Stephen King - Reviews

11/22/63

Stephen King
Pocket Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Suspense
Themes: Alternate Timelines, Time Travel
****+

Description

In 2012 Maine, schoolteacher Jake Epping never dreamed time travel was possible - until his friend Al Templeton, dying of cancer, lets him in on a secret. In the back of Al's diner is a portal to 1958, always the same moment - and no matter how long one stays in the past, one always returns just two minutes later in the present. For years, Al just used then local market and 1950's prices as a cheap source of meat for his burgers, but then he realized he could do more... much more, such as prevent a national tragedy: the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963. Al tested his theory by preventing smaller tragedies, then meticulously stalked killer Lee Harvey Oswald, but his ill health caught up to him before he could act. Now he passes the secret and his notes to Jake. But time travel is tricky, and time acts to protect itself from even the best-intentioned meddlers...

Review

I've read a couple books and the odd short story by Stephen King, and while they weren't bad, I never got the huge hype surrounding him. (An old anthology whose name escapes me but also included the tale "The Brave Little Toaster" notwithstanding; that was a staple of my childhood.) Still, the subject of this one intrigued me (and I had a coupon to burn off at the bookstore that day), so I picked it up... and was very impressed. This is the writing that I hadn't encountered before, the stuff that elevated King to his near-cult status.
Jake isn't a perfect hero, struggling to do what he thinks is right against increasing resistance from various sources. His exploration of the past reveals the good and the bad of history, a world often viewed through the glow of nostalgia but which was every bit as contradictory as modern times, where attitudes may be (slightly) different but humans remain human, for better or worse. Time itself becomes a character, a stalking force that feints and strikes and tempts Jake off his course. His ultimate goal may be to stop assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, but even as he pursues that goal he must live his own life in the past, a life where even the best plans and truest loves are seemingly doomed for being built on lies. The story is a bit of a slow burn, but interesting enough to keep me reading, building at last to a tense climax - but what comes after the climax is even more powerful. King's extensive research makes both the "Land of Ago" and the characters come to life, turning the cast into much more than names in a history book or conspiracy theory essay. Reading this book in 2017 is a very different experience than it would've been just a few years ago; much of the ugliness of the past that Jake saw, the ugliness so many of us thought was slowly receding in the rear-view mirror, has come back to threaten our future, casting a bit of a pall over the ending. Nevertheless, I found it an eminently satisfying read, riddled with interesting details and recurring themes and moments that kicked it up a half star in the ratings.
(As a closing note, I still say the best-ever explanation for the JFK assassination was the one posited in the British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf, in the episode "Tikka to Ride" - the crew's temporal meddling leads to a very original solution to the conspiracy.)

Billy Summers

Stephen King
Simon & Schuster
Fiction, Crime/Thriller
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Soldier Stories
****+

Description

The war in Iraq may have trained Billy Summers to be a sniper, but he was a killer long before then, ever since one of his mother's string of loser boyfriends murdered his kid sister in front of him. After the war, it seemed only natural that he'd fall into life as an assassin, one of the best in the business. He told himself that it's not so different from what he did in the war, that the people he kills are bad themselves, but there's only so long he can repeat that and believe it. After this last hit, he's decided it's time to hang up his gun for good. Perhaps that's why he didn't ask the questions he should have asked: why this job needs such an extensive setup, months embedding himself in a small Southern town with an elaborate cover story about being an aspiring novelist under a tight deadline... or why the payout was so large for a target who, while no angel, hardly seemed to deserve the kind of attention he was getting. But something's sour about this whole deal, something that leaves him a fugitive from both the police and his former employers.
A man in Billy's position would be a fool to stick his neck out to help anyone, let alone the young woman dumped in the vacant lot one evening after a brutal attack. But he can't look away, not if he wants to believe that there's still a good person under all the bad he's done. Now, his quest for revenge and the money he's owed, as well as the truth about the hit he was hired for, carries the added complication of Alice, who could all too easily be pulled down by his bad life.

