4 Stars. I haven't reviewed the earlier books in this trilogy so this will act as more of a series review. I've done my best to avoid any spoilers but there may be some small ones. I wouldn't classify these books as horror simply because that implies a level of the supernatural and/or gore that this series doesn't achieve. But [...]
4 Stars. I haven’t read that much Richard Matheson, just one short story collection containing I am Legend, but I enjoyed it immensely. I don’t remember where I came across this collection, but when I saw the combination of Richard Matheson, Joe Hill, and Stephen King, I added it to my wishlist. Like any anthology, this was […]
Scott Landon, award-winning novelist, died two years ago. His wife, Lisey, is finally cleaning out his study. As she goes through his old papers, awards, and photos, buried memories come boiling to the surface. Then she gets a call from a man who tells her to hand over her late husband's unpublished work or face the consequences. What I love best about starting a new-to-me Stephen King is that feeling. If you're a SK fan, you know what I'm talking about. There isn't really a "getting into the story" phase. You're just in it. Right where he wants you to be. And right where you want to be: in the practiced but never predictable hands of a master storyteller. This one didn't let me down. I actually enjoyed this a lot more than Duma Key, the most recent King novel I've read. It's really sort of the story of a marriage: the good times, the bad times, the barely-got-each-other-through-it times. I loved that these characters had their own insiders language. I think most relationships have this, but it's hard for a writer to get it right. I felt like I was right in the middle of a real relationship where the magic words are bool, SOWISA, strap it on, smucking, and Boo'ya Moon. He really just got this so right. I even wondered if he was using catch-phrases from his own marriage. This quote struck me: "Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing." Don't go into this expecting the freaky, terrifying blood baths that everyone associates with Stephen King. He's grown past that.…
Life hasn't been easy for Dan Torrance since the events of The Shining. Now that he's an adult, his shining has faded a little but it's still too much for him to handle. Following in his father's footsteps, he's turned to alcohol to escape from his problems. He eventually hits his bottom and tries to turn his life around. He ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he senses a girl with a shining even bigger than his own. But a sinister group called The True Knot have sensed her as well and they know they would feast off the "steam" she would release if they could just get their hands on her to torture her to death. Dan and little Abra, with the help of a few friends, must find a way to defeat The True Knot and keep them from feeding off children with the shining. It's been 10+ years since I've read The Shining or watched the movie so I can't address how well Doctor Sleep compares to it. But I can tell you that I loved this book. My one complaint is that it does feel a bit as if it's meandering at times. It took a very long time to even bring Abra into the story. Eventually though, all of those little "tangents" tie into the bigger scheme of things. As the story twisted and I realized exactly how things were fitting together, I would just laugh out loud sometimes. Not because the story was funny but because I was delighted that King was taking me in directions that I did not see coming at all. That's starting to feel like a rare thing for me to find in an author. The book was much stronger for it as well. I liked…
Edgar Freemantle is a building contractor in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Then he is involved in a terrible workplace accident that leaves him with a brain injury and an amputated right arm. His therapist suggests that Edgar should get away from everything and get a fresh start. He tells Edgar to do something that makes him happy because he "[needs] hedges against the night." Edgar moves to Duma Key on the Gulf coast of Florida and takes up sketching. His only neighbors are an old lady and an eccentric ex-lawyer. Edgar takes up sketching and with amazing rapidity becomes a painter. The therapy is good for him, but strange things are happening on Duma Key. Do Edgar's paintings hold a clue to Duma Key's past and present? Really, this was 3 and a half stars. I tore through it, just like I tear through every Stephen King book I read. I liked the characters, especially Wireman, but it felt weird to read a Stephen King novel set in Florida. I'm no expert, but it seems like--if they're set in this world at all--his novels are always in Maine, or at least New England. Also, I sort of felt like this had been done before. The plot wasn't the same, but the same sorts of ideas show up in Charles de Lint's Memory and Dream (which I prefer to this one, by the way). I really hate to write this, but I'll be glad when Stephen King gets his accident written out of his system. I know, I know! That's easy for me to say. That's a life-changing, maybe even a life-shattering, event and I'm pretty much wishing that the guy would just "Get over it, already!" I feel heartless. But there it is. I do wish it would stop…
Stephen King sits down to share his thoughts on the writing process. No matter what you think of his books personally, you have to admit that he's a master at drawing in legions of fans. He prefaces his work with an explanation of what prompted him to write it. He was talking with author Amy Tan when he asked her what one question she wishes somebody actually would ask her at an author Q-and-A. "Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and then said: 'No one ever asks about the language.'....But Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don't ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it's done. It's about the day job; it's about the language." Divided into three main sections, King actually covers a lot of ground in this short book. The first section is a mini-memoir of his life and the events that influenced his writing. The second part is the mechanics, and the third is about his life-changing accident (which happened in the middle of writing this book). I enjoyed the section about his life. I would never claim to be King's "Number One Fan," but I do enjoy reading his work. I can't say that I know anything about his life. He was run over about 10 years ago, Joe Hill is his son, and Tabitha King is his wife. That's about it. Oh, and that he was pretty strung out on drugs…
