Finished Revival this past week. Rallies in the final stretch, but I'd be lying if I said the preceding two thirds of the story didn't underwhelm me. So often the hero feels story-adjacent. At any given point, there's something interesting happening with the minister, but we're denied that for what feels like a too-traditional memoir of sex and drugs and rock and roll. Obviously this is the point, as King refers to the minister as the "fifth business" of this story, and in that regard, despite the single-focus horror elements that recall the relative purity of his early works (telekinesis in Carrie, vampirism in 'salem's Lot, a riff on Frankenstein in this one), this has little of the ferocity of those books. It's an odd book, one of his lesser ones of recent years (I prefer Full Dark No Stars, Under the Dome, and 11/22/63, in that order), but that final leg of the journey builds up momentum and pays off the stalling and digressions (if only just) with a memorable and surprisingly nihilistic climax.