I first read this book ages ago, in the 80s, and I didn't like it at all -but it was clearly because of a horribly bad French translation (in this time I couldn't read English). I returned to it now and I found it very good, although with a little weak ending. There are many excellent things in this book. First, the idea of digging. There is something extremely appealing about the idea that there is somewhere, very close to our home, a buried treasure waiting to be uncovered. King is always at his best exploring children fantasies and fears (he is a teacher by profession) and here he had the idea of discovering a real alien spacecraft buried just behind one of the main character's house. This will of course have very serious consequences to almost everybody in the town, expecially considering, that the aliens who used to own the ship, were really, but really not ET-like.... There are many great moments in this book and in fact one of the chapters from the middle is so good that sometimes it figures in King's antologies as a separate short story and it was also adapted for TV as one of the "Outer Limits" episodes... There are however some flaws, which make it impossible to five star it. The ending is unsatisfactory and hastened, like if the author was on a too strict a deadline. The identity of the evil force in the book is uncertain and confusing - is it a ghost of one of alien crew? is it just a poisonous gas? I failed to understand this point and it left me hangry for answers at the end. And then there is one (just one) point which I found simply too stupid to suffer - although the "tommyknockers" are so smart, that they can easily rebuild vending machines in warrior robots, they are forced to kidnap living beings to use them as sources of energy! How in the Earth couldn't they think about something simpler, like solar panels or just tapping discreetly the energy lines (that would still attract attention ultimately but much less that disappearing people)? Still, I had fun reading this book and I think that even weaker Stephen King's works are still the best you can find on the market as far as fantastic books are concerned. Read it and make up your own idea.