This book consists of 3 novellas and 1 short story. This book just didn't do it for me except for the last story which was fantastic and almost carried the book all by itself. Unfortunately, it didn't. Going into it I was in the mood for a scary story and the book's title is epic so I had high hopes. Didn't happen, I thought it was going to with the first story but then he switched gears and lost me. The second story was good too but the writing was pretty brutal at times (sorry I hate to admit it). Who uses a scrunchy? Seriously it's 2011...
1922 - The first story was a confession by a farmer who killed his wife with the help of his 14 year old son in 1922. I was excited in the middle of the novella when it began to get scary but King shifted gears and the last half was more tense than scary. I was honestly just so so with this one. There were a couple choppy bits of writing that I had a hard time getting past and the story never reached that great level. It petered right out for me when it essentially switched from a ghost story to a story of young outlaws.
Big Driver - The second story was a story about vengeance. A writer in her late 30's gets trapped and brutally rapped by a huge red neck in the woods of Southern Massachusetts. While dealing with the pain, she hunts him down and the others responsible for allowing him to trap her. At times there were some pretty disturbing content and I enjoyed the story a lot. My only issue with this one is that King was a little awkward with some of the GPS & technology writing. It almost felt like he wrote it a while ago and had to edit it to catch up with the times. Luckily that was at the beginning and the story made up for it.
Fair Extension - The third story was the shortest and had some pretty good parts despite the plot being a bit on the dull side. Basically a guy is sick and makes a deal with what I assume is a demon to get well. All of his cosmic bad luck has to be transferred to someone he hates who is his long time best friend who he's basically just super jealous of. I liked the parts when he was making the deal but ended up just getting a little bummed out for the poor schmuck who never did anything to this guy. He was basically just better at everything and then this a hole dumps all his crap on him and sleeps like a baby.
A Good Marriage - The last story was the best, it was about a wife who accidentally finds that her long time husband has one of the darkest secrets imaginable. I don't want to give away too much but it was amazing and covered some subject matter that is fascinating and one that I'm surprised isn't written about more in fiction.
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