4.5 stars. As usual, Stephen King inspired and scared the pants off me in equal measure. Also as usual for vintage King, there's a lot of period-typical misogyny and racism in this book which took me out of the story at times but it wasn't more than what you'd expect.

This book is essentially a book about death, moreso than any other book of his I've read. It's about our relationship with death, our fear of it, the shocking finality of it, and the importance of accepting that it is natural and inevitable and always just around the corner.

This doesn't mean that there's non-stop gore in this book. In fact, it's mostly two dudes sitting around philosophising about death and telling stories about the people and pets who are no longer with them. Not to say that it was boring because it definitely was not. This is what King does best in my opinion. Not the twists and monsters but the in-depth character studies and meandering monologues that give the characters and world a weight and realness that other authors can only dream of achieving. This is how King builds the suspense that he's so famous for. He hints that something bad will happen then spends hundreds of plotless pages building up his characters so that when the inevitable disaster comes it punches you right in the heart. And yes, very, very gory.

I'm taking off .5 stars for the treatment of the female characters and the lack of minorities except as off-screen wise, mystical ancients. I've read Stephen King say that any sexism and racism in his books is meant to be part of the characterisations of his characters, because real people are that way, but that doesn't explain the structural sexism and racism in this book. Certainly when in the first chapter Louis Creed thinks about how he'd like to smack his daughter because she's annoying him, that's part of his character. But the fact that the only adult female characters are just there for the main male characters to protect and worry over and no Native characters are given a voice but they're constantly referred to in a stereotypical way is on King. I'm willing to forgive this because 80s but I thought I should point it out.

tl;dr: heartbreaking, gruesome, and poignant book that deals with death in all its complexities. Highly recommend.