Rating: 3/5

General review(spoiler free)

The story will take you through the life of Jamie Morton, a rockstar and a drug addict. In order to make Jamie’s life worth the story, Stephen King added in a joker-like character named Jacob Charles. King describes him as the “fifth business”, which is a person who doesn’t fit into any category of people you encounter: family, friend, stranger, etc, but is still affecting your life in some ways. Jacob occasionally enters and exits the stage of Jamie’s life, surprising him with his secret electricity tricks, then finally granting him a big show to end off the story.

I gave this book a 3/5 rating because a good chunk of the book is just Jamie’s boring life. As boring as it is, the beginning of this book is very intriguing as you see through the lens of young Jamie. The ending, I have to say, is one of King’s most imaginative things I’ve ever read. Beside the ending “the fifth business” Jacob will also keep you continue to read with the hope that he’ll show up at some point and give you a surprise. Overall, this book is just a burger with a dry patty in between two quality buns.

If you are just curious about what King’s imagination pocket has for you, then you may enjoy this book, but if you’re a person who is looking for consistent plot development, then this book might not be your cup of tea.

In-depth review(contains spoiler)

I love the way King started this novel. Just a normal town with a new Reverend called Jacob Charles, and of course this new town member became friends with our lovely and still young protagonist Jamie and his family. The first part that really hooked me up is when Jacob cured Conner, Jamie’s brother, of his throat injury with an electric shock. Reverend Jacobs was a really nice person until his wife and kid got into a car crash, which didn’t surprise me because I knew something horrible is going to happen when things are getting nice. It was at this part that Jacob, who seemed like a neighbor and a friend to Jamie, turn into the joker that Jamie hated. After this accident, Jacob lost hope in god and made a speech about how god is fake, which I really enjoyed reading. This chapter of Jamie’s childhood ends with Jacob leaving the town, which is cliche.

The following chapter describes Jamie’s life as a rockstar and how badly he’s gotten addicted to drugs, which is boring and realistic at the same time. Just as things went to shit with Jamie’s life, the joker appears, curing Jamie of his addiction with secret electricity just like how he cured Conner.  Now I’m really interested in this whole deal with secret electricity.

The joker goes away for the second time, leaving Jamie with strange aftereffects of the cure. Just as Jamie start to be concerned and investigate these aftereffects, the joker appears again, now as a god-like figure who cures groups of disabled people with his secret electricity. It didn’t surprise me that Jacob would use the effects of secret electricity for business, but I didn’t expect him to do it in such a religious and persuasive way; this is the joker showing his true color. I was hoping King would reveal more about the secret electricity when Jamie went to talk to Jacob, but he didn’t. Jacob is pissed that Jamie suggested him to stop because of the after effects and disappears for third time, leaving Jamie working in some random studio.

After a boring chunk of Jamie’s life at the studio, the joker appears again. This time, he threatens that if Jamie doesn’t collaborate with him on an experiment, he will not cure the half-dead Astrid, Jamie’s girlfriend in his teenage years(Damn I didn’t think Astrid would come back to the game like this). Jamie has no choice but to accept the deal as I expected. Jacob cures Astrid, and Jamie perform the final experiment with Jacob.

In this last part, Jacob performs the experiment of opening the gateway of the afterlife through the dead corpse of Mary Jane, which to me was fascinating. With nearby lightning, Jamie somehow serves as the conduit and opens the gateway to the afterlife, a dimension called the Null, through Mary Jane’s corpse. In the dimension, countless dead people are ruled and tortured by ant-like creatures that serve the god of the dimension called the Mother. The way King described the whole scene of the Null and Mother completely blew my mind as I expected. It was so wild that I thought I was looking at the work of an alien. However, King didn’t lay down all his cards about the deal with secret electricity and those strange aftereffects, which was utterly disappointing. I expected all those clues left throughout the book to be explained in the end, but that isn’t the case.

Overall, I had a decent experience going through Jamie’s life, seeing Jacob pop up and disappear, each time showing more about his secret electricity. I love the idea of Mother and the Null because it’s very “Stephen King” and could change people’s view about death. I also loved Reverend Jacob as the fifth business because it’s quite a unique character.

Personal theories(major spoilers)

This part may sound bizarre. So far, I haven’t found any connection between this book and King’s other books, only came up with a few theories.

Thanks to this book, we now know that, in King’s universe, dead people go to a dimension called the Null and are enslaved by a god called the Mother to endure endless torture. I think that what Jacob discovered as secret electricity may be a kind of energy in the Null or even from Mother. In the book, the secret electricity came from lightning bolts, so I thought the energy in a lightning bolt might be enough to open up a tiny wormhole that allowed the secret electricity from Mother to leak to earth.

This secret electricity remains in the body of whoever has been shocked with it, and somehow creates a connection between the person and Mother, which explains why Jamie have dreams of his dead family members, and why that music producer also has visions of the world beyond the world they live in. This also explains why Jamie serves as a “conduit” in the Mary Jane experiment instead of Jacobs, who hasn’t been “treated” with secret electricity.

I think Mother drove the people who have been “treated” with secret electricity to commit suicide just because it wants more slaves. It didn’t make Jamie suicide because Jamie, apparently, has the strongest connection out of all the “treated” people. Through Jamie, Mother gain enough control over the “treated” people to make them suicide and take some others with them; it’s even able to open up a gateway in space with Jamie and the corpse of Mary Jane(for this I have no explanation).

A million questions still remain unanswered: Who is the Mother? Why does the Null exist? If mother can control people through secret electricity, why doesn’t it just turn the “treated” people into killing machines? I guess there is one answer: it’s just a Stephen King tale; he writes what comes to his mind.

Anyways, that’s all I could make up for this book. Feel free to share with me in the comments down below your own theory or what you think of mine and things that I missed.