Author Ben Mears has returned to the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, where he spent the best years of his childhood. He had a traumatic, horrifying experience there, and he wants to write it out of his system at last. Around the same time, two other men move into town, R. T. Straker and Kurt Barlow. They buy and move into the local house that has haunted Ben for years. And then people start disappearing... Parts of this felt a little familiar. Little Mark Petrie reminded me of Jake from The Dark Tower series and the kid from The Talisman. Ben reminded me of someone too, I just can't put my finger on who. And then there's the name Susan. I wonder if there's a Susan in King's past. That slight familiarity aside, I did enjoy this. I think part of what gives me the willies when reading King's work is that he doesn't back away from using children in his horror stories. He kills them off when he has to and he turns them into evil little beings too. He uses children to chilling effect in this novel. One of the subplots that I really liked was Father Callahan's struggle with faith. Maybe that's because I did read The Dark Tower series first, but I enjoyed "meeting" Father Callahan and learning more about him. His part in this book comes pretty late, so I'll refrain from discussing him more. I want to re-read his part in The Dark Tower now that I know more about him! I really liked that the vampires in this book were real, true, evil vampires. Granted, this was written in the mid-70s, well before the current vampire love story craze (not knocking it at all), but it's still refreshing to read right now. This…
Do we all know the basic story of Cujo? Big, lovable St. Bernard gets rabies and goes on a rampage. That's it. Sounds so simple, and it mostly is, but King can tell one heck of a story. I read this without once closing it, in one 12-hour night shift, without even thinking about getting tired. In fact, I found myself idly wandering around the office, doing things that needed to be done, holding this book in one hand and working with the other. I seriously couldn't put it down. But it was a little weak. There was this little subplot where he tried to make the story supernatural. I thought it was silly and unnecessary. It was scarier for being something that I (in my complete ignorance of rabies) think could maybe happen, at least for a little while. And can I go on record as saying that I hate the name Tadder? If Tad is too short for you, why not move on to Theo? Your kid will not thank you for Tadder when he's being beaten up on the playground. I'm just glad I had finished this before my husband said, "How do you know he didn't mean it to sound like tater?" But the fact that almost all the "horror" elements take place in such a confined space with just three characters, one of whom is a St. Bernard, earns King huge points. This really should not have been a page turner, and yet it was. There is a reason the man is so popular. Reviewed October 21, 2009 Malaprop’s | Better World Books Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and…
Warning! This review will be incredibly long because I find it impossible to review a collection of short stories without reviewing each story. Feel free to move along. Overall, this was not a typical Stephen King short story collection. His short stories generally give me nightmares. There were a few horror stories in here, but really he was exploring the post-9/11 world, grief, loss, and the afterlife. Some of his efforts were more successful than others, but the ones that worked really worked for me. "Willa"--3 stars--A young couple on their way to San Francisco are waiting at a train depot for another train after theirs derails. This story was just sort of eerie. King is so great at setting a mood that you realize right away that something's not quite right, but mostly this story just felt like page filler. "The Gingerbread Girl"--5 stars--A young woman runs to escape her grief, and then a nightmare. This one was straight-up suspense. I found my shoulders tensed and my body hunched over as I read this one. It's amazing to me that an author can do that in so few pages. "Harvey's Dream"--3 stars--A man on the brink of retirement tells his wife about a terrible dream he had the night before. It was well-written, but I just didn't care. "Rest Stop"--4 stars--A mild mystery writer overhears a disturbing argument at a rest stop late one night and must decide what to do about it. This one left me wondering what I would do in his shoes. There's some exploration of the hidden depths we carry around inside that we hope we never tap into. A good "makes-you-think" story. "Stationary Bike"--A man creates more than he thinks when he paints himself a picture to help pass the time as he rides…
Peter David and company retell the story found in Book Four of The Dark Tower Series, Wizard and Glass. I didn't realize this was basically a re-telling of Wizard and Glass, I just assumed it was some sort of "Further Adventures of the Gunslinger" kind of thing set when Roland was young. I had a hard time reading Wizard and Glass because I had picked up on the ending somewhere. I was a little more resigned to it here, but still, this isn't my favorite of Roland's adventures. I did like the artwork a lot. I thought it captured the moods of the characters very well, and I enjoyed scoping out each frame. I felt like this would have been hard to follow if I hadn't read the book first. It's been so long since I read it that I still had a little bit of a hard time following along. It felt like it stopped very abruptly too. Maybe the next will pick up and explain the ending a little better. That's really all I have to say. It was well worth the time I spent reading it, and I'm sure I'll get around to the rest of the series at some point. Find author Stephen King on his website. Buy The Gunslinger Born at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore, and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.