

Fairly standard King: a ton of set up that gets you really invested in the characters, then it gets weird, but you're already in for the long haul. It starts out as a story about a boy, an old man, and his dog, and ends with the boy trying to save a kingdom. It was a shame the dog was sidelined so much in the second half, but this was a great, sprawling yarn from a master storyteller, a fantasy novel like too few of his books.