I just re-read Sleeping Beauties in August and enjoyed it more the second time around. Under The Dome is probably my favorite “late-era” King novels and I still can’t believe how badly CBS (and King himself) fucked up that story for TV. I mean, it was all right there in the pages to begin with. Why they felt the need to just screw with the characters and events is beyond me.
Oh yes. Sleeping Beauties was a good one too. I felt exhausted just reading about those staying awake. Well crafted tale and characters too.
I’ve been interested in Sleeping Beauties but I’ve read negative reviews that say it’s all Owen King not Stephen. Anyone have thoughts on this?
I’d be very honest and say I wouldn’t really be able to identify their voices too much but it reads like a Stephen King novel to me - maybe a little lighter on the gore. I enjoyed it and am enjoying it again.
Lemme upvote The Long Walk. It’s one of those rare stories that I still have very strong images from reading it 35-40 years ago.
Just bought the Kindle Bachman Books collection. I’m actually really looking forward to diving back in.
I had no idea you could still get it in any form. Is ‘Rage’ still in there? I’ve got a beat up trade paperback version that I’ve had for about 30 years.
Saw this thread just after finishing The Revival yesterday. As usual, King is really good at character building and his work is easy to read, so I breezed through it. But, I find the plot in this one is pretty shallow and frankly, not even horrifying. There is a short novella in the eBook bargain thread about “A Dead Djinn of Cairo” which also talks about a portal into another world where tentacles tried to enter into our world and that novella is a much more interesting piece of work to me. It was a let down. I am surprise that The Revival has good reviews in amazon. I would have given it a 3-star.
Before Revival, I read Duma Keys and that is a really good book. It has Pet Semetary type of horror and is an interesting premise/idea.
My worst King, not having read Tommyknockers nor Dreamcatcher (and thanks to this thread, I will stay far away), has to be From a Buick 8. I stopped halfway and put down the book and I have not put down any King halfway.
Same, for me. As well as Under the Dome. There are a lot of King books I read, but have zero memory of anything that happened in there.
I have “Under The Dome” in my Kindle library and have not started it. That bad, huh?
To each their own. I absolutely love that book. I love the large cast of characters he created, and watching their society just slowly unravel because of their situation is really compelling. There are also parts of it that are quite disturbing, as human beings can tend to be when there’s no one around to keep them in line.
I also enjoyed it because I live in a small town and it’s all too easy for me to imagine a snowglobe placed over the top of us, and witnessing the chaos that would ensue once the rednecks take over.
This was my problem with the book. It’s not “slow” at all. the whole book takes place over a week.
Jesus, did I just completely miss this while I was reading the book? Did I ignore it? I honestly don’t know.
To be fair, 2020 showed us that a week isn’t that far-fetched.
No, Rage is gone, it’s just the three now - Running Man, The Long Walk and Roadwork.
I’d say it’s a very stereotypical Stephen King book - the characters are great and the concept is pretty impressive. It just seems to really run out of steam at the end. I still enjoyed it though, but I’m a pretty solid Stephen King fan.
(Although not even I can say I thought The Tommyknockers or Dreamcatcher were any good. What’s worse is that the film of Dreamcatcher is so dreadful it almost manages to make a bad book worse.)
I did the same. It was unbelievably bad. I stayed away from King for years after that experience.
I don’t remember it being unbelievably bad, but then again I remember almost nothing about it, which might be a clear indication of quality…
Shit-weasels!
I have one problem with The Long Walk. I’m over six feet and have a long stride and walk pretty fast, but 4mph is still just below a jog for me. I think about that book every time I’m on a treadmill (infrequent though that may be) and say “Nah, he should have picked 3 mph.”
Yeah, Dreamcatcher knocked me off the King train almost as hard as the Tommyknocker era. Buick 8 was a masterpiece by comparison.