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Comments On Book
Like most Steven King efforts, this book is unnecessarily long. He describes many characters, scenes, and props in great detail that helps to give the reader as sense of the situation... BUT these descriptions don't have any bearing on the story... I found that I would read these passages very closely assuming that there would be a resurfacing of these details later in the story... Needless to say, I was disappointed.
The plot also leaves much to be desired. The entire plot can be summed up quite briefly: a man suffers from insomnia, a town is erupting in civil war over abortion issues, and the insomniac gets involved. Herein lies the problem, the story doesn't "go" anywhere. I found myself constantly anticipating, a plot twist or a climatic situation. But the ones that are offered lack punch, explanation or believability.
Furthermore, the ended was choppy at best. I got the impression that Steven King had finished the book and was all set to call the project complete only to have one last brainstorm that neither furthers the story nor closes the loop.
I would recommend this book for hard-core Steven King fans, but not for the average reading looking for something with depth, intelligence, and cleverness.
Keep bouncin,
PingPong
The grand scope of this book is quite intellectually and philisophically invigorating. Underpinning the entire story is the basic question of fate and its role in our lives.
King picks an interesting route to investigate this question by choosing to create physical manifestations of fate and the random. He further stretches the story by linking sleep deprivation with the capacity to see these little men who represent fate. If anybody has ever suffered from insomnia, you know that perceptions can be greatly affected, sometimes go so far as to induce hallucination. This introduces a part of the story that can be seen in virtually all of King's books, the strong internal struggle that the protagonist goes through. In this case, it is Ralph deciding whether he is insane or not.
Once Ralph (the main character) becomes involved in this system of fate management, it becomes obvious to him, and the reader, that fate really is just fate, something that is supposed to happen. It becomes much easier to reconcile oneself to these events upon this realization. However, there is the random to deal with, and this is what causes most of the problems we encounter as human beings.
The story goes on way too long, however, and the entire abortion topic is worthless. Overall, a very good read that evokes some interesting thoughts, but just WAY too long.
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