Ratings198
Average rating3.9
the thing with King books is that they have their own rules when it comes to my star rating system. A 4 star read from King is 100x better than other book that wasn't written by king that i rated 5 stars.
Even a 3 star read from King is better than most of the 5 star reads from other authors i've read.
This book wasn't even being considered to be read by me for a while, it was pretty low on the list of what i wanted to read and i wanted to read maybe 10 more King books before i got to this one but I had this period where i reeeeeeally wanted to re-read The Shining but i promised myself i wouldn't re-read anything this year so the obvious choice was to read the sequel to The Shining... this book.
I'm glad i did because its a great great novel and story but as a sequel? nah. If you read this hoping for the feeling The Shining gave you then you've picked up the wrong book. This book had no essence from its predecessor. This doesn't mean it's bad but this book is it's own novel and holds up wonderfully by itself. It's just a completely different feel and experience.
As King said in the author note, he wrote The Shining when he was an alcoholic and he wrote this book while sober and i applaud him. He incorporated sobriety into this book and it shows how far King has come since his “the bottom” days. I'd rather a 3-4 star read from a sober happy man than a masterpiece from a sad alcoholic man.
Major respect from King.
i will say it again, yes this book is a 4 star read but translating from my King rating system to my normal one... its like a 8 star read.
If you don't read King then you're missing out!