Review

This is the first King title I've read without overt supernatural elements (aside from a few nods to his previous titles), but Billy Summers hardly needs demons or ghosts to live a haunted, cursed life. Scarred from a young age, every step he takes seems to carry him further from the normal, happy life other people appear to live, into a future where the best he can manage is to rationalize life as a hired gun by only taking hits on murderers or child rapists or other objectively terrible people. The cover story provided by his handler, that of a writer, taps into a latent dream of his own, and once he discovers the power of writing to relive (and rewrite) his past, he comes to understand what kind of life he might have had had he never had to pick up a gun to defend himself from the man who murdered his sister, or learned to snipe in a war zone. Even as he plans for his own escape from the dark side, though, he has to wonder if it's too late to ever be that other person or live that other life, and though not overtly superstitious, he keeps seeing signs of his own impending doom. Rescuing Alice marks a turning point, one (possibly last) chance to do the right thing. She repays that kindness by becoming the ally he didn't realize he needed - though, touched by her own trauma, she could too easily fall into the sort of life he himself is trying to escape from. Meanwhile, Billy can't seem to stop writing the story of how he became who he is, though even he isn't sure if it's the beginning of something better or an epitaph. As usual, King delivers complex characters going through various levels of Hell, struggling and often failing yet unable to give up or walk away, even as tragedy seems all but certain. There are a few lulls and sidetracks, and one or two elements feel a little too coincidental, but it's always interesting, if often dark and sometimes brutal.

The Body

Stephen King
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing
Fiction, Thriller
Themes: Classics, Country Tales
****+

Description

A successful author with a happy family and fulfilling life, Gordie Lachance reflects upon the experience that both defined his childhood and, in a way, ended it. The year was 1960, the place a small Maine town called Castle Rock, and a young teen Gordie was hanging out with his friends Chris and Teddy one summer day when Vern showed up and told them he knows where they can see a dead body. Everyone knew about the boy Ray Brower who disappeared several days ago while out picking berries; surely this was the same kid. Vern claimed the body was in the woods off the railroad tracks, and they could probably get there in a day and a half following the rails. Partly from summer boredom, partly from a macabre childish fascination with death, the foursome decided to make the journey... not knowing how it would change them, and their relationship, for the rest of their lives.

Review

This novella formed the basis of the classic 1986 movie "Stand By Me", which changed some details but kept the heart of the tale, a coming-of-age journey where the true natures of the four friends are laid bare and their childhood innocence is forever lost, in tact. As in other King works, the characters become real people, flawed and complex and often living under dark clouds that they may never escape. Also as in other King works, childhood is remembered not as a golden, happy time of love and safety and whimsy (as some adults like to remember it), but as a violent struggle that leaves scars, sometimes literal, that one rarely outgrows. The half-feral childhood in a 1960's small town, long before kids were boxed in by schedules and leashed by cell phones, comes through clearly, even as the adult Gordie can pause to reflect on events and memories, even interspersing excerpts from his own stories. King paints a vivid, if sometimes brutal, picture of the friends, the town, and the transformative journey whose implications Gordie wouldn't fully understand until later; even the grown and married Gordie is still processing everything that happened, everything that he learned, all the ways that one fateful decision to go look at a dead body set the stage for the lives that would unfold after. Even as the journey transforms from impulsive adventure to something darker and more serious, there are moments of profound meaning and beauty. Much like the movie, there's a lot to examine and process in this work, more to it than initially meets the eye (or ear, as this is yet another audiobook I checked out from Libby).

Cujo

Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Biohazards, Canids, Classics, Country Tales
****

Description

The Trenton family - Vic, Donna, and young Tad - moved to Castle Rock, Maine from the big city to raise their boy in a better place, but it may be the undoing of their family. Vic's small advertising firm may be losing its biggest client, Donna's frustrations over small town life and being a stay-at-home mother lead to a brief affair with an unstable man, and Tad is convinced that there's a monster in the closet of his new room. When Vic has to head out of town on short notice to try saving his business, he leaves Donna with the boy and the family Pinto, which has been acting up lately. The local repair "shop" is crusty Joe Camber's converted barn at the end of a long, dead-end country lane... a shop space he shares with a gentle giant Saint Bernard named Cujo. The dog has been a solid animal, good and loyal, as well as a best friend to Joe's son Brett - until a fateful encounter with a rabid bat. Now Cujo, in growing pain and confusion and sourceless rage, is a monster on four legs... and Donna and Tad are about to become the targets of an unstoppable madness.

