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A review by sariene
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
3.0
It's been a long time since I was this disappointed with a Stephen King book. Don't get me wrong, it was a great story, but the execution was below the level I've come to expect from King.
I'm generally a fan of his work and usually don't mind how long-winded he is, but this time it felt like a lot of the book was just filler. It was too drawn out, with the suspense poorly cultivated so I didn't feel like it was going anywhere a lot of the time. It was like the literary equivalent of an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie: a lot of boring but punctuated by tasty bits of action and plot.
I also think King might have outdone himself this time with the cleverness. He seemed a lot more impressed than I was with the words he made up for Scott and Lisey's private language. The use of "sowisa" was especially gratuitous. At times it felt like he was using the nonsense words as an excuse to not say anything more interesting. It all wore a little thin by the end of the book.
The last really irritating thing was that Lisey isn't particularly likeable. If you're going to write a female lead (and by all means, do!), the least you can do is make her a stronger character than this. Come to think of it, there wasn't a single female character of any significance that wasn't given stereotypically "female" character flaws. You have the stuck up, bossy sister, the unstable mental case sister, etc. Then there's Lisey, who doesn't think she's smart or talented, who's happy with her only important role in life being to support her man, and isn't she lucky to have landed such a fabulous one?! There were plenty of eye-rolling examples of this, but I literally had to pause the audiobook and ask if I just heard that right when she complains about not having a man around anymore to explain to her how her cell phone works. I mean really, you can do better.
Overall, this is an example of a great author almost phoning it in, and putting out a mediocre book.
I'm generally a fan of his work and usually don't mind how long-winded he is, but this time it felt like a lot of the book was just filler. It was too drawn out, with the suspense poorly cultivated so I didn't feel like it was going anywhere a lot of the time. It was like the literary equivalent of an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie: a lot of boring but punctuated by tasty bits of action and plot.
I also think King might have outdone himself this time with the cleverness. He seemed a lot more impressed than I was with the words he made up for Scott and Lisey's private language. The use of "sowisa" was especially gratuitous. At times it felt like he was using the nonsense words as an excuse to not say anything more interesting. It all wore a little thin by the end of the book.
The last really irritating thing was that Lisey isn't particularly likeable. If you're going to write a female lead (and by all means, do!), the least you can do is make her a stronger character than this. Come to think of it, there wasn't a single female character of any significance that wasn't given stereotypically "female" character flaws. You have the stuck up, bossy sister, the unstable mental case sister, etc. Then there's Lisey, who doesn't think she's smart or talented, who's happy with her only important role in life being to support her man, and isn't she lucky to have landed such a fabulous one?! There were plenty of eye-rolling examples of this, but I literally had to pause the audiobook and ask if I just heard that right when she complains about not having a man around anymore to explain to her how her cell phone works. I mean really, you can do better.
Overall, this is an example of a great author almost phoning it in, and putting out a mediocre book.