A Review of Ur by Stephen King
I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me before, but when I at first downloaded the Amazon Kindle app for my laptop, after having wanted an iPhone for the Kindle app, then after discovering the Kindle app for the Blackberry didn’t work for my Blackberry, I had all but forgotten one of the main reasons I had wanted the Kindle app to begin with: Stephen King’s Kindle-only publication Ur. Of course, now it’s coming out in audio book format and will undoubtedly be collected in a story collection sometime in the years to come, but being the avid King reader that I am, I couldn’t simply wait forever to read Ur.
I’m glad I downloaded it this evening. I read it in one sitting, as I did with his latest novella Blockade Billy, and did not regret the $3 I paid for it. First off, it’s another must-read for those familiar with King’s Dark Tower mythos. There’s a blatant hint early in the story, but later, when certain low men show their ugly faces, I was floored. I’ve always been fascinated with The Dark Tower, and the premise of an otherworldly Kindle tying into the millions of other levels of the Dark Tower (or simply think of them as alternate realities) was pretty wild. Imagine getting to read works by Ernest Hemingway or Edgar Allen Poe that had never been published in our world. Or reading news headlines from radically different worlds. It’s like the old television show Sliders without the interdimensional travel.
So yeah, check it out, if you can.
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In addition, Hangman’s not going so well. I’m adding Q to the letters not found in the solution and adding a body to the poor stick figure. Get to guessing people!
