11/22/63

Brilliant book. Jake was very well written and the characters of Deke, both Miz's, Mike, Al and so on were great. Lee Oswald was great and his relationship with Marina was intriguing. I also loved the minor once offs like Silent Mike or the Jump Rope Girls. King does a great job at painting the picture of what exactly is happening. I think my favourite part of the book was the whole Jodie arc - it really felt that Jake was at his peak and the blossoming relationship with Sadie was great. Unfortunately I can't give this 5/5 as I think Sadie didn't get a whole lot of time as a character and I felt she was more of a love interest rather than her own individual - these grievances are minimal as she does show individuality following the Clayton incident and the whole 11/22/63 scene. I also felt the alternate history was undercooked with only ~10 pages given to a scenario in which JFK lives - basically it's bad, not because of him as a president but as the rules of time travel which the book argues that time travel is not good, but sort of is for love? It's not really an alternate history, sci-fi book but more of a 1950s, 1960s period, romance drama. I think the book was at its best when it did that versus the time travel of the Card Men which was not well written I feel. The fact that the alternative wrong timeline was given such little time shows that it wasn't really ever a sci-fi book but rather a ‘foreigner in a strange land' story. It's definitely interesting because it shows how different the 2010s are to the 1950-60s. The high intensity scenes like the Dunning, Clayton and Kennedy incidents are well written but ultimately feels more drama and detective novel rather than something we'd see in sci-fi. It uses time travel as a means to talk about a different period in our lives, and a well written one at that, but falls flat on alternative history, sci-fi and explanation of time travel.