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Stephen King – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon | Review

Title: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 342

Rating: 4*/5

Stephen King – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

This book was interesting, because it’s very different to what you might expect if you’re a big Stephen King fan. It’s much more streamlined, almost basic, in a way that reminds me of a fairy tale. It makes for an interesting change, especially if you’ve just finished reading IT, The Stand or one of his longer works. That’s mostly down to the fact that there’s no need here to go into the characters‘ backstories. He can focus on the action, and the action is gripping and exciting along the way. Better still, you could read it to a kid without giving them nightmares.

Loosely speaking, the plot follows what happens to a young girl after she gets lost during a walk through the woods with her mother and brother. Her family is arguing and paying her little attention, so when she needs to go to the toilet she decides to wander off. But once she leaves the path, she can’t seem to find it again. That leaves her lost in the woods, struggling to survive with no company except for the radio on her walkman, which she uses to listen in to Red Sox games. In particular, she likes to imagine she has company in the form of Tom Gordon, the Red Sox player, who she has a huge crush on.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is good enough, but it’s not amazing. For any other author, a book like this would be one hell of an achievement, but for Stephen King, it’s just okay. Still worth reading, but not revolutionary.

One last thing to mention is that the book actually ends on page 298, but the page count is higher because it also comes with a preview of Hearts in Atlantis. I haven’t read that yet, but I do own a copy, so I guess I’ll work my way round to that sometime soon.

Stephen King

Click here to buy The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

Stephen King – The Waste Lands | Review

Title: The Waste Lands

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 584

Rating: 7/10

Stephen King – The Waste Lands

The Waste Lands is the third book in Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series, and so far it’s the one that I’ve enjoyed the least. It’s also the one that was the longest, so perhaps that has something to do with it. Either way, it’s hard to call, because the different books in this series are really just one long, interconnected saga; you can’t really have one without the others, and you can’t really read them out of order.

I should warn you here that if you haven’t read the first two books in this series then this review might contain spoilers. But spoilers are inevitable, because the story picks up directly after the ending of The Drawing of the Three, in which the gunslinger made new allies by pulling them into his world. Those same characters are here again, and they’re becoming gunslingers in their own rights; now Roland isn’t alone, and he has to continue to follow the path towards the mystical Dark Power with his newfound comrades.

It’s interesting, because King manages to answer a lot of questions here, but he also opens up just as many new ones. Even though I didn’t enjoy this as much as the first two books, and even though it was a long read with plenty of pages, I still can’t wait to get started on book number four, especially because this book ends on something of a cliffhanger.

Stephen King

I also like the way that King used riddles in both an abstract way – as part of the narrative – and in a tangible way, as a plot device. Riddles are commonplace throughout the story, and I liked the way that King would introduce you to one and then deliver the answer later on in the book; we also learn that Roland used to learn riddles as a child, and they’re required at the end for them to progress with their mission.

We also get to find out exactly what the Waste Lands are, and we’re reintroduced to some old characters and given a chance to meet a couple of new ones. It’s interesting, because I couldn’t help feeling like this book developed a bunch of the characters but didn’t really progress the plot too much. It’s a long old series, and I want to feel like I’m getting closer to the tower. While we did inch a little closer this time, it felt like we were moving at a snail’s pace.

Overall then, this book is definitely worth reading if you’ve read the first two books in the series, but you need to bear in mind that the end will leave you hanging and that it feels like we’re losing a little momentum. I’m hoping that King can ramp the momentum back up again with the next book in the series.

And I will be reading it, for sure. That’s the thing with Roland and his friends – it’s eminently readable, and even if it feels like it’s going a little slowly, you still power through the pages. I can’t imagine anything stopping me from finishing the series now that I’ve started. It’s a decent read, and The Waste Lands is that sort of ‘middle book‘ that’s there because it needs to be there. It doesn’t stand out above the other books, but it is still worth reading despite that. So what are you waiting for?