Insomnia

The plot of this book is great, the characters are great, and the climax is so much fun (and then annoying), but this book is just too damn long. My attention really started to wane around the 70% mark. The Dark Tower connections were a lot of fun and I'm a little confused why people don't commonly mention this book as one of King's fantasy novels because it fully is. It's not a horror book, it's fantasy.

The ending of this book does a thing that I hate a lot, that King has done before, that I can't get into because of spoilers, but most people will not be bothered by this because it's incredibly specific to me. Definitely recommend this one, should be more well known among King fans.

Do NOT listen to the audiobook. Just don't do it. Listen to anything else instead. Listen to traffic outside. Listen to the sounds of your stomach when you're hungry. Listen to your neighbors singing karaoke. Anything, besides this book. I didn't particularly love Eli Wallach's narration (very quiet and unemotive) but what really makes this a bad audiobook experience is the sound effects. Sweet lord, it is atrocious. There are no words to adequately convey how much I wanted to drive my car into a ravine every time I heard these damn noises. Think of a cat howling when you step on its tail, mixed with nails on a chalk board, a Nine Inch Nails song outro, and a person screaming from underwater and you have a vague approximation of the jarring noise this audiobook made every 11 minutes. I hate it.