Strange but good
This is a weird one to review. I absolutely hated it at first and struggled to keep reading. The use of plural first person pronouns "we" and "us" took me out of the story and made me angry at the expulsion. Thankfully two things happened about a third of the way through. The narrative became focuses far more on third person and the upsetting "we"s and "us"es grew less frequent. Secondly I started to care deeply about the characters and got swept up in the action. I noticed the things that annoyed me far lass. About two thirds of the way through we met a familiar character, a "gunslinger" and I realised I was in the "Dark Tower" universe and grew more intrigued and excited. While this book is more horror than fantasy, the connection with a film I watched a few months ago made it feel lighter.
My favourite paragraph - "Exhausted, strung out, Jack cannot hold off his awareness of the world's essential fragility, its constant, unstoppable movement toward death, or the deeper awareness that in that movement lies the source of all its meaning. Do you see all this heart-stopping beauty? Look closely, because in a moment your heart will stop."
The book contains regular and excellently handled foreshadowing, which is at times sardonic yet frequently raises a chuckle (however grim).
