Insomnia Book Review by Stephen King (WITH SPOILERS!!) 

Stephen King is one of my favourite authors and Insonmia is my favourite book by him. In quite a number of his stories, children are the main characters and I love that, fear for childrens safety almost cripples me. In this the main person is past the age of retirement at 70 and he's amasing, I just love Ralf Roberts. The little green man character was an embodiment of Maturin, or Gan from the Dark Tower.

I'm a lunatic because I loved the music in the audiobook lmao! Great review!

This is the first Stephen kings book i read and i loved it!, i cant wait to read the dark tower. I was, indeed, very confused sometimes about some characters but it didn't stop me from feeling the story. Personally, i love that part where Cloto and Láquesis (idk what they're names are in English) have that long conversation with Ralph and Lois in the hospital

Amazing review as always! Thank you for brining up the audiobook music because that was so jarring and unnecessary! I listen a lot on my commute to work and the random discordant noises in between really took me out of it, in some cases the music would start while the narrator was still reading and I would not be able to hear the last 10 seconds of the scene. Besides that I thoroughly enjoyed Insomnia! I cant wait for the Rose Madder review, I just finished it earlier this week, it was the first book that made me genuinely scared and got my heart racing!

I loved that scene of ralph seeing the doctors through his window it reminded me of rear window it was super cool

Oh, you are so right about Patrick Danville! So right😄 About the Dark Tower ending... I'm not gonna say anything, of course, but I think the ending was perfect. One of my King's favorites. But there is chance you'll consider it a prank😅 I hope not, though. The ending with Rick Astley would've been awesome as well.

I can be honest and say that I really didn’t like Insomnia. It felt like this was King on every form of crack available. It was too weird for me and this might be an unpopular opinion but I really didn’t like Lois. I loved Ralph and the majority of the cast but I really couldn’t care about Lois. The best part of the book was in my opinion when Roland was mentioned xD Great video as always and I’m looking forward to seeing what you think about Rose Madder :)

This was one of the first King books I read nearly 20 years ago, I hadn't read IT yet and only The Gunslinger as far as The Dark Tower goes. I remember enjoying it but forgot most of it. It was much better this time around especially reading right after IT, seeing another side of Derry.

So happy someone shared the same experience with the audiobook as I did.

Fantastic review as always. If you want an idea of what it’s like to experience Insomnia without reading the Dark Tower I can tell you. Back in my teens in the 90’s was when I started reading King. I’d started with Needful Things and The Stand and got hooked. I binged the King books available in my local library, both tower adjacent like It and Salem’s Lot, and non-Tower books like Carrie, the Shining and Cujo. But I didn’t read any of the actual Dark Tower books. Don’t know why. Maybe it was because I wasn’t much of a fantasy reader at that point. Maybe I didn’t much care for starting a series that I couldn’t finish, which was certainly the case back in the mid ‘90’s. Or maybe I just hadn’t gotten around to it. Whatever the reason, when I read Insomnia, just after it’s release, I hadn’t read any of the Dark Tower, and Insomnia was the book that made me think “Y’know what, I’m good for Stephen King books for now” and moved on to Clive Barker and James Herbert (what can I say, I was a teenage boy, horror was my jam). It wasn’t too befuddling and a non-Tower reader, no more than King is normally anyway. I was aware that the Tower and Roland existed, but I just thought of the Crimson King as kind of a lesser cousin to Pennywise not some major multiversal antagonist. The book just felt all over the place. It seemed like he had a great setting and set up but didn’t really know where to go with it. I did like the characters probably more than you did yourself, and I enjoyed coming back to Derry. I thought the town divided over reproductive rights was a great backdrop for the story, it seemed very outlandish when I read it in the 90’s, weirdly it seems more plausible in the 2020’s. However the surreal elements with the doctors, and Ralph and Lois’s abilities along with the Crimson King felt like a step too far. Oh and the green man really sucked. I revisited it many years later when I did my Dark Tower journey, I probably got it more, but I didn’t like it much better. Oh and when I revisited it I did the audiobook too! I like listening to audiobooks in bed whilst drifting off to sleep and the number of night’s I sat bold upright when those musical interludes started is beyond counting! Ironically the audiobook of Insomnia gave me Insomnia. F*** those musical interludes!

Little doctors of Illaria was weird too

Another great review. Since I just did the whole extended reading (ahem listening) again since you started your journey, I love hearing your opinions first time through. This book made a lot more sense to me the second time I listened to it. I agree with your thoughts with the whole review including the whole out of nowhere extremely odd and loud music intervals. This book however in my opinion is critical to the Dark Tower extended series. You should skip Rose Matter IMO as far as the extended Dark Tower series it has very little tie in, but it was a decent book on its own. Hahaha be careful of the Rick Roll.

One of my favorite King books. I hope someday they make a movie of it but they’ll have to retitle it not to get it confused with that other movie with Robin Williams and Al Pacino.. I always imagined Ralph Roberts being played by Sam Neil (“Jurassic Park”) and Sigourney Weaver (“Aliens” and “Ghostbusters”) as Lois…

Great detail in this review! I haven't read many of Stephen King's books. I'm a fan, but I am so limited in time (most of his books are thick). I don't know what books are in the Dark Tower series. Seems this book should be avoided by someone like me, I'd have no idea what is going on. "I don't know anybody." I wonder if you know how huge your statement is. Social media (lets be honest, your friendships there are overall, pretty shallow) has totally replaced real-life friends for the majority of people. In my lifespan, I have watched it happen. People just don't really connect like they used to. There's a lot of cool stuff in our present, but also a lot of cool stuff lost to the past. Indeed, your videos are entertaining. I really like that they inspire one to think as well. Very well done!!!

O man I hope you do a dark towel review

A book I know I'll never read, so thanks for this review.

Not to spoil anything for you but I'll say I felt a little Rick rolled at the end of the Dark Tower series. But I know others loved the ending.

This book and The Talisman are my favs! Have you read The Necroscope series by Brian Lumley? By far the best vampires ever! Love your reviews, cheers from Canada!

The ending of Dark Tower is interesting

One of the very few Stephen King books I can't finish, I find it super annoying somehow. I've read most everything of his except his late "works" and a handful of those that I just can't get through.

my first stephen king book listened on audible lol it was an experience

You get to meet him in the gunslinger!

Oh, the power of a pencil eraser:)

Your prediction of the ending of the dark tower wasn’t to far off 😂 .

It's very annoying to me that Stephen King decided to introduce critical characters from the Dark Tower series in such a bad and boring book.