Bag of Bones

What a perplexing King novel. There are parts of this book I find absolutely brilliant and it is marred by so many things I'm unsure how I feel about it or outright dislike.

I think I've settled on it being the most “King” book out of all of his books. It has all of his strengths; town-building and small town secrets buried deep, compelling characters, great slow burn horror, dialogue that feels like real people, really good prose about emotional topics, the plot was usually engaging and the tension and atmosphere was top tier!

....but it also has all of his weaknesses; unnecessary detours, a ridiculous amount of horniness, a child that acts way too old for their actual age, villains that go from “scary with how powerful/bad they are” to “laughably cartoonish” (sometimes they do not do this, in which case it's a strength), a really really uncomfortable scene that went too far into the graphic nature of it than was necessary, an older guy getting involved with a much younger woman in a ridiculous way, his Quentin Tarantino-esque love for saying racial slurs over and over again to get across just how BAD a villain is.

I've seen a fair amount of people have this as one of their least favorite King novels and I do find that a bit confusing; this book has a lot of good, and some great. And I can understand having some of the not great stuff bother you more. But definitely not one of his weaker books.