The December book for the sci-fi/fantasy book club I belong to was Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon.  I am not normally a Stephen King fan -- the only book of his I've read and really liked was On Writing, which of course was not a novel at all -- but I decided to do my best to approach this one with an open mind.

It helped, perhaps, that I'd heard from many Stephen King fans that they didn't like The Eyes of the Dragon -- that it was different than his other work, that he should have stuck more to horror and sci-fi rather than trying to write fairy tale-style fantasy.  I figured, hey, if his fans don't like it and I'm not usually a fan, maybe this book will be more of the style I like.

(For the record, the only other Stephen King book I had read, besides On Writing, was Dolores Claiborne, and I thoroughly hated that one.)

As it turned out, I didn't love The Eyes of the Dragon by any means, but I definitely found it more bearable than Dolores Claiborne.  I like fairy tale-style fantasy well enough, which helped, though I didn't particularly care for the narrative style of this one -- he wrote it much like a Grimms fairy tale, and I rather disliked the choppiness and lack of flow.  Lots of incredibly short chapters didn't help, either.  But these stylistic tendencies seemed less obvious later in the story, as the action and the story became more compelling, so I was able to enjoy the book all right.

Like I said, it wasn't my favorite, but I suppose one thing this book did do for me was to make me more willing to try other Stephen King novels!