11/22/63 – Stephen King

Summary: Jake Epping has an opportunity to undo one of the defining moments of a generation. Don’t forget about The Butterfly Effect, though.

Setting: Late 1950’s / early 1960’s & present day

Plot: Jake is a high school teacher in (where else?) Maine. In addition to his normal classes, he teaches GED night school to adults as well. The high school janitor is in his adult class, and when the janitor relates (in a writing assignment) the story of how his abusive (and estranged) father killed all the other members of the family, Jake is moved almost to tears.

 

The dying owner of a diner (an acquaintance named Al) calls Jake, and over a late meeting at the diner, shows Jake a specific spot in the back pantry of the diner, and tells Jake that this particular spot is inexplicably linked with a different time, telling him that if he walks into this specific spot, he will be transported back to the late 1950’s. Jake is understandably skeptical until Al talks him into taking a journey back in time, as a test.

 

Jake makes the test journey (and returns unharmed), and is convinced. He makes another journey to the 1950’s to save the other members of the janitor’s family, so he can see for himself what consequences changes in the past can have on the present, and learns that due to The Butterfly Effect, small changes can have wide-reaching effects.

 

Al gives him a mission: Travel back to the late 50’s, and make his way to Dallas in time to stop Oswald from shooting Kennedy in 1963. Al sets him up with some money, and some research that he’s done to make the job a bit easier (sports results, research into Oswald’s life and movements leading up to the shooting).

 

Jake decides to stop Oswald, but first he has to live through 5+ years in the 1950’s and 60’s, waiting for the right time to act. He fits an entire lifetime into that 5 years.

Criticisms:  No technical criticisms. A little jumpy at the end, but it’s by design. A lot of King’s books do that, and while this book’s got a few of those trademark “end a paragraph in the middle of a sentence, then continue the sentence in the next paragraph but change the topic of the sentence in the middle” changes, there are remarkably few of them. It’s King’s style, and you’ll see hundreds of those “transitions” in a book like “The Stand”. This book has only 3 or 4 of them.

Wrap-up: King is unfairly classified as a horror writer, and there are two kinds of readers:

1. Those who have read a lot of Stephen King and know that the characterization of him as strictly “Horror” is not accurate;

2. Those who have read a couple of King’s horror novels and have decided that they don’t like him because his books are too scary, or won’t read his books in the first place because they don’t like horror.

This novel has no horror in it. None.

 

There are parts that can be a little bit gory, but there’s absolutely no horror.

 

While this book is ostensibly about going back in time and preventing the assassination of JFK, I’m not certain that that’s a fair characterization of it; I think the book is more about the journey that Jake takes (both in terms of distance, and over 5 years) while waiting for his chance to act. He has time during his journey to get in trouble with the mob (in two different locations), make a difference to an entire class of high schoolers (in one case, one of the stars of a high school football team decides to focus on drama and acting instead), and to fall in love; all while trying to reconcile the false identity (from the 1950’s and 1960’s) that he’s had to create with his true identity from the 2000’s.

 

Regardless of genre, King is a master of his craft, and if you haven’t read any of his “non-horror” work because you don’t like scary stuff, you’re missing out on some wonderful writing and doing yourself quite a disservice. All of his books (with the exception of a couple of NF’s and some of his earliest work) are quite solid, and I can’t think of many writers who are even in the same class as King in regards to verisimilitude.

 

If you want some suggestions of other Stephen King books to take a look at (that aren’t horror), let me know. I can suggest a few for you.

 

As far as this book - there is no “pat” ending to it; it’s not all wrapped up with a pretty bow on top of it. This book doesn’t end with “happily ever after”. Stories in real life rarely end like that either. If that’s what you’re looking for, this may not be the book for you. If you want a realistic book where the hero has to make some tough choices and live with the consequences of his decisions, give it a try. 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A-.

Master of the Game – Sidney Sheldon

Summary: The story of Kate Blackwell, the head of an international conglomerate. This book traces her fortune from the very beginning until her 90th birthday party. The story of her fortune begins with her father’s journey from Scotland to the rugged deserts of South Africa in the 1880’s, and follows her life (and the lives of her family) through both World Wars and beyond - to current day.

