At work I have a Book Friend who reads mostly horror. He gives me horror recommendations, and I give him sci-fi recommendations, and we both try to enjoy each other’s genre of choice, to varying success. At the other’s insistence, we have both read genre staples without being convinced of their universal relevance (though I have more right to feel aggrieved about this arrangement because Slaughterhouse Five was like 250 pages and It was fucking 1,200 pages, Dorian).
It was not for me. I finished It, because I’m a finisher and I was chasing the sunk time cost of like 35 hours, but I did not rush to find my next King novel and I finally told my library app after deferring about eleven times that no thank you, I do not want to read The Stand.
Dorian kept insisting that despite all that, I should read 11/22/63 because it has a lot of sci-fi elements and he finally got me with two words: time travel.
… and I’m so glad he did. I loved it. It’s easily my favorite King book (even more than On Writing, which I also loved), and 66 books in, it’s one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. I include this long intro to convince folks that you don’t have to be a King superfan to love this story about a time traveller attempting to alter history through the prevention of several tragedies, including the Kennedy assassination.
I won’t say much more about the plot, except that the hero spends some time in Derry, Maine, around the time of the first It murders and interacts with a couple of It characters. I was bummed about this, because I was already hooked on the story but really did not want to be reading It again. I think It fans will enjoy this, but it also didn’t go long enough to spoil the experience for me. (I might skip a couple chapters when I re-read, but I will re-read.)
11/22/63 has a great premise (time travel is fun all on its own and the rules of time travel in this universe are interesting and unique), is well-researched and fascinating from a historical perspective, and is full of high stakes for characters we care about, not to mention for the world and the totality of spacetime. I enjoyed the book (nearly) the whole way through, but the ending is absolute perfection y’all. Stephen King gave me chills, twice. I talked about this book for weeks with anyone who would listen and went on a wild Wikipedia rabbit hole on the history of assassinations.
I highly recommend 11/22/63 if you are AT ALL a fan of alternate history, speculative fiction, or time travel. Horror freaks like Dorian and sci-fi dweebs like HC agree–it’s worth your time.
