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Reading Time: About 8.5 hours
My Take: This was a fantastic read but the ending fell so flat I felt completely frustrated and kinda angry. Later is a gripping page-turner that I read pretty darn quickly (I’m a slower reader), but it just didn’t deliver the payoff I expect from Stephen King’s work. The best way I can describe it is that it’s basically a McDonald’s McValue meal – it’s quick, delicious, and flavorful but despite the calories you’ll be left unsatisfied.
Full Disclosure: I’m a King fan who grew up reading his work (this was in the ’80s and my parents were just happy I was reading anything), so I’m coming at this with both high expectations and deep appreciation for his writing style.
I was hooked early by the first-person narrative and lots of good tension building. King nails the pacing here – it’s designed to be a page-turner in the tradition of those classic hard-boiled mysteries from the ’40s, and if anyone can pull that off, it’s Stephen King. The quick pace keeps both the action and the tension building nicely, especially considering the limitations of its first-person, past-tense narration.
But then we get to the resolution, and wow – it was shockingly unsatisfying. It honestly felt like King either ran out of interest in the story or maybe just ran out of time. The ending left me hanging so high and dry that I literally Googled whether there was a sequel (there’s not).
[SPOILER ALERT – Skip Orange Text If You’re Still Reading Later!] Here’s what frustrated me most: the book starts with great plot buildup and multiple storylines developing simultaneously, which eventually do weave in nicely.
We follow this kid dealing with increasingly scary supernatural situations, it starts getting genuinely creepy, then suddenly jumps to him as an young adult and boom – it’s over. No real resolution, and no payoff for all that buildup.
There’s one big antagonist “showdown” (if you can even call it that), and then the story just… stops. We get a small consolation prize at the denouement, the revelation of who his father is, and a potential explanation for where he gets his special powers from, but even that just flops to the floor with no discussion, character growth, or conflict of any sort resulting from it. It just dies on arrival.
UGH!
The other major disappointment here was the character arches, or rather lack thereof.
Without a doubt the characters in Later are all distinct and have strong voices; though they all have that distinctive Stephen King flavor – if you’ve read a lot of his work (and especially if you’ve read On Writing), you’ll know exactly what I mean.
The characters feel authentic, even when they sometimes come across as forced, and the dialogue is natural but repetitive, again because King is pushing those larger-than-life character voices he’s known for.
I’m cool with all of that.
But do the characters actually grow throughout the story? I don’t feel like they did.
The antagonists do develop during the book, though in predictable ways.
[SPOILER ALERT] The main antagonist Liz basically follows the typical junkie path, which moves the story forward, but isn’t much of anything special.
The protagonist on the other hand, doesn’t do much of anything. A lot of this could probably be blamed on the first-person narration, but honestly, it’s more than that. Sure, he takes small actions, which do to move the plot forward, but those actions are only things suggested to him by others, which he does in reaction to actions the antagonists do.
He doesn’t think of anything on his own, or take an initiative, he just tries to stop the bad things from happening using the tactics others have told him about. Once the bad thing stops, he settles back into doing nothing, and wanting nothing but the status quo (or maybe a girlfriend, which is completely unrelated to the story).
In fact, at the end we even find out his supernatural gift was just a circumstance of his conception – it was never a choice he made or something he developed through his own agency.
The protagonist’s mother is arguably the other main character, but she’s also lacking any real development. Though her backstory gets a hint of intrigue at the end, it’s all told in past-tense. She’s essentially the same person at the beginning of the book as she is at the end, despite some pretty crazy events happening to her son (notice I say happening to him, not events he drives).
Apparently the only character drivers are drugs, bloodlust, and incest… I guess?
Stephen King is a legend when it comes to writing craft, and this book is a masterclass in readability and quality paperback writing.
Even though he spills the beans on the “seeing dead people” concept right in the first chapter – a trope we’ve all seen before in places like The Sixth Sense and Odd Thomas (Amazon Links) – there’s enough unpredictability and plot development that you’re left eager and happy to read on. King knows how to keep pages turning, and that skill is on full display here.
Here’s a look at the first sentence of the prologue to give you a taste of the narration in Later:
Given that I’m not really sure what genre to call this book, it’s hard to say whether it adheres to or creatively departs from genre conventions. I think the book is 100% a page-turning pulp paperback, but I don’t believe it’s a mystery as the Hard Case Crime imprint would have you believe. Is it a horror book? Sort of, I guess. It has clear supernatural elements, which are normally relegated to horror or fantasy, but at the same time, the trope of a kid who sees dead people is so ingrained in our collective culture that it feels more like a thriller than a horror novel.
I guess in the end I categorized it on Murder She Read as a hard-boiled mystery novel as Hard Case Crime books would suggest, but honestly, I think it’s just a good, old-fashioned pulp paperback page-turner that doesn’t need your damn labels anyway.
If you’re looking for straight reader enjoyment or a readable page-turner, this is a great book for you. If you’re looking for emotional engagement or a satisfying conclusion, look elsewhere.
Rating: 3 stars – a great read with some flaws.
Rating: 3 stars – a great read with some flaws.
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