Having read many of Stephen Kings excellent books, I expected to find this as easy to read and enjoy as all the others. But it has an inbuilt problem for me as a reader from the UK. The language and cultural references in the first chapters are frequently confusing and sometimes even incomprehensible.

Generally speaking, if I come across a book where I can’t empathise with a single character in the first three chapters, I abandon it and don’t write a review. Because this one is by an author with a well-deserved great reputation, I felt I could indulge my disappointment without doing his sales or standing any harm at all.

I need to care about at least one of the players if I’m to devote my precious time to a book. Because this one bore the name of Stephen King and I both admire and know many of his works, I continued through the fog of meaningless references as far as page 111, where I gave up the battle to understand or even care about the underlying aspects of the story. I had failed to understand much of the surface matter already and the idea of ploughing through 713 pages made me almost lose the will to live!

There is undoubtedly a good story here, why wouldn’t there be considering the pedigree? But it isn’t one I’ll be giving any further time to.

Perhaps, when employing jargon, dialect and social references that are understood only by the people of the area in which the story is set, it might be a good idea to let potential readers know this is the case.

Many fans will no doubt buy this book, but I suspect a lot outside the boundaries of the region depicted in the opening chapters will do what I did; give up.

[Any review is a personal opinion. No reviewer can represent the view of anyone else. The best we can manage is an honest reaction to any given book.]