 41884478] at an airport bookstore. It wasn't until after paying for it that I realized that that book was actually part two in a new series.Fast forward several years. I'm staring at my shelf and spot Finders Keepers again. I'm running out of new books to read so I finally order Mr Mercedes and begin to read it during the pandemic.Now I know that Stephen King likes to be a genre chameleon from time to time, but he often finds himself using familiar tropes for comfort. This particular book does start in true King fashion but then goes into a pretty tense cat-and-mouse game. A man runs over and kills several people at a job fair in a Mercedes; thus, he is given the nickname Mr Mercedes. Bill Hodges, a retired detective, starts getting taunted by the very same Mr M. This quickly escalates in a game of wits with Bill trying to stop the killer from striking again.Also notable in this book is the first appearance of Holly Gibney, a new fan favorite from this point on who now even has her own spinoff book [b:Holly 65916344 Holly Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1674418461l/65916344.SY75.jpg 106237905].

I rather enjoyed this book. Gaiman has a way of writing characters like no one else. My biggest gripe is the portrayal of the New Gods. I think they were a good idea, but things like making Technology a spoiled brat kid just makes Neil seem like a grumpy old man yelling “Get off my lawn!” There were a couple other things I could nitpick, but overall I thought it was a fun ride from start to finish.

Meh

This was the OK'est book. Gaunt was a great antagonist. That was about it though.