King's done it again. I had a bit of a hard time getting into the beginning in Derry, but once Jake got to Florida I couldn't put it down (though, with 800 pages, I did have to sleep once). The bulk of the book, set in and around Dallas, benefits strongly from the amount of research done, which King details in the afterword. The alternate history was very well done in general.

The characters were both believable and people I could, in general, care about (unlike many of King's characters, who sometimes feel like they're just there as foils for whatever Evil lurks in Maine this time), [spoilers for the mood of the ending]

which makes it all the harder when the book ends with a classic King tragedy, though it's more bittersweet than some

. Despite not being all that similar in, well, most ways, it reminded me very strongly of The Dark Tower; as another review said, it was both very Stephen King and not at all like most Stephen King novels.

Though it purports to be about trying to stop the JFK assassination, it's really about love, loss, and the obstinacy of the past (and also maybe a bit of Candide thrown in, for good measure). Highly recommend.