The premise really prompted me to read this novel. Aside from the fact that King wrote this, the premise really made me curious as to what the novel was all about. It was about a man who got cursed, and now he’s losing weight everyday, and he fears that it will come to a point where he’ll turn into nothing.
Everything was good, but nothing was great. That’s the main problem of the novel for me. While the start of the novel was batshit amazing and fast paced, the middle and the end was a huge dragger and almost made me not finish this. The reason he got cursed was witty, but after King revealed that, everything went downhill. The events were terribly uninteresting, and there was this fucking chapter, chapter fucking 22 that was so boring at first, and was too fucking long, it made me stop reading the novel for a few days. The chapter did improve halfway through, but I’m still annoyed with the length, and the boredom the first half exuded.
The characters were satisfactory, but all I can say is that I only liked 2 characters in the whole novel. The main character Billy, and his friend Ginelli. All of the others were either mediocre or plain old annoying. I’ve read a lot of King’s books, so I’m safe to say that his characters are most of the time spectacular. This novel was lacking, sad to say.
I honestly can’t really commend the plot development because I didn’t like the middle to about 85% of the novel. It was a lot dragging and a bunch of useless things were said. I know the novel is damn short already, but it could’ve been shorter. The gypsies were a bit interesting, but they also lost their funk sooner than expected.
The redeeming quality of the novel after that terrible middle part was the ending. It was well thought out and obviously something King would throw in. Such a huge turn of events for the main character. He just can’t seem to win.
3/5 stars. I almost gave this a two, but like I said above, the ending was good. Not my favorite King book, and I’m sadly disappointed with this. I know a lot of my friends enjoyed this, but it just wasn’t for me. My favorite thing about the novel was the premise, and that’s obviously not a good thing.
killerscorpion 