** spoiler alert ** A word of warning: I've tried to avoid spoilers but a few sneak in anyway -- and at least one hints at a major event -- so if you really do not want to know before you read the book stop reading this review now.

This is a good novel, and with an all-out love story at the heart of the tale. And that part works very well. Not only is this realistic, it is also very moving. Well done, Mr. King.

Unfortunately, for me, the other matter at the heart of the story -- the time travel thought experiment -- didn't work as good. In fact, it annoyed me now and then. Now, I know that I can't expect more hardcore scientific explanations, or even more detailed philosophical explanations, to such matter in a story by Stephen King. And that's normally a good thing because with King we usually get just enough information to get things to move smoothly forward, without bugging down the story's flow in technicalities. That's really an admirable trait. But here, in 11/22/63 , there's just too much that is... not only superficially explained, but also are quite huge improbabilites and, seemingly, random "reasons" or, if you prefer, "rules" to time travelling.

Some may not care one bit (one of my friends recently read the story, and she gave it 5 stars exactly because she didn't find this part important at all), but there are some weird "guardians" on the other side of the "timehole" (The Green Card Man or whatever) -- that, it turns out, seem to know what's going on yet cannot do anything besides talking to the protagonist and whine? Really? And time "harmonizes itself"? Really? Why? And -- more importantly, since I can accept the idea of "harmonizing" as such -- why does things end up in the harmony the way they do? Almost everytime with the exact same thing, person or event, just in new dressings somewhere else in the new timeline. Huh? And how on Earth does the protagonist (and Al before him) manage to recognize this pattern -- to the point of foreseeing things?

And the recognition at the end, in the love story...? Arh c'mon. Very romantic but isn't this stretching things too far?

When too much of such oddities pop up in a story they demand to be explained, I think. A few -- fair enough, it's not important. But this crosses the line -- and it is never explained in any coherent, believable way.

That said, King is still a master storyteller. Most of the story takes place back in time, from 1958 to 1963, and even when I found too much daily conundrum taking up the pages (and not being important to the Oswald Lee & Kennedy plot), which happened a lot, I remained curious and stayed onboard. I cared for the main characters and I wanted to see how everything turned out.

Many readers probably (still) expect a King novel to be a horror story. Well, this is not a horror story. A few, well-placed horrific, gory scenes, yes, but that's it. It's not exactly science fiction either (although with the time travel as an important element, this comes closer than the label "horror"). And it's close to realism, yet not quite. If it's any one thing, I suppose it can be labelled "an alternative history" story. But it's really neither-nor... or both-and;-) And I commend King to keep writing independently on what labels are "proper" or what's expected of him. It shows, in my opinion, that he cares. He loves writing.

If I were to rate the novel on the love story and King's ability to draw believable characters alone I'd give it 5.

Take that as a warning or as a recommendation, at your leisure.