11/22/63 in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Sep 14, 2012 Kerry rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audible, audiobook, timetravel, historical

I have never noticed Stephen King to be so sentimental, but man, he really is in this book. Aside from racism, he thinks America in 1958-63 is a freaking paradise. Everything tastes better! Everyone is nicer! Everything is so cheap! I never understand the "everything is so cheap" thing. It's all relative, man.

The main character is a Mary Sue if ever there were one. Stephen King wishes he could go back to 1963 and fall in love and save the president. He wants it so hard it's kind of gross. But th ...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Molly rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, historical-fiction, 3-and-a-half-stars, time-travel, i-want-to-like-you, spinning-wheels, read-in-2012

This one was hard to rate. I really enjoyed certain aspects, but overall it was sort of unsatisfying. I loved King's rules of time travel -- every trip is a reset...but not quite. I actually wish more of the story had been dedicated to the "Card Men" who guarded the portals. I liked that all of the trips to the past (even the short ones) had consequences, that the coincidences Jake kept seeing were effects of the many "strings" Al created with all of his trips to the 50s. It made far more sense This one was hard to rate. I really enjoyed certain aspects, but overall it was sort of unsatisfying. I loved King's rules of time travel -- every trip is a reset...but not quite. I actually wish more of the story had been dedicated to the "Card Men" who guarded the portals. I liked that all of the trips to the past (even the short ones) had consequences, that the coincidences Jake kept seeing were effects of the many "strings" Al created with all of his trips to the 50s. It made far more sense than the "rules" (and I use the term loosely) laid out in Shadow of Night, where the only changes to the present were the ones the characters found convenient.

Anyway, the plot is fairly straightforward. Jake Epping is a high school English teacher who has always felt something missing. When he reads a paper by one of his GED students about his father murdering the family, Jake is understandably affected. When the local diner owner suddenly appears to have aged 5 years overnight, and comes to Jake with an unbelievable explanation, Jake pretty quickly jumps at the chance to be a part of it. I liked the way King had Al (the diner owner and original time traveler) explain what he called the rabbit hole. It was just there. It worked because it did. Every trip reset the timeline because it did. Al never bothered to think any further about it because he wasn't seeing any effects, only benefits. That's fairly realistic, to me. I didn't need some complicated explanation that would probably involve physics. It works because it does. End of story. The sort of twist with the Card Men at the end made sense as well -- every trip *does* have consequences, which you can observe if you stick around long enough.

Anyway. Al presents Jake with a mission -- prevent JFK's assassination. It seems like a fine idea, after all, think of what *might* not have happened if JFK had lived. The key word here, of course, is might. We have no way of knowing that imagined future is any better than what really happened. But Al believes, and spent almost 5 years in the past gathering information. The only problem is that Al gets lung cancer and doesn't think he'll make it to November of '63 (The rabbit hole always sends you to the same day in 1958). This is where Jake comes in -- Al thinks he's just the guy to carry on his work. Once Jake realizes that this could also give him the chance to save his student's family, he's on board. He makes his first trip to the past and almost succeeds in saving them, but arrives too late. So he returns to the present and considers staying, but Al's death convinces him that he needs to go back.

This trip is a longer one, and Jake actually does make it to 11/22/63. This was the part that got tedious. Obviously Jake has about 5 years to kill, and he can't start doing any Oswald recon until the guy is back in the states. So Jake travels, saves the family for real, and eventually lands in Texas, where he lucks into a teaching job and meets a woman named Sadie. This is where I wanted to quit reading. King is good at many things, but romance is not one of them. And as I ranted in my Shadow of Night review, I don't need romance to be the main aspect of the plot. I liked Sadie ok as a character, but their romance did nothing for me. I didn't like that it became more about Jake's epic love for Sadie than about the importance of not fucking around with the past (which is obdurate. And if you're not sure about that part, King will repeat it at least once every 2 pages. Obdurate).

I thought it was interesting that, in saving Kennedy, Jake essentially ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. What I did NOT like was that he was willing to risk actually destroying reality for a chance to see Sadie again. Granted, he doesn't, but that whole chapter where he sits in the hotel in 1958 and whines just summed up to me why I disliked him as a character. In the end, it's not about anyone but Jake. Jake and his great gifts for teaching and saving lives. Blech. The end left me cold. I could care less that he was reunited with Sadie, I wanted to hear more about the Card Men.

In the end, I wouldn't call this a terrible book, or even a poorly written one. It was most definitely too long, and I think the romance was a misfire. I was able to put it aside for several weeks and came close to not finishing it at all, which is disappointing since I had looked forward to reading it for almost a year. I'd also hesitate to recommend it to many people because it's such a time commitment to finish the damn thing. ...more

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May 12, 2013 molly rated it liked it

i can't remember the last book of king's i read. "the tommyknockers"? something of that era. this was a refreshing change, at least in that he seemed interested in what he was writing about, rather than just cranking out another horror/fantasy tome, but i still felt it dragged, and the end was way too schmaltzy/rushed for all that came before it. ...more

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