Billy Summers
Ratings250
Average rating4.1
Presents as a cliche story but King adds depth to set it apart.
Final rating: 4.25
First third is a bit too slow for my liking, but it really picks up afterwards.
I don't care much for war flashbacks, seeing as I DNF'ed the American Sniper. However, in this case I think they were very well included and relevant for character development.
The more I think about the ending, the more I like it. Still bawled my eyes out tho
This is as good as anything he's written, certainly since the turn of the century. Like a perfect shepherd's pie, one with just the right amount of shepherds in it. Full of loveable and loathsome characters and a lovely little nod to a previous story, in this instance... The Shining.
Absolute interesting and fascinating story that was great from the beginning. I listened to the german audiobook which has a brilliant speaker.
I highly enjoyed this amazing story.
This story seems to drag on forever! I can't recall the last time I spent more than a week on a thriller. Despite all the hype surrounding this Stephen King book, I think I made the wrong choice for my first read. It felt like it was needlessly drawn out. I did enjoy the parts with Alice, they added some fun to the mix. However, I couldn't connect with Billy's character, so I found it hard to care about his fate. Plus, I'm not a fan of war stories, so those parts fell flat for me. It wasn't until halfway through that I felt like the story finally started to pick up some momentum. I am writing this review at about 300/432 pages because I am starting to get impatient and hoping this novel ends soon or starts to evoke some emotion in me.
Just finished reading and I think the ending is beautiful. Everything else - meh.
fantastic ending. stephen king is for sure great at what he does and all that. this isnt any classic masterpiece but it was definitely a very fun read and touches on great themes. i'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for a fun read with great storytelling and you think the premise is fun
4,5/5⭐️
Wat een prachtig boek! Hoe de achterflap wordt beschreven is maar 40% van het boek. Daarna krijgt het een ander soort wending, maar het past heel goed bij het verhaal! Het einde is ook heel mooi uitgewerkt.
Dit is het eerste Stephen King boek wat ik heb gelezen en ik vond het super mooi geschreven!
The book “Billy Summers” is seen by some as an atypical King book. Presumably, this means that there is nothing unexplained or supernatural in it. Let's leave aside the cameo of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining for a moment.
But it's not that atypical. King's vast body of work contains quite a few books and stories without supernatural phenomena and monsters. And Billy Summers is one of them.
As always with King, the writing style is like a hot knife through butter. No hiccups, no strange turns of phrase, and no stylistic breaks. And if they are there, it's intentional. Once again, there's nothing to criticize about the translation. Stephen King is usually well translated into Dutch, so kudos to the translator. This is also the reason why I often read King in Dutch.
The book was surprising but still predictable. The first part of the book reminded me a bit of 11/22/63. The description of Small Town America. King is a master at this. Not much happens, but in a few strokes of the pen, he sketches a complete neighborhood with its characteristic residents, social norms, and customs. The reader becomes almost a part of it. A six-pack, a few burgers, and MAGA.
My expectation was that this part would be the main focus of the book, but nothing could be further from the truth. For me, this was surprising. But once it becomes clear how King wants to continue the story, the ending is not very surprising anymore.
Although the plot itself is not very special, King manages to create a gripping story. He slowly brings together the past and present of Billy Summers. Intentionally awkward at the beginning but gradually becoming a smooth whole. Here, you can clearly see King's mastery and experience.
Furthermore, it's not an exceptionally outstanding book. A good story, a few hours of entertainment without pretensions.
4 stars.
This was an enjoyable read but I think it lacked the ‘strangeness' of Kings most effective works and lacked a mind blowing reveal at the end.
Even with a lot to like, King's constant political bashing and unneeded allusion to Covid/lockdown drag down an otherwise solid book. I understand a writer's want to interject their own feelings and thoughts into their work, but to a point it gets overbearing, and is why it took me so long to finally finish this read. I read fiction to escape from the realities of our world. Talking of a future virus that has no bearing to the story was unneeded; and no matter your political leanings, the constant republican bashing was unnecessary. Other wise, this was a middle of the road “feel-good” (or at least as feel-good as King gets, ex. Stand by Me, Shawshank). Was not his best or most inspired, but other than my few qualms was an otherwise good read.
