Spoiler alert: No one’s head spins around in this one… but some may or may not be removed…
The fact that the novel’s author, William Peter Blatty, also wrote the screenplay for the adaptation didn’t hurt anything. He obviously knew the characters the best and also the beats that would move the story along.
This is one of those books that, when you finish it, you wonder if the good guys actually won. I had seen the film version a couple times before reading this book, but it had been years. So I really felt like I was going in fresh. Let’s just say that the title is a little misleading given that the eponymous character doesn’t really show up until the last couple chapters (his appearance in the prologue notwithstanding). A more appropriate title might be “666 Reasons Why Children Are Creepy as Hell” or something of that nature. I guess history will have to be the judge of which title is better…