 

Setting: Late 1800’s through 1983, international

 

Plot: Our story starts with Jamie McGregor, a Scottish teenager who follows the diamond rush to South Africa. He’s deceived, beaten, and left for dead in the desert by a business partner, and he reinvents himself with one goal in mind: revenge.

 

Jamie recovers and eventually builds up a thriving enterprise, tearing apart the life of his former partner and eventually driving the man to suicide. In the process though, he passes along his overdeveloped sense of vengeance to his own daughter. The rest of the book follows her life as she manipulates everyone around her for her own purposes.

 

Kate Blackwell is enormously successful by every conventional definition of the word, but as she looks back upon her life, one question remains: was it all worth it?

 

Her manipulation effects her entire family; I can’t give a lot of details without giving up parts of the plot, but her manipulation effects every single member of her family. Deception, insanity, murder – it’s all in here.

 

The story begins at Kate’s 90th birthday party as she’s reflecting back on her life, and follows the entire story of the family over the last hundred plus years.

 

Criticisms: Absolutely none.

 

Wrap-up: My meager summary and plot sections can’t even come close to doing this book justice. This is one of my favorite books, and I re-read it every couple of years just to remind myself what the ultimate pinnacle of writing should look like.

 

It’s a bit weighty at 500 pages but while you’re reading it, you’ll have a hard time sleeping wondering what’s going to happen next. An impulsive page-turner, and I can’t think (off the top of my head) of a book that I would recommend higher than this. It’s got universal appeal, and is perfectly written – an absolute must read.

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, an A+ isn’t a high enough grade for this book – so I’m going to (metaphorically) circle the A+ in red and put two bold lines under it. READ THIS BOOK!

The Templar Salvation – Raymond Khoury

Summary: Another Templar conspiracy novel.

Setting: Present day and Medieval Europe and Middle East

Plot: At an archaeological dig in Turkey, clues are found to a Templar treasure. FBI Agent Reilly is involved when his ex-girlfriend is kidnapped by a terrorist who is following the clues to the lost treasure, which could topple the Catholic Church.

Criticisms: A couple of plot holes, a character or two who completely disappear. A bit jumpy in some of the transitions to flashbacks.

Wrap-up: Khoury is an author who’s trying to cash in on the popularity of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code. His transitions are a bit rough, and this series can be a bit plodding at times, but does a halfway competent job of keeping the books moving.

Having said that, I keep reading this series. Maybe I’m a just glutton for punishment.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a C+.

Gates of Fire – Steven Pressfield

Summary: The fictionalized historical account of one of two Spartans who survived the battle at Thermopylae, previously fictionalized in the movie “300”.

 

Setting: Ancient Greece.

 

Plot: I put the plot back in for this review. It’s worth it!

 

King Xerxes from Persia is taking over the world, and King Leonidas of the Spartans refuses to allow Xerxes’ forces to march in unopposed. He selects 300 warriors (and their squires) and leads them and their allies to make a stand at a natural choke point in northern Greece. Of those 300 warriors and their associated support personnel, there are 2 survivors. The narrator is one of them, commissioned by King Xerxes to tell the story of the Spartans.

 

The narrator tells the story from the point of view of one of the squires; essentially a helper to a knight and a punching bag for that knight as he goes through training. The story covers the squire’s journey from a sacked and abandoned village in northern Greece all the way to Sparta in southern Greece, and his assignment to different Spartan knights.

 

While the stories in the narration are quite entertaining (humorous, compelling, poignant and sometimes quite ghastly), the concepts that Pressfield presents are quite hard hitting, and force quite a bit of self-examination. The concepts of valor, honor, and duty are explored in great depth, and attempting to compare any values that you (the reader) hold dear against the values that the Spartan warriors (and their wives) lived by on a daily basis leaves you with a haunting feeling of inadequacy.

 

A bit of an example: The whole city knows that Leonidas will be calling up 300 knights to go face Xerxes. Only knights who have male descendants will be chosen – effectively, Leonidas is acknowledging that this is a suicide mission. The wife of one of the main characters conspires to save her nephew by claiming him as her own son, knowing full well that her husband (who’s fathered only daughters) will now be eligible to be called up. She knows that her husband’s sense of honor will be shattered if he’s not allowed to participate in the defense of their homeland. The king pulls her aside afterward and explains his reasoning for choosing only certain knights (including her husband) to participate:

 

“When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.

