Billy Summers is one of Stephen King's newest books and I recommend that you add this to your books to read list. This isn't like the normal Stephen King books I am used to reading; those tend to have more of a heavy supernatural element to them.
This book is about Billy Summers, former sniper, an Iraq vet who takes assignments to take out people he considers “bad people”. From the moment he takes the job everything that could go wrong starts to go wrong.
When I first started the book I couldn’t decide if I liked Billy Summers or not. It jumps around from likability to a kind of likability. By the end of the book I really liked Billy and rooted for him at every turn. There are many characters that come and go. The one character I am still up in the air about even though I am done reading the book is Alice. I am not sure how to explain it but she just rubs me the wrong way. She doesn’t seem to be the most willing to learn from her mistakes or deal with the past. Bucky who is as close to a friend as Billy has may not be a major character but is such a great character. He tells it like it is and he is the friend that anyone can turn to.
A lot happened throughout the book. The book bounces back to events from Billy's military past to the present which help paint who he really is. It feels like the different events could almost have been books on their own. King writes them with such detail and description that you feel like you know enough to get the whole picture. You have to make sure you are paying attention to what is going so much can change and some of it is so subtle.
King tends to weave a web of connections to his other books and their storylines into books he has written. Because I have read so many of his books I always look for the connections. I wasn’t sure if he was going to add any connections in this one or how he would. Once I got to the road trip part of the book I was wondering if this was how he was going to connect them. The connection wasn’t very big but it was very strong because it was to one of his most famous books, The Shining, which is one of my favourites. I won’t say how it goes but how he tied the two together was fantastic.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
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