Review

This 1981 horror novel still delivers suspense and chills, though some of the story arcs range a bit far afield and don't always quite pay off for their ranging. From the start, there's a supernatural sheen to the otherwise earthbound terror that's about to be visited upon the Trentons and other residents of Castle Rock, demons that cannot be escaped from once they've chosen their victims. After the opening, the setting and characters are established and set in position for the terrors to come, most of them having complicated inner lives and relationships. As in other King novels, there are other themes that tie them together, in this instance matters of time and age and how every year, every month, every moment narrows choices and all too often moves one further away from the life one wants, further away from the people they used to be and still think of themselves as being even though that version of them slipped away while they were busy with the day-to-day business of living. Yet even when the past is gone, it still shapes and colors the future, a seemingly inescapable pattern. Different characters deal with their frustrations and disappointments over lost times and repeating patterns in their lives in different ways that drive the plot; some look backward and keep trying to recapture a lost era, others try to numb or drown the pain of lost years, still others feed resentments or other distractions. Even Cujo struggles to stay a good and loyal dog even as an alien madness - one, again, with some tinges of the unnatural behind it - drives the animal to murderous rampages.
From a somewhat meandering opening, the story builds toward its violent, tragic climax. At numerous spots along the way are places where things could go differently, where someone else other than Donna and Tad could move into the line of catastrophe (or said catastrophe might have been averted altogether), yet those moments are passed by as tragedy becomes more and more inevitable. As a monster, Cujo becomes downright terrifying, all the moreso because the reader first met him was, indeed, a very good dog. Rabies is a horrific enough disease on its own, but the strain in Castle Rock - of course - is more than a mere virus. Cujo does not just mindlessly hunt and maul; this is a stalking, cunning creature, the tool of an older and darker and more patient evil than any mere canine (or human) mind can understand. (There's also quite a bit of damage done to the troublesome Pinto whose engine malfunction kicks off so many bad things; having driven cars with "issues" myself, I rather suspect there was some personal catharsis involved as King mercilessly and relentlessly ravaged that car.) Toward the end the tale wanders a bit again, though the conclusion is reasonably strong.
On its own, Cujo remains a decent horror story. Compared to some other masterworks by the author, such as It or Pet Sematary, it falls short, but average Stephen King is still fairly good.

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

The Dark Tower series, Book 1
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Fantasy
Themes: Alternate Earths, Apocalypse, Classics, Magic Workers, Religious Themes
***

Description

At one time, the gunslingers were the knights of their world, executors of justice and upholders of civilized law, but times changed and the world moved on, leaving law and civilization dying in the dust. Among the scattered, shrinking townships, talk of the Devil and Armageddon is heavy in the air, and from the looks of things the End of Days can’t be far off. Roland, the last gunslinger in this dying land, crosses desert and mountain in pursuit of the “man in black,” a sorcerer capable of great miracles and great deceptions. Through him, he hopes to learn the way to the Tower, a place beyond space and time where God himself may be found looking upon His many universes, and perhaps the only place from which Roland’s world – or all worlds - may be saved.

Review

If Stephen King hadn’t already proven himself a profitable commodity, I doubt this book ever would’ve seen the light of day in its current form. It is, admittedly, just the start of a longer saga, a saga that was unfinished at the time this book was published, and that’s the main problem: it feels like the first few chapters of another book, roughly lopped off, padded out, and stuck into a dust jacket. The gunslinger and his world were so obviously part of a much bigger story that I never connected with them in any meaningful way. I also never have been able to tolerate Meaning of the Universe stories (stories in which the author attempts to break down the very nature of reality and pass it off as fiction), and the final part of the book was one long dissertation on the Meaning of the Universe as it sets the gunslinger up for the quest to find the Tower and possibly save his world. I found it at Half Price Books, and that’s the only way I’d even consider pursuing the series. It may be unfair of me to judge it harshly, knowing that there is a series attached to it, but it was packaged and presented as a single book, and thus as a single book I must rate it. As it is, I can’t say I feel compelled to follow the gunslinger much further on his surreally grandiose quest to the middle of nowhere.

The Eyes of the Dragon

Stephen King
Signet Books
Fiction, Fantasy
Themes: Fairy Tales, Wizards
***+

Description

Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Delain, there lived a king known as Roland the Good... a man who may have been no more good or evil than most, but who had at his shoulder a sinister demon of a Court Magician, Flagg. Perhaps it was Flagg's influence, or perhaps it was Roland's own weakness, but the king's son Thomas grew up feeling so insecure and unloved and inadequate that he would be the perfect pawn to finish off the magician's centuries-long Plan: destroying the long line of Delain's royalty and unleashing generations of chaos and bloodshed. Unfortunately, Thomas's beloved older brother, Peter, stands to inherit the crown. But when Roland is poisoned and Peter convicted of regicide, nothing stands in the path of Flagg's victory... nothing, perhaps, except the bonds of loyalty, memories of love, and the slender threads of hope rooted in a long-lost gift.

