Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003. 
 I have never read any Stephen King before in my life. I'm not sure I've seen many of the film adaptations of his books, either, but there are so many I'm sure I've glanced one or two. I don't feel qualified to write much about this one: it is simply a case of I did not enjoy it but there are one or two things I'd like to mention. 
 First off, you can definitely see what a good author King actually is. If you take a paragraph from anywhere in this book and you analyse it alone, it stands strongly and everything just flows so well. I really enjoyed the beginning of this novel: I was intrigued and quite excited. At the time I was suffering from a particularly bad case of influenza, which made the whole experience rather effective. However, around a quarter of the way in the book nose-dived so terribly it became an immense struggle to get through. 
 I didn't much like any of the characters. I felt most of them were fairly flat, though their relationships with each other were often interesting. The romance (I won't spoil it by naming the characters (not that I can remember their names)) was one of the most pathetic things I've ever come across in a book. It was pointless, arbitrary, unrealistic, teenage-like, Twilight-like. It made me roll my eyes and pull so many faces I was in danger of coming out looking like Dolly Parton. 
 The plot was almost non-existence and it was so slow. In fact, I skipped about two hundreds pages (read=lightly skimmed) and I didn't miss a single thing. And I know because I've looked up what happens on Wikipedia. I think it's harsh to complain about the fact this book was not horror, despite it being labelled as such, because authors get pigeon-holed as to whatever it is they had success doing, but it was the least scary book I've read (not that I've read many) and I can't say it was even a decent dystopian novel. 
 All in all I seriously didn't enjoy this book but it definitely hasn't put me off King at all. I've been recommend many of his others-which I fully intend to read. Didn't like the book, didn't mind the author. 
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