Starke Charaktere, Packende Momente. Ende etwas unspektakulärer als erwartet.

Sehr starke erste Hälfte, noch schwächere zweite Hälfte

Desperation is my childhood. It’s funny, because a child should probably not be reading a book like this. To be clear: I was around 12 or 13 years old when I finally had the courage to take it down from the shelf and read it. I had been looking at it for years. I loved this book so much that I recommended it to my two closest friends—exactly two best friends—and they loved it just as much. We were so young back then. I don’t even remember the details of the plot anymore, only the feeling it left behind: that kind of creepy but strangely cosy atmosphere. I even recall not fully understanding the ending at the time. But it was our book, our shared adventure. So when I thought about our little book club, where each month one of us gets to choose a book, I figured: why not revisit it? This time, it was my choice. And I don’t regret it for a second. Reading it now, at 31, was even better than I remembered. I loved every part of it. The whole plot just hits so much harder with age. It’s so deep—because even though it’s a horror novel, Stephen King has this way of taking a theme like religion, cutting it open, and dissecting it with surgical precision. The book goes straight to your heart. The characters are complex, layered, and real—you can genuinely relate to them. The story is beautifully crafted. King is a genius when it comes to words and storytelling. The plot twists are both surprising and breathtaking. Even the descriptive passages, which in other books might feel heavy, here are so finely written that reading them is pure joy, never boring. I can’t fully express what this book gave us back in childhood, but it gave it to me all over again now. The feeling is truly indescribable. Reading a Stephen King novel is always a pleasure, but this was something else—majestic, unforgettable. I have this habit of writing down the storyline in detail, so that I can revisit it later and remember the journey as if I lived it myself. But this book is so complex and long that I didn’t even attempt it this time. Instead, I’ll just highlight my favorite parts, the ones that gave me chills: ⸻ Creepiest and most unforgettable scenes • When the cop stops Mary and Peter—you just know something is wrong, but you can’t tell what exactly, and that makes it so much creepier. • When the cop takes David’s family, and you still have no idea what’s truly happening. • David talking about his best friend’s miracle, and how it gave him faith in God. • The cop gets Johnny—and he’s already rotting. What the hell is going on? • The boy escaping from the cell, managing to get out of the room even though a coyote was waiting to tear him apart. • What the boy discovers in the police station, how he helps the others, and how he kills the coyote. • Steve and Cynthia exploring the abandoned mining company building: the town is empty, the building deserted, creepy music is playing, a severed hand floats in the aquarium, dead bodies hang in the lab, strange animal stones scattered around. • Later, finding a house where a family lies dead around the table, covered in bugs. • The cop taking away David’s mother. • The group reaching the old cinema. • Steve and Cynthia meeting Audrey and going to the cinema with her. • Tak sending a wildcat to the cinema to kill the boy—but it kills Tom instead. Johnny eventually kills the cat. • Tak appearing in Ellen’s body and tricking Mary into kidnapping her while the others are searching for David and Audrey. • Audrey trying to choke David while he is in a trance with God. • Audrey beginning to decay and rot immediately after the stones are taken from her—and her horrifying death. • Mary in the dark room next to the China Pit: thinking she sees soup on the table, only to realize it’s a plate full of blood. To escape, she has to leap onto a pile of rotting corpses. • David trying to persuade Johnny that they need him. When he fails, Johnny leaves, but forgets his wallet. David checks it and realizes that when he was in the land of the dead, he was actually speaking to a young Johnny. • Mary barely escaping from Tak, who then flees Ellen’s body and takes over an eagle instead. • Entering the China Pit and discovering those eerie parts of the mine and the caves. • Johnny sending everyone away—even David—telling him: God is cruel. Sometimes He makes you live. • The ending: David finds his blue school passport in his pocket, the same one he had left behind in what they called the Viet Cong place, back home in Ohio…

Wow! Spannung pur! Das war mein alter King, so wie ich ihn kennen- und lieben gelernt habe. Mit vielen Horrorelementen und einem Ende, das glänzt - einfach großartig!