Review

Despite a certain fairy-tale charm, if one with dark undertones, this book ultimately feels like a short story - or, at best, a novella - fluffed and stretched out to paperback length. It tells itself in endless circles, with the omniscient storyteller narrator telegraphing major developments only to annoyingly dance and delay and backtrack, while deliberately omitting key elements just to shock (or, in my case, irritate) the reader. The world of Delain is a generalized sketch, a hazy watercolor backdrop with hints of magic but only a vague sense of cohesiveness. Likewise, the characters tend to be exaggerated figures straight out of a storybook - which, I suppose, is entirely appropriate given the tone of the tale. King creates some interesting imagery now and again, but ultimately I found myself too restless at the deliberate meandering pace to truly immerse in this story. I've read worse, though.

Secret Window, Secret Garden

The Four Past Midnight series, Story 2
Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Books
***+

Description

"You stole my story" are the first words out of the man's mouth - the last thing any writer wants to hear, but especially not Maine author Mort Riley. He has enjoyed decent success on the bookshelves, but his life is now in tatters, which is why he's living in the lakeside vacation cabin and his now-ex wife Amy is back in their home in Derry. Worse, the words have stopped flowing, and a writer without words is hardly a writer at all. And now this utter stranger, John Shooter, stands on the cabin doorstep threatening him over a short story he published years ago, claiming Mort somehow stole it from his home in a flyspeck of a town in Mississippi. It's a ridiculous claim, of course, but Mort needs proof, and he needs it fast. If he can't find it in three days, then John is prepared to seek "justice" in his own cold, cruel ways... ways that could involve his neighbors, his friends, and even Amy.
Originally part of the novella collection Four Past Midnight.

Review

Another novella from the Four Past Midnight collection, Secret Window, Secret Garden opens with a writer's nightmare: a stranger, possibly a crazed fan, on the doorstep with accusations of plagiarism that could destroy what career and life Mort Riley has left. He scoffs at the claim, of course, but the manuscript John hands him - titled "Secret Window, Secret Garden" - is almost the mirror image of his own early story "The Sowing Season", about a man who catches his wife cheating and plots to murder her and hide the body in her garden, in ways that are very hard to ascribe to mere convergent literary evolution... made all the more surreal now, after Mort himself caught Amy in bed with a family friend, culminating in their recent divorce. But Mort has no idea who the man is, nor has he ever been to Mississippi. If anything, it's more likely that John read Mort's story in a magazine and either forgot when he wrote his own tale or deliberately mimicked the story - but, of course, now that he needs it, Mort can't seem to find the issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that "The Sowing Season" originally appeared in, and the furious stranger won't accept his word on the matter. It isn't long before John shows Mort just how seriously he's taking this... and Mort, driven to the brink of sanity already by the failure of his marriage and the block that threatens his future as a writer, finds himself responding with both paranoia and violence of his own. He resists reaching out to the local law enforcement - the "law" in the sleepy lakeside town where he's staying isn't particularly effective anyway - and when he does reach out to others, bad things tend to happen, as John always seems to be a step ahead of him. The situation spirals out of control along with Mort's sanity, which was already frayed long before his wife's affair. The result is, in typical King fashion, harrowing, gruesome, and tragic, a life disintegrating before the reader's eyes. It lost half a star for drawing itself out a bit long once the big twist was clear, and for lingering overlong in the aftermath, circling its point a few times too often before actually getting there.

The Sun Dog

The Four Past Midnight series, Story 4
Stephen King
Scribner
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Canids, Curses, Demons, Dreams, Occult
****

Description

Kevin Delevan of Castle Rock, Maine only wanted one thing for his fifteenth birthday: a Polaroid Sun 660 camera. But his delight soon turns to confusion, when he tries to take a picture of his family and instead gets a photo of a strange, feral-looking black dog by a picket fence, neither of which he's seen before in his life. The next photo shows the same thing... as does a fresh pack of film. Only when he takes it to local junk dealer "Pop" Merrill, who has a seedy reputation but is oddly resourceful, does Kevin notice that, in every frame, the dog is moving - as if it realizes someone has taken its photo, and is not happy about it. And when Pop smells a profit in a camera that may be possessed by an actual demon, the whole town might be endangered, because with every click of the shutter the Sun Dog comes closer and closer.
Originally part of the novella collection Four Past Midnight.

