It has been 17 books (counting only his original fiction novels) and 22 years since the last memorable King book (Misery). Many (most?) had counted him out as a has-been, me included.

Then he goes and writes this book. The man always did like a surprising twist in his made-up stories, only this time he's outdone himself and the twist happened in real life.

So what is my opinion after reading 877 pages in a week? It's un-put-downable, entertaining as hell, but in no way serious literature, no matter how you define that term. His good characters are all good and his bad characters are all bad; there is no mixing of character traits whatsoever. It gets tiring after a while.

I'm not going to nitpick the reasons why things in my opinion probably wouldn't go the way they do in the book in real life, but I will say that the map of the town at the front of the book bears no resemblance to the town described in the book. I suspect King wrote whatever he wanted without thinking about the spatial relationships between locations, and when the book was done the publisher insisted on a map to be included, but it proved impossible to draw a map that fits everything in the book because there are contradictory descriptions in the book, so they just slapped one together and hoped nobody would notice it doesn't fit at all.