I’m a big King fan: I have seen a few movie adaptations, would put “The Stand” on my list of top 20 books, and this is the 15th book of his I have read. This new edition to his pantheon caught my eye at the library and was hesitantly recommended by a friend who was already shin-deep into this book, but on the fence about it. Having finished it, I give it a resounding fist shake for an excellent premise but meandering execution.
It’s a different flavor of King, while there are horror elements sprinkled in, I would not call this a horror book. Instead, it is as if the darkest Grimm Brothers fairy tale was smashed together with Jack and the Beanstalk and turned up to eleven. It’s a coming-of-age story of Charlie Reade, who befriends the neighborhood boogeyman, the old man on the hill, and comes face-to-face with a fantastical fairy tale world. And if that sounds exciting, well, too bad, because you have to read about 300 friggin’ pages before there is any fairy tale in this fairy tale. Woof (Also, related, there is an amazing dog in this book, Radar gets 5 stars for being a good boy). The first 100 pages showed such promise, Charlie is a great kid to root for, and watching the dismantling of the crotchety neighbor mythos was lovely, and that was a book I’d like to read. But King promised me fairy tales and by the time he was ready to go there, I was too into the Charlie/Bowditch story to really give it up.
Charlie must wage battle in this other world, a place that was akin to if when Dorothy showed up to Oz she found it, instead of paved with yellow bricks, crumbling and its people warped by a horrible plague. And then it goes down winding hallways and corridors forever and ever and ever.
The editors really should have had a come-to-Jesus with him on this one. My friends and I have decided the editors are probably at this point afraid to say anything. “So, um, Steve. 600 pages huh? Is there anything in there…maybe, that you think we could trim? You’re glaring. You know what, I’ll see myself out.”
Also, as often happens with Steve, the landing is a wobbly mess. I was left with a Langoliers feeling in my mouth where the build-up was a ratcheting roller coaster, slowly click-clacking up up up. Where the “big bad” was made out to be the biggest baddest baddie but in the end was dispatched pretty quickly in the final showdown.
I know this one got a lot of love last year in fantasy circles, and I understand why it’s popular, but I need a little more pep in my pacing. I will obviously keep reading Steve, even his most bloated tomes, but next time try to cut me a little break and try out “less is more” for once, instead of “more is more.”