Review

Stephen King delivers another solid horror story in a small Maine town, revisiting Castle Rock with a tale of a boy, his father, a greedy shopkeeper, and a monstrous being hungry for human blood. Kevin, understandably, does a lot of growing up in a short time, while his father forges a renewed connection by learning to trust his son, even about things that defy all rational thought (perhaps especially about those things). As in other King stories, most characters become fairly fully realized entities during the tale (Kevin's mother and sister being exceptions; they feel somewhat extraneous throughout in a story strongly focused on boys like Kevin, his dad, and "Pop"). The Sun Dog itself is a fearsome creature, not just bloodthirsty but cunning enough to manipulate those who hold the camera (or perhaps whatever created the Dog is responsible; again, as in many King titles, there are implications of greater forces at play in which the conflict we see is just one round in a much larger and longer game). If there are times when it feels like the tale is drawing itself out and dancing around points before reaching them, the whole comes together well enough to make up for the sidetracks and circling.

It

Stephen King
Signet Books
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Classics, Epics, Ghosts and Spirits, Locations with Character, Religious Themes
****+

Description

In the summer floods of 1958, Bill Denbrough's kid brother, George, went out to play with a paper boat... and was found dead, mutilated in the streets of Derry, Maine. Thus began another season of killing, a cycle of supernaturally vicious crimes that had played out, generation after generation, in the former logging town for centuries - only, this year, Bill and six other children stood in its way.
In 1985, the former "Losers' Club" has grown up and drifted away... all save Mike, now the town librarian. When the killings begin again, he calls on his old friends in the name of a blood-oath they swore, an oath they no longer remember - just as they no longer remember each other, or the thing they discovered lurking under the streets of Derry. They bested it once, in the forgotten summer of 1958, and only they can beat it for good, but that means returning to their haunted home town to confront once again the murderous face of all fears made manifest, the ageless entity known sometimes as Pennywise the clown, sometimes as Robert Gray, but truly known only as It.

Review

Yes, I suppose I'm a bit late to the party on this one. (The reading backlog's pushing triple digits, counting digital files...) In any event, the 2017 movie remake release prompted me to finally get around to trying it. Well, that, and numerous recommendations, not to mention having been unexpectedly impressed by King's 11/22/63, which made me suspect I might enjoy other longer books of his. And this thing is, indeed, a long book, north of 1100 pages. It takes a lot of story to fill that many pages, a tale of epic proportions - and Stephen King delivers.
Cutting back and forth between 1958 and 1985, between childhood and adulthood, with the odd trip even further back in time to previous outbreaks of It, King builds remarkably complete characters in a town with a complex, haunted history stretching back hundreds of years. It takes some time to build momentum, not to mention time to sort out the cast, but King masterfully weaves the mundane with the supernatural, the ordinary with the extraordinary, to keep the reader (at least, me) interested while creating a growing sense of horror, not to mention a sense that nobody, not even the main crew, is guaranteed safe passage, let alone a happy ending. His 1958 child's-eye view of Derry brilliantly depicts a lost age, not just in years but in maturity: childhood here doesn't have the blinding golden glow of nostalgia that some authors create, and can frankly suck even without supernatural entities stalking the streets, but it has its good points, too. The era comes alive again as a child experienced it, with favorite TV shows and double feature monster films and whole days spent wandering and playing in a way few children get to experience in this overwired, overscheduled, and overprotective age. As adults, returning memories slowly remind the characters how they became who they are, in good ways and bad; there's no Hollywood moment where everything becomes magically fixed by a Moment of Truth or power montage, but there are answers and some sense of closure. Meanwhile, they must remember the power of their former friendship, even as they try to evade the gruesome traps It sets to stop them. In many ways, the tale is as much about the struggle of childhood, the repeating cycles of life, and the rites of passage (and necessary sacrifices) as one grows up and changes, even into adulthood, a struggle made manifest in the fear-feeding entity of It.
The whole comes together in a brilliantly powerful conclusion, both past and present, followed by a bittersweet yet inevitable ending. It fully deserves its status as a classic, not just in the horror genre but in overall epic fiction - and this is, indeed, an epic tale, even if it takes place mostly in one haunted New England town. I only shaved a half-point for a little bit of excessive wandering, particularly in the interlude flashbacks beyond the main scope of the characters' tales.

