The Tommyknockers

2/10

Okay so this book is clearly worse than Ready Player One. It's worse than catcher in the Rye, but my hatred for Catcher in the Rye is pure; unadulterated. Nothing can touch it. So that leaves Skullsworn and Ready Player Two. Both were more painful to read but they were also significantly shorter. It's tough... I'm going to say this is the fourth worst book I've ever read.

The saddest part is that I thought the beginning was okay, and I started to get a false hope that maybe, just maybe, my expectations were low enough to end up enjoying this. I will also admit the last 10% was decent. That leaves the middle 70% to be a rambling, incoherently, absurdly horny and downright weird reading experience that was tedious to the maximum. Most of the things happening were goofy ghost-alien shenanigans and when it wasn't that, it was just random characters rambling on and on and on about just...nothing. And then having sex. And then thinking about having sex again. And then rambling. And then ghost-aliens. And then sex. Repeat for 500 pages. This book should be required reading in Narcotics anonymous because reading this is the most effective deterrent to not do cocaine that I've ever seen. Just so many times I was like, “why? Why are we doing this? Why are a woman's breasts turning into a giant, megabreast? Did King do such a large coke binge during this that he locked his editor in a basement and released the book immediately?”


I do find it interesting that King used elements of this book elsewhere, after getting sober. It's basically Dreamcatchers, Needful Things, and Under the Dome merged into one uncomfortable experience. I didn't like Needful Things either, so maybe “a town gets taken over by a malevolent presence” is not a story from King I enjoy. Anyway...the worst is definitely behind me, and I would not recommend anybody read this, unless you're a King completionist like me or just like pain.