Layemi

I have some seriously mixed feelings about this book.

It opens with the big event that from the description of the book and reviews I read before buying it, was the mysterious day the whole book is about. It was strange to me to give us such intense details about the first half the day, then switch to the present and act like we don't know anything about the terrible day, and what happened. Obviously we didn't know everything, but I felt we knew enough that all the mystery surrounding that day was a bit much.
After the intensely exciting description of the terrible day, the book went downhill for me. Even the second terrible day in the present, somehow fell flat in my mind. Maybe I've read too many books and watched too many films about that type of situation, but I felt it could have been written in a more captivating way.
After that, even though things were slowly being revealed to us, I couldn't take it anymore. The conversations and characters' actions felt long and drawn out, it felt like watching a movie in slow motion. Other reviews had noted that the story goes slowly so I had prepared for that but it was too slow for me. Eventually I gave up.
However, the reason I am giving this book 4 stars and not 2 or 3 is because, out of curiosity, I found a thread that discussed the ending and I was shocked. I skipped ahead to about the last 2 chapters of the book, and I have to say that the story concludes in a satisfying and surprising, though heartbreaking (which was to be expected) way.

All in all I think if I'd had the patience I would've rated this book a confident 4 stars or maybe even 5, but the story was way too slow for me, though the ending was great.

Fantastic writing, a very well thought out story, and an ending that will leave you nearly in tears.

If I had a favourite books I read this year list this would be number 1, and it's definitely one of my favourite books I've ever read now, and definitely my number one dystopian future book.

It was my first Stephen King novel, and definitely the first of many to come.

I really really wanted to love this book. I read the longest walk also by Stephen King, and it is now one of my favourite books of all time, so I was really looking forward to reading another one of his dystopian future books.


It started out great, as usual just the writing skill itself is amazing in this book. Reading it felt like I was watching an action packed movie, and I was thinking how it has to be made into a movie if it hasn't been yet (it has).

When the main game started and the conspiracies started coming to light it was interesting then too, but as he started going from place to place with basically the same thing happening everywhere, it started to get really boring and tedious, and just felt like it was going nowhere.


I understand where King (Bachman) was trying to go with the plot, and I understood that it was building up to something, but it was just taking way way WAY too long to get there.


The ending wasn't necessarily disappointing, but I can't say that I didn't see it coming. I saw the end of the long walk coming too, but in that novel the build up to what I knew but didn't want to believe would happen was written and described so beautifully, the ending left me nearly in tears.


With this novel however I was just glad I was finally done with the book.


How well written this novel was and how much I enjoyed for the long walk will keep me still reading his novels, but this one definitely let me down a little bit.