The Mist

Stephen King
Viking
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Apocalypse, Classics, Religious Themes, Weirdness
****+

Description

The summer storm was the first sign of trouble in Bridgton, Maine, a vicious and hungry beast that destroyed trees and houses and brought down power lines all over town. At his lakeside home, David Drayton, his wife Steffy, and young son Billy rode out the worst of it in the basement. The next day, David notices a strange white mist across the water, lingering despite the sun and the breeze, but has more pressing concerns than a little odd weather, such as cleaning up storm debris and clearing the road.
He should have paid more attention to the mist.
When David, Billy, and a neighbor head into town to fetch groceries and supplies, the mist spreads, eventually reaching the supermarket parking lot... and those who venture into it do not return. Worse, with power and phone lines down, there's no way to call for help - and no way to know if there's anyone left to even call. Now David and his son are stranded in the store along with dozens of neighbors and strangers - as well as Mrs. Carmody, a local eccentric and religious zealot to whom the deadly mist is proof of the End Times at hand. The longer they're stuck, the more people fall under the sway of her words... and her conviction that the only way out is through blood sacrifice.

Review

This classic horror novella packs plenty of terror, tangible and psychological, into its relatively short page count. From the first dark clouds of the impending summer storm to the last lines, a tangible weight of doom hangs over David and his small family, premonitions of deadly danger that nevertheless fall short of the actual horrors he and his son encounter. What, exactly, is the mist? Nobody knows exactly, and nobody can know. The beasts it births do not seem like anything of this world, lending some weight to the wilder theories bandied about concerning a nearby government base known as Project Arrowhead, but the sheer monstrous nature of them also makes Mrs. Carmody's insistence that Hell has opened up upon the Earth not entirely out of the realm of possibility. The cause, ultimately, hardly matters to those stuck trying to survive an inherently unsurvivable situation. The supermarket, which had seemed a salvation, soon becomes a trap, between Carmody's increasingly-fervent talk of damnation and sacrifice and a splinter sect of "Flat Earth" deniers who refuse to believe there's anything threatening in the fog despite all evidence on hand (all too relatable in modern times) and the general slow-creeping insanity of being stuck in a box with strangers and dwindling supplies and no plausible hope of outside rescue. David is no perfect hero; his commitment to his son's survival (and his own) leads him to some desperate acts (or non-acts, as when one desperate mother pleads for help getting home to her own children beyond the mist and finds no takers). As in other King tales, the characters become real people, even incidental ones, making their almost inevitable gruesome deaths hit all the harder. With the exception of Carmody (who has echoes in other King works, a figure seemingly energized and empowered by terrible circumstances who spreads confusion and lies to make bad situations even worse, as though in service to some darker purpose), there are few outright villains, just ordinary people pushed beyond the limits of psychological and physical endurance by an impossible situation. The tension and terrors keep rising throughout, leading to a fitting conclusion, if not a neat and tidy one.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King
Pocket Books
Nonfiction, Memoir/Writing
****

Description

Prolific author Stephen King discusses writing - not just how to write, but what writing has meant in his own life.

Review

I know, I know... I really should spend more time actually writing than reading books on writing, especially having actually landed one (albeit minor) sale. But I've seen this one recommended by sources I trust (and it was half price), so I read it anyway.
Having read enough how-to-write books, I've become familiar with the general format - a format generally eschewed here. On the cover, this is billed as "a memoir of the craft," and that's what King presents, starting with a brief rundown of his life and how he became a writer... not to mention why he remains a writer, as brought into sharp relief with his recounting of the 1999 accident that nearly ended both his career and his life. It's an interesting glimpse at the development of a best-selling novelist (and short story writer, and noveletteer), offering a human perspective of an exceptional career. King follows with his advice on writing, from the nuts-and-bolts "toolbox" every writer needs to suggestions on editing and submissions. Some of this is the same basic material one can find in most writing books, though put in King's own, occasionally blunt words. (Published in 2000, it was just ahead of the e-submission revolution, with advice geared toward physical manuscript presentation.) He closes with a list of suggested reads - not "how to write" books, but novels and such that he cites as good examples of the craft, positive influences, or just good stories.
On the whole, it's a good book, a little different than the usual writing advice tome.

Pet Sematary

Stephen King
Doubleday
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Classics, Demons, Felines, Ghosts, Locations With Character, Undead
****+

Description

Louis Creed had high hopes for the future when he moved his family - wife Rachel, young daughter Ellie, baby Gage, and cantankerous cat Winston Churchill (or "Church") - to the town of Ludlow. He has a new job as campus doctor for the University of Maine, and the old house has lots of room for a growing family. The elderly neighbors across the busy street almost feel like kin from the first day. Many's the night Louis sits on their front porch with a beer, listening to old Jud Crandall tell tales of yesterday's Ludlow... and tales of the strange little cemetery in the woods behind his new home, where the local kids have buried beloved pets since time immemorial. But when Church gets struck by a car while Rachel and the kids are visiting relatives for the holidays, Louis can't bring himself to destroy his daughter's childhood innocence by telling her that her beloved (if cranky) pet is dead - over Christmas break, no less. Old Jud has an unusual solution, leading him to a deeper, secret burial ground beyond the pet graves to bury the unlucky cat. Louis doesn't understand why - until a day later when Church returns. It's not quite the same as it was, oddly clumsy and smelling of the grave, but it seems like an ordinary, living cat. Somehow, impossibly, the hidden burial ground resurrected Church. But there are dark powers at work, powers that Louis is now part of. And when tragedy strikes his family, he feels a temptation to cross a dangerous line... for, if a cat can be brought back from the dead, why not a child?

