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2.5 stars rounded up to three... grudgingly. It came down to a coin toss; it's that close to being two stars.

There's a good story in here, but Lord do you have to cut through a bunch of crap to get to it. The most amazing line in the book is actually in the author's note at the end: So and so "gave us enormously helpful readings of an early, much-longer version of the novel. We are much obliged to them." So am I! This thing is 700 pages long, and that's easily 350 pages too many. The idea that it was even longer at one point...

Anyway, a lot of the extra stuff is fluff, and I normally like fluff as long as it's done well, but it wasn't done well here. There is so much extra needless crap, and it constantly interrupts the flow of the story. We get background anecdotes for every character almost every other page. A little bit of that goes a long way.

We also get phrases which are sometimes witty, but they constantly interrupt the action, and sometimes they're repetitive. Here's an example: "Outside the main doors, shadowed from the brightening sun by the remains of the Fleetwood RV - never to take Barry Holden and his family on camping expeditions again - Frank felt" blah blah blah. "Never to take Barry..." etc. is unnecessary. We know the RV was Barry's. We know it's smashed. We've been told these things several times, so we know it's never going to be used again. That phrase would be a nice interjection if this were an isolated thing, but this kind of thing is ev.ery.where! During the showdown at the end, I wanted to shout at the book "Jesus, dudes, just tell the goddam story!" And this is coming from someone who loves Charles Dickens, a master of using 50 words when 10 would do just as well. Dickens does it well. King normally does too, but he missed the mark this time. I know he co-wrote it with his son, but I would think he'd have to sign off on it before it went to press. Still, Stephen could benefit from an editor who could reel him in the past couple of decades, and I guess his son was using the same editor. But when you're the King, you can write what you want because it will always sell.

I'm trying to judge this story on its own merits, but that's hard to do since I've read almost everything else King has written. I'm tempted to retitle this Under the Storm of the Green Stand because I was constantly reminded of four of his other works, namely the books Under the Dome, The Stand, The Green Mile (tangentially), and the miniseries Storm of the Century. The last is also a screenplay, but I have no plans to read it because I can't stand plays/scripts. I'd much rather watch it, and I've seen it a million times because it's just that good. You should check it out. If it's a choice between watching it or reading this, you should still watch the miniseries.

King normally shines with characters as well, but once again he falls short. The sudden turnaround in attitude and temperament at the end for some of them was unrealistic. At least I wasn't buying it. I enjoyed some other characters, though. And speaking of characters, I've seen a lot of gripes that there were too many. I kind of agree, but kind of don't. I think the number of characters was fine, but many of them could've been more in the background. We didn't need all of their histories, motivations, etc. The fact that they walked on and played their part (shooting someone, or carrying a message) would've been fine, and then they could've exited stage left. And even some of the stuff for the main characters could've been cut. I can't figure why we needed any of the Norcross family drama. It was played up and went absolutely nowhere in the end. That alone could've cut 75-100 pages.

Then there's the social commentary. I think the takeaway point was that men are the cause of all the world's woes. I understood where they were coming from, but I think they were painting with a very broad brush. Things are neither that simple nor that bleak. In all fairness they tried to make it complex, but you could tell how they felt about the issue. I disagree with the stance, and having to read that over and over again was wearisome. I think I would've found it wearisome even if I did agree with it because it got pretty heavy-handed by the end.



There were also the usual digs at anything that leans right. I'm used to that from Mr. King, but this had more than usual, so that's another tick mark in the con column. I could be way off base here, but I'm going to make an observation anyway. It seems like Stephen and Owen have some kind of guilt complex for being white men and feel like they need to apologize to women and black people on behalf of all white men everywhere, and I think this book is their attempt to do so. I'm probably reading too much into it, but that crossed my mind. However, if that's the case, then they need to apologize to the transgender community for this book because there weren't any transgenders in it, and I really would like to have seen what would've happened to a chick with a dick. (view spoiler)[Would s/he have grown a cocoon when s/he fell asleep and gone to Our Town, or whatever it was they called the land on the other side of the tree, or would s/he have awoken the next day right where s/he conked out? (hide spoiler)] They could've given us the final word on a hot debate right there.

The sad thing is that I enjoyed the first 400-500 pages of this, shortcomings notwithstanding. It was long-winded, but it was still well-written at that point. The past decade has taught me that I shouldn't be surprised to find a long build-up in King's stories. Under the Dome, 11/22/63, and Revival all suffer from that. This was holding steady at a 3.5 to four star rating, but then everything that annoyed me about it went into overdrive in the last couple hundred pages. And when I got to the last 20 pages where the surviving characters get their epilogues, I found I just didn't care anymore.

I'll repeat it: There's a good story here, but...



Yeah. It's in need of some weed-eating and polishing.