By Jesse Powell I wanted to take a different approach with this book review. I love book reviews, but sometimes writing them can be, well, a pain in my ass because I get to the end of the book and I don’t remember the juicy tidbits I wanted to write the most about. Oh sure, I could write them down or underline them. I started doing that once. Then I was reading books three times slower than usual. That got really boring, really quickly. This time around I’m reading Dr. Sleep by Stephen King, which is the sequel to The Shining. I know, right?! I love Stephen King. I’ve loved his books since I was 9 years old. Yes, that’s right, I was nine when I read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It is still one of my favorite books. His vivid descriptions have always fascinated me. His stories that explore the morbid, the terrifying, the macabre are very intriguing to me. My mind doesn’t think like Stephen King’s does, and that’s why his books draw me in time and time again. A quick synopsis of The Shining, for those of you who aren’t familiar but are still interested in what I have to say: published in 1977, it features a young boy named Danny Torrence whose writer father takes on a job as a caretaker at a hotel that turns out to be haunted. The Shining was inspired by the neoclassical Stanley Hotel located in Estes Park, Colorado. Danny has “the shining,” which is what he calls his gift for knowing things without being told them. He knows things about people and he can tell when others have the shining. He sees ghosts as well, and that’s just the beginning of the trouble. Dr. Sleep picks up with an adult Danny struggling with a drinking problem and enjoying a serious case of wanderlust. He goes wherever the shine tells him. Flashbacks show us snippets of Danny’s friendship with Dick Holloran, the custodian from the hotel who saved him and his mother. Danny is followed by ghosts from the hotel and they’re not of the friendly variety. Dick teaches young Danny how to capture the ghosts that haunt him by envisioning a metal box in his head and locking them away on a shelf in his mind. Wait, what?! Back the fuck up. How does he manage this? Does it take a toll on his mental and emotional well-being? What happens to them in the box? More importantly, can they escape? Oh but it seems Mr. King is going to make me wait for these answers. The more I read the more I realize it could be chapters before I am let in on the secret. That’s what a great author does, they hook you and keep you interested. Stephen King has mastered this. I’m about a third of the way through this thick book and I love it. It has taken me this long to decide that, but I liked it at least. It has gotten to the fun, weird storylines that keep me coming back to his books. I love the thrill and the fear, don’t get me wrong. You have to in order to enjoy most of King’s best work. I am weird, though, and I love weird things. I love aliens and telekinesis. I love mind reading and astral projection. At this point in the novel, I’ve met Abra, a young girl mentioned on the back cover who exhibits psychic talents from infancy. I can’t put the book down at this point. I want to know more about this little girl who can play music out loud for herself with no instrument, just her mind, to help her fall asleep. Ah, but King is Master of the macabre, if he is nothing else, and this book takes a sudden turn for the morbid. King plays with scary imagery like most of us play with kittens. Dr. Sleep features a ragtag group of unknown monsters called the True Knot. They are not around for comedic relief, let me tell you. Although King enjoys throwing that in at random times, and you’ll feel like it couldn’t come soon enough. The True Knot are interesting, for sure. That’s the thing about King’s character’s, they will intrigue you and then they’ll do something awful. You just never know whether they’ll be someone you root for or against until you already like them. It’s a gamble, really. The True Knot really pisses me off and while I want to know more about them, I also hope all of them perish by the end of the book.
King is quite verbose and for the most part I’m fine with that. I love how descriptive he is of his characters and his settings. He takes the long way ‘round when it comes to parceling out his stories. Dr. Sleep is no exception. It’s longer than its prequel and features far more side plots. Sometimes I think King writes certain things just to see if anyone will write him about it. I’m certain he wants to get a reaction out of his dear readers. There were parts of Dr. Sleep that made me wish it would just hurry up already. They turned out to be useful bits and I was placated, but I still feel there were things I could have done without. I feel like this is one of King’s best novels in spite of the little criticism I’ve mentioned. He has come a long way in his writing and how could he not after publishing 55 novels? He pushes the limits with his writing. He explores relationships of all kinds and he likes to see how crazy he can get before his editors tell him no. (It’s pretty crazy, in case you were wondering.) His novels are not for the faint of heart, so if you’re feeling like testing your own sanity, grab a copy of Dr. Sleep.
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