 

But who, lady, will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughter of the fallen.

 

If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing if as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all of Hellas will stand behind her.

 

Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.”

There’s a bit more of an explanation, she cries a bit, then declares:

“Those were the last tears of mine, my lord, that the sun will ever see.”

There are so many parts of this book that gave me the chills; it’s very rare to read such a strong story of valor, honor, and duty. Current era stories about the military (and some civilian stories too) highlight these same concepts, but for the most part, the protagonists in the current stories succeed against insurmountable odds, or know heading into a situation that there’s a chance that they won’t survive.

 

These soldiers knew for a fact that they would not be returning from the Hot Gates. Theirs was a suicide mission. Their goal in facing down Xerxes in this particular spot was twofold: to hurt him enough in this one battle that he would think twice about taking on all of Greece’s military might, and to set an example for the rest of Greece in the lengths that they should all be willing to go to to preserve their country and their way of life.

 

Contrary to the popular image, there were not only 300 men standing up to the Persian invasion. There were 300 Spartan knights, but some allies joined with them in this battle; true historical accounts differ, but there were between 7,000 and 10,000 defenders. Historical accounts differ as well on the number of troops the Persian king brought; anywhere from 250,000 to 2,000,000 troops are acceptable numbers within the context of the true story. There is also no hard evidence of how many casualties were suffered by the Persian troops. I have seen figures quoting as many as 50,000 casualties of this one battle on the Persian side alone.

 

Nearly universal though, are the number of Spartan deaths. Leonidas sent all of the remaining allies away at the end, and only the remaining Spartans of the original 300 (along with their remaining squires) and one ally (numbering around 200 troops) remained at the end. Historically, there may have been a handful of survivors from the final clash, but it’s universally agreed that none of the Spartan knights survived.

 

Criticisms: Quite gory at times.

 

Wrap-up: This is a very hard book to read. The language can be quite antiquated at times, but it really gives you a good feel for the time period. Some of the moral concepts brought up force what can be some painful introspection. Extremely gory at times. A very good book, but definitely not for everyone. If you can watch 300 without flinching at the amount of gore, and the time period interests you, I would highly recommend this book.

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A.

The Other Side of Midnight - Sidney Sheldon

Summary: One word - Vengeance. With a capital V. An "In Your Face", over the top grandiose exposition of Vengeance, with a steaming side order of ruining someone's life over the course of a couple of decades.

Setting: Europe and the United States, between the 1930's and the late 1940's.

Plot: Standard Sidney Sheldon fare; an exceptionally written, internationally set, character based drama. Noelle gets jilted by a US pilot who's on temporary assignment to the RAF. She spends the next few years plotting how to get even with him, then delivers on her promise (with a truly surprising Sheldon twist). It's hard to classify Noelle as the antagonist or protagonist in this story; she's definitely a "bad" character (the story opens with her on trial for murder), but she's been forced into her circumstance by her (sometimes naive) dealings with other characters. I was rooting for her by halfway through the book, and trying to guess how she would deliver her vengeance to the aforementioned pilot. This book begins with the adventures of a handful of main characters through the turbulent time of France, England, the United States and Greece in the years and months leading up to the Second World War, and their story continues through the war, and a few years immediately following.

Criticisms: This book has only a few issues, mostly with what some of the characters are able to accomplish with limited resources. Some of the female characters are able to throw themselves on the mercy of handy benefactors who have obviously been inserted into the plot specifically for those purposes (if that makes any sense). There is some further development of those characters though, so he didn't completely forget about those characters once they'd accomplished what he'd originally needed them for. A few were obviously secondary creations though.

Wrap-up: Sidney Sheldon did a very good job with this book, one of his better ones. It was initially published in 1973, and while some of the terminology is quite dated, as a historical drama it performs within its internal time period fairly smoothly. The international settings are brilliant, and Sheldon demonstrates again how well his descriptions can be used to paint pictures that you can see and feel, almost more vibrantly than if you experienced them yourself. There are a few minor holes in the plot, but the stumbles are artfully concealed with reasonable explanations, given the time periods involved.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I would give this book a solid B+.