Reviews with content warning for Racism - 11/22/63

At the time of release, the descriptor "romantasy" hadn't entered the set of literary genres, but I think it's apt to describe this novel. 11/22/63 is a corny time-travel romantasy with a dense background of historical fiction. And, being Stephen King, it's tonally tense and has moments of explicitly described violence.

Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine, USA, gets summoned to the back room of his favorite diner by Al, a dear friend, who shows him a portal to the past. Literally. A straight line to 1958 and back. Al is dying, and wants Jake to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. But that would require spending 5 years in the past just to get to that point, and still it remains unclear who really shot JFK. Was it truly the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald? Was it the CIA? Soviets? And what will the future behold, if he's successful?

But I've buried the lede. It's a romance novel, I promise.

What I liked:

strong historical research
feasibility of how the characters would have acted
the flow of the storytelling

What I didn't like:

failure to critically assess the downsides of the 50's and 60's
only a peek behind the curtain of the time travel system
the "downstream effects" of altering the past seemed farfetched in a book that was otherwise very reasonable (within its own world, of course)

When the book was written (2011), the willingness to overlook the glaring flaws of the midcentury in order to appreciate "a simpler time" was more okay than it is now, or maybe I just have a lower tolerance for it. Yes, major bad things happened to marginalized people as a part of the plot, but the character didn't seem to mind the "generic racism" that permeates his environment, for example. I prefer Kindred by Octavia Butler for getting that criticism correct.

The ease of systemic oppression is too distracting for me to really love the book. But to give the great Stephen King credit, it's the first book in a long time that I stayed up late to continue reading. Which was dumb, given that I was plagued with nightmares afterwards. But hey, I kept going back, because the book is written so compellingly. The characters are themselves. The time travel system sparks my curiosity, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. And I'll certainly continue to pick up Stephen King novels.

Content Warnings

stormfather's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Great time travel book!

Content Warnings

mariposa517's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Content Warnings

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