Este livro parecia que nunca mais acabava, arrastei a leitura várias vezes. Houve partes da história que me suscitaram interesse mas grande parte não me fascinou. Não foi um dos meus livros favoritos.
“Billy Summers” is a hired killer looking to get out of that line of work after one last hit. Will he retire as planned or will things go awry?
Stephen King writes crime fiction comfortably but with some dark themes.
I liked it and rate it 4 / 5.
Stephen King writes a crime novel from a hitman's point of view.
Typical King prose, solid and readable. The characters were interesting. The story itself got a little slow at points. Probably could have hacked 50-100 pages from this thing and still had a banger of a story.
All in all, not my favorite of his works, but definitely a solid entry. I'm kind of enjoying King's work in the world of crime fiction. It's definitely not as interesting as his horror stuff, but I find it in some ways much more readable.
Stephen King really, really wants you to like Billy Summers. He's a highly skilled hitman but he only shoots “bad guys.” He has a tragic backstory. He's a lot smarter than he appears to other people and has secret literary aspirations. He saves damsels in distress.
This desperation for us to love this character adds up to a story that instead of being intense is rather bland and mild. It's not boring; I was certainly compelled enough to at least find out what the setup was. It just doesn't stand out much from any crime thriller, other than the fact that King wrote it. All of the time spent on the set up of Billy's job, plus establishing him as someone with a very different nature than his demeanor, didn't pay off in an interesting way.
The emotional center of the book is on his bond with Alice, which if the reader can buy into this, would make the story more meaningful. I was never convinced they would have any reason to trust each other and there wasn't any tension between them.
It's a readable book, just not one that's going to be memorable. All the political references are going to make it rather dated anyway, should anyone still care to read this in forty years or so. It's not going to be like The Dead Zone, which I would still read right now.
Like many a King books, I had to get through about the first half, which I found very tedious. After that, the book picked up speed, but never, never ever, in a way like, for example, “It”. “Billy Summers” was just unnecessary in the end. Yes, unnecessary is an appropriate word for it. And if there hadn't been a nice little twist at the end, which I kind of expected anyway, the book would have been a pure disappointment for me. But as it was, I had some fun reading it at times. But is that enough for a good book or even a King classic? Unfortunately, “Billy Summers” will never rank among his masterpieces.
This is a 2.8 star book for me.
I liked a where Stephen King was going with Billy Summers and the slow build up to Billy's one last hit in this book. I also liked a lot of the side characters that were introduced in the first half.
However, once Alice Maxwell is introduced, I felt like King was trying to mash too many things together. I also didn't feel like the person who ordered the hit made much sense; it would have been more interesting if it was someone from Billy's past.
Also, if I'm a hit man, I'm not stopping for days or weeks to write a book or assuming everything is hunky dory after I go shoot up a house full of people. It's like Billy forgot he was a hit man the second half of the book.
Anyway, a decent read, but nothing is read again.
Audiobook, very well performed by Paul Sparks. I liked the characters in this unlikely tale. The ending was unnecessarily drawn out and writing seems to be the magic solution to trauma. Other than that, a fine book. Liked his clipped writing style.
Well, that took a while, didn't it?
As you can see it took me about forever to finish this, so I need to come clean: I rarely watch crime movies or series, and haven't read a whole lot of crime in my life; same with war, whether it's WWII, Vietnam, civil wars, or whatever. Those are just topics that don't interest me, and those are mostly what this book is about. Again, King is a good writer, but the subjects are just blah to me.
At the halfway point it got a little better, not much though, and there were a few instances where the story seemed to be picking up, only for it to be bogged down again.
Also, in the first half of the book there were so many characters introduced that I lost track of who was who. That got better around the halfway point, too, but there'd still been too many characters with no real bearing on the story.
So, 1½ stars, rounded up to 2.