Review

This classic Stephen King horror story, in standard King fashion, brings an ordinary man and his family into contact with dark forces that crack open the veneer of normalcy and happiness and sanity in which they've been cocooned. It also serves as an examination of death, and how people cope (or fail to cope) with one of the most natural, inevitable events in existence. As a doctor, Louis understands on an academic level that death is the inescapable side-effect of life. He was half-raised in a mortuary by an undertaker uncle. If anyone should understand death on a practical level, it's him. He even tries to help his young daughter come to grips with the concept when their visit to the pet graveyard exposes her to mortality on a personal level for the first time in her life. His wife, on the other hand, was scarred by a childhood trauma involving a terminally ill sister and goes out of her way to not talk or even think about the d-word. When death enters their home, however, it's Louis who crumbles, scrambling to rationalize and undo the thing, despite his years of medical training and practice telling him that not only is death inescapable for all of us, but, as Jud puts it, "sometimes dead is better".
Disaster and darkness are foreshadowed from the start, but it takes a while for the plot ball to begin its roll. Along the way, the characters and the small Maine town come to life, the latter often through Jud's meandering tales of the town's history and the history of the secret burial grounds, which has been passed down through the generations as a local secret... one that has its own momentum, a way of creating circumstances where one in the know feels compelled to share the secret with another, feeding the ageless, shapeless, predatory darkness at its heart. There are many moments where Louis could step off the doomed path, many moments of possible salvation where the little voice of reason in his head tries desperately to be heard, but greater forces are at work, within Louis's increasingly-twisted mind and without in the woods beyond his home. Even seeing the disturbing changes in Church, how the once-docile animal develops something like a sadistic streak, isn't enough to stop the desperation of a father who sees the slenderest chance of mending an irrevocably shattered family. Tension and stakes raise ever more swiftly as the tale winds on, Louis's pains and torments drawn to excruciating extremes, eventually entangling the rest of his family. At some point, the climax becomes inevitable, yet remains riveting as it plays out. The finale is a masterful last twist of the knife.
Even as it plays on primal fears of death and unnamed evils in the dark and how quickly our logical higher minds (and the logical world views so many of us construct for ourselves) fall apart when confronted by the overwhelming and the impossible, topics King often explores in his works, the story ends up being about so much more than the gore and terror. For that it earned its extra half-star, even with the unrelenting darkness (and even with some old ideas on pet, particularly cat, ownership).

The Shining

The Shining series, Book 1
Stephen King
Simon & Schuster
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
Themes: Buildings with Character, Classics, Country Tales, Cross-Genre, Ghosts and Spirits, Mind Powers
****

Description

Frustrated in his writing efforts and fired from his teaching job, recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance knows that his latest job - live-in winter caretaker for a Colorado luxury resort, the Overlook Hotel - is likely his last chance, both for himself and his failing marriage. Being snowed in for months might be trying, but it just may be what he needs to rebuild his relationship (and trust) with his wife Wendy and young boy Dan. But the Overlook has a long and checkered history, and shadows just beneath the surface of reality... shadows that his son's unusual gifts waken...

Review

Like some other King novels, this classic horror story explores the generational impact and lifelong scars of abuse - substance abuse, physical abuse, and psychological abuse - and whether it's ever possible to outrun the demons handed down from our elders. Jack is a man coming apart long before he sets foot inside the haunted hotel, a simmering stew of unhealed scars and resentments and self-hatred that he tried to medicate away with alcohol for too long. His marriage already hangs by a thread, trust irrevocably damaged after a drunken incident with his son that Wendy witnessed, for all that the boy Danny still sees Jack as the hero of his life. Wendy also comes from a bad place, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. And while both love their son dearly, they can't help feeling like they don't understand him and his unusual ways, ways that go far beyond having an imaginary friend "Tony" who shows him things he could not possibly know. As for Danny, he's a kid struggling with burdens that would crush the average adult, trying to cope with abilities he doesn't fully understand on top of knowledge he shouldn't have - knowledge of the dark word "divorce" that flits through his parents' heads too often, knowledge of the darkness in the Overlook, and more. The hotel almost doesn't even need supernatural influence to set the ball rolling toward disaster, and yet it becomes a malevolent character on its own, delighting in tormenting its new toys with dreams and hallucinations and unearthing the darkest of dark ideas from their psyches. Trouble builds slowly and steadily as the winter sets in and options for escape dwindle, with Jack's mind slowly cracking from internal and external pressures, Wendy trying and failing to hold onto the man she loves (or the version of him she loves) and protect her son, and Dan under constant mental assault from the Overlook's evil, precognitive dreams, and the fraying sanity of his parents. The whole makes for an enjoyably dark tale.

