I keep swearing I'm going to abandon King once and for all, forever, in response to his moronic, strident political positions. He's become a complete buffoon. It's sad, because I once considered him the greatest writer of this generation. He had an unmatched way with words. The Stand, Cujo, The Shining, Carrie, Christine, Salem's Lot.... horror masterpieces. But after the accident that nearly claimed his life, something came loose in his brain. The political posturing took precdence over literary achievement. His novels roiled with libtard lunacy to the point they were difficult to read.
When I saw he had a new book on the shelves, I hoped against hope that he'd exorcised that political demon and could go back to writing just for the sake of writing. I was hoping perhaps the man had one great horror novel left in his decayed liberal soul. Never Flinch was a bitter disappointment.
It's not a novel. It's a series of his wack-a-doodle political viewpoints weaved into an implausible, stupid story. None of the wordcraft that made King great is on display here. Nope. He'd rather babble about how many people Covid is still killing - by page seven where he claims "four per hour." He'd rather paint Christians in an evil, backward-thinking, murderous light while simultaneously deifying and praising an abortion activist central to the so-called plot of the book.
That he essentially turned Holly Gibney - a character that had potential to drive a creative narrative - into a tut-tutting Covid freak is a crime. He reduced her to a caricature.
King is done. His earlier, pre-"I hate Trump, God, and America" work I could mow through quickly, absorbed into the story and its characters. The Stand is 114,873 pages and I can STILL churn through it in two or three days. I've had Never Flinch for over two weeks now. I'm still not done and it's only about 450 pages. It's a blundering, clumsy, ham-handed, poorly-worded, slog through the lives of characters that have none of the life he should be able to breathe into them. He can't breathe life into the characters because he's so busy trying to prop up his utterly deranged political opinions. He cares more about making sure he can interject some mention of masks and Covid than he does about giving any of the characters in this dud of a book any resonance.
I'm a forgiving soul, but I think this turd of a novel must be the bridge too far with King.
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