Travis has made so many of these books. You’d think the cadence would follow the same kind of pacing as the 9 that come before it. And for 90% of the book, it does just that. However, we get some odd choices and some poorly fleshed out scenes that feels tired. Worn out. Like Travis was losing steam in this and pulled inspiration from other sources after he had already finished it. It has a weird enough turn with the “Club” that ends up being a pivotal choke point for our characters which devolves the plot into a weird game show vs a VR video game.
Our big bad is just a big sad and we never really get true clarity on the strange epilogue that leaves more head-scratching questions than satisfying answers. It felt a lot like the Dark Tower series, and not in a good way. Y’know, the abandoned tech that doesn’t really mean anything other than set dressing and loose groundwork for future storytelling? When King was clearly not in the right headspace for it? Like that. Then we get to the ending… yikes. Massive fumble. The plot-ball is all over the place.
I really wanted to like this one more. Mr Stifel is still on point, but even his soothing, majestic timber can’t smooth out the wrinkles of this hodge-podge of a climax. I do still want an 11th book, but more out of curiosity how Travis will pull it all together. I feel like we’re going on yet another long lazy ride with characters that have much less to risk and stakes that don’t really matter outside the game. It feels… a bit lazy. Maybe the author needs to take a break for a bit. Maybe come back with more inspired tales because this was pretty blasé and splaping in content post-completion to squeeze in more room for additional stories takes all the drama out of it.
Less Lazy River, more Wild Rapids plz.