The Talisman

The Jack Sawyer trilogy, Book 1
Stephen King and Peter Straub
Ballantine Books
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
Themes: Alternate Earths, Classics, Cross-Genre, Epics, Locations with Character, Magic Workers, Portal Adventures, Religious Themes, Shapeshifters, Weirdness
***+

Description

Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer knows his mother is dying, but doesn't know what to do about it, or about anything else that's gone so terribly wrong with his life since the death of his father years ago. What he does know is that his mom has drug them across the country to avoid the predation of family "friend" Marcus Sloat, his father's former business partner, but Sloat somehow keeps tracking them down. Jack feels lost and alone and utterly helpless... until a stranger tells him there's a way to fix everything, a quest that will take him across America and another parallel world known as the Territories, through dangers human and otherwise - a quest to retrieve a mysterious magical artifact known as the Talisman. But Jack isn't the only one on a quest, nor is he the only one who can travel to the Territories and back; Morgan Sloat and his foul minions are on his heels almost from the moment the boy takes his first tentative steps westward. And if Morgan gets his hands on the Talisman, whole worlds may fall.

Review

I admit I mostly tried this one to get ahead of a rumored Netflix adaptation. Though billed as its own story (or trilogy, now), it is tangentially associated with King's Dark Tower series, which never tempted me past the first book. Maybe that was part of what I found subtly unsatisfactory here, though there is quite a bit to enjoy.
Jack was born knowing of the Territories, which he called the Daydream lands (after the vivid "daydream" visits he'd take there), but - in the way of many children who grow up, especially too fast - he lost track of that part of himself until forced to remember. The Territories themselves are an interesting portal world, smaller than Earth but full of magic and marvels and terrors that form a sort of surreal mirror of our world, with several mysteries that Jack only catches glimpses of in passing. They are something Earth forgot about itself, something both wonderful and terrible, condensed into a purer, more potent form. His enemies in both worlds are cruel and monstrous, especially the ones that purport to be human, often twisting kindness and perceived benevolence into horrors and pain and outright torture. Morgan Sloat, who has a Territories "Twinner" (alternate self) every bit as horrid as himself, is aided and abetted by an insane zealot at least as terrifying as Morgan, though Morgan's son Richard - long a friend of Jack's when the families were closer - turns into an ally. More than once, Jack stumbles, but he manages to climb to his feet and keep going, slowly growing into his role as a hero as the journey strips away the last vestiges of his innocence. The whole takes on an epic quality, if one soaked in blood and pain and horror.
Where the book narrowly lost a half-star was in the sense that it was dragging its feet almost from the start. Jack must be pushed, repeatedly, into taking his first steps on the quest, even after seeing proof of the Territories and the potential truth of the stranger's claims more than once. Once on the road, he often slows to a standstill, mired in his own head or in some horrible situation (or both) that sometimes plays out long past effectiveness, as though the narrative just wanted to wallow in the depravity of some of his situations. More than once, Morgan's page time is just so much mustache-twirling and hand-rubbing at his own evil schemes without actually advancing the plot much. (And if, once again, a Black man exists mostly to enable a white boy hero, even to the point of self-sacrifice... well, it seemed to be a Thing that hopefully can be relegated to older books like this one.) All this caused just enough irritation to hold the book down from a solid Good rating. As to whether I'll pursue the second installment... I doubt it, as it seems like it ties more closely into King's greater Dark Tower series, and I just have no real interest in that right now. (I may change my mind later, but for now the to-be-read pile's plenty full.)
On an unrelated note, this paperback marked the end of the line for the best, most reliable, hardest to lose bookmark I've ever owned. After five years of faithful service and innumerable stories, it finally succumbed to a fatal tear. Rest in peace, Woodland Park Zoo map from Summer 2017. We went on many adventures together, you and I.