Book Review -- Stephen King's "11/22/63"

Five out of Five Stars

I've read everything Stephen King has ever written, and most I absolutely love, while some are more "meh".  When I got this one in the mail (I belong to the Stephen King Book Club) and saw the book was about Kennedy, I thought, "Aw crap, a 'meh' book".  This just isn't a period of history I'm that interested in, although I have traveled to Dallas and have seen the open Book Depository window and the Eternal Flame, I've not really studied much else about it.

But, it's Stephen King.

The premise -- there's a "rabbit hole" to the past -- 1958 -- and the main character, Jake, is given a plea from a dying friend.  Stop the Kennedy assassination.

The trick with the "rabbit hole" is you always start in 1958, but you're only gone for two minutes in 2011-time.  And every time you go back through the "rabbit hole", time resets.  So if you screw up, you can go back to 2011 and start over.

But of course, it's Stephen King.  There are a ton of plot twists, one of which is how time doesn't want to change, and the closer Jake comes to making various changes in history, the more "things" happen.  Small changes, like preventing the death of a young girl, don't fight him as much as the fight to stop Oswald.  Does he make it?  Read the book.  Does time change back in 2011?  Read the book.  Is there a happy ending? 

Read the book.

There are two things I love about King that are prevalent in this book -- one, his amazing plot and character development, and two, the recurrence of past characters from other books.  You'll briefly meet people from "It", for instance.  I hope one of these days I'll find some intrepid soul who's hooked up all the characters from book to book.

I absolutely loved this book.  King did a lot of historical fact-checking and his theories are interesting.  The book is huge, but I devoured it.

Highly recommended, even if you aren't a Stephen King fan.

Lori Anderson creates jewelry for her web site, Lori Anderson Designs, and wrote the blog An Artist's Year Off.  She is the creator of the Bead Soup Blog Party.