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General Category >> General Board >> TWO MINUTE REVIEWS: Dr. Sleep by Stephen King
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Message started by Gary A. Markette on Apr 9^th, 2014, 10:53am

Title: TWO MINUTE REVIEWS: Dr. Sleep by Stephen King
Post by Gary A. Markette on Apr 9^th, 2014, 10:53am

Stephen King has written so many novels, novellas, short stories, and other stuff that I rank his work in tiers. Tier 1 contains the writings I think excellent; works like The Stand, The Drawing of the Three (Book 2 of the Dark Tower series), The Eyes of the Dragon, and The Library Policeman. Tier 2 contains the Very Good and includes (among others) The Shining, Salem's Lot, Carrie, and The Sun Dog. Tiers 3 through 5 rank as Good, Readable, and "published because he's Stephen King" respectively. (This last group contains such works as The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher, and The Colorado Kid. Of course, all of this is merely my bias. Some of the work I find tedious, others may enjoy.) His recent Dr. Sleep straddles the Very Good and Excellent tiers (leaning a bit more toward Very Good).

Dr Sleep continues the story of Danny Torrance -- the little boy from The Shining -- the character that the Kubric movie messed up so badly (along with almost everything else; hey Stan, if it ain't broke, don't fix it). About this book, King said that "it's a balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror story." Wrong, Steve. You don't write horror stories. You write action adventure novels that use horror as an element of the plot. To be fair, this page turner uses that plot element a lot. King's recurrent theme of vampirism--in a different and interesting form this time--is cental here and the group of badies involved is really nasty. Another King theme--children in peril--also drives the reader through his prose. Throughout, the Master weaves his usual magic making you care about and identify with the characters. I relegate this to the second tier only in comparison to other works on Tier 1.

Read this one. It's a worthy sequel to The Shining. (I hope no egomaniacal producer/director gets his claws on it.)

Strongly recommended: 4 smiles

:) :) :) :)