Don't ask me why – it makes no sense to me either – and yet there it is. One of the issues was that, for some reason, I had read The Eyes of the Dragon before I read The Stand. And the ending, which just seemed to fade into nothingness after building up to what, in my mind, should have been a terrific climax, a battle to end all battles. I even disliked the main characters, Peter and Thomas, for being whiny and having a curious lack of agency. I hated the narrator of this novel-told-as-story, an omniscient wizard (I assumed) with a personality. What did I specifically hate? I hated the tone. Many King fans dislike it, simply because it strays into a genre they don't see as his. Maybe, of all the King novels I have to reread for this project, this was the one I was dreading most and I'm not alone in that. I brought my own baggage to those 400 pages of dragons and wizards and traditional, fantasy-quest narrative, and I (perhaps inevitably) hated it. So, when I was going through King's work and came to the cover of this – which proudly declared, over a picture of a wizard and some fancy patterns, that this was "a classic fantasy from the master storyteller" – I just had no interest in it. I was told to try The Lord of the Rings, as something more grown-up, but that was, somehow, worse just a mess of nonsense to me. I just couldn't imagine why anybody would want to read such a twee, simpering narrative, overwritten and unimaginative. 1,000,000 first printing $300,000 ad/promo BOMC selection.I hated The Hobbit. This heartwarming chronicle of brotherly love may be enjoyed by young adults and their parents. Surprisingly, Eyes is a gentle story, despite violence, gore and his standard vulgarity, because King has ingeniously interposed himself between reader and narrative as if he were telling the tale aloud, with a soothing cadence practically audible in the evocative prose. Flagg has imprisoned Peter, the heir apparent, on suspicion of murdering the king (actually it was Flagg who did it) and installed the profligate second son, an easier mark, on the throne. Eyes details the crusade of Peter and Thomas, two princely brothers, to destroy the 400-year-old Flagg, the evil magician who threatens to control the kingdom of Delain after the death of their father, King Roland, who remained unwed until he was past 50. King's legion of fans are likely to find that a restrained maturity marks the differences between this stylish, successful effort at fantasy (illustrated by 21 half-tones) and his earlier, sometimes overwrought writings. Advance publicity hails this ""story'' (not labeled a novel) by the popular writer as appealing to ``readers of all ages,'' although its genesis was in a story King told to his children.
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