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5starslut's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
My first King book since I read “It” in 2017 and hated that book so much I felt gaslit by the nation. I swore off King, but this book has called to me for years. The story so dark and twisted he didn’t want to publish it! His scariest book! It baited me into it And I have some Thoughts.
First, I’ll just say that Stephen King is a hypnotic writer. He has a very engaging, mesmerizing narrative voice. It is easy to lose time reading him. I wanted to read a few pages before bed and stayed up until 2am reading 150 pages. I appreciate any author’s ability to steal my attention. I like his turns of phrase, his narrative devices like italicized thoughts (although sometimes it is too much), the way he slips into the character voice, and his use of foreshadowing (Tananarive Due does that too, and I can see how he was influential on her writing as she herself has said).
That being said, I wonder if he sucks as a person. His characters are insufferable normies, and othering is a big part of King’s storytelling. From Native Americans, to Louis’s Indian coworker, old people— ironic given his current age—, to Jewish people, to women, with perhaps at the center of it all an ableism smattered throughout (Louis is a doctor), but full throated in describing Rachel’s sister who died of spinal meningitis:
“Victims of long illnesses often become demanding, unpleasant monsters. The idea of the saint-like, long-suffering patient is a big romantic fiction. By the time the first sore crops up on a bed-bound patient’s butt, he— or she— has started to snipe and cut and spread the misery. They can’t help it, but that doesn’t help the people in the situation.”
I’m kind-of speechless at this. And I don’t believe it was characterization, because King goes on in the next pages after that passage, using a sick and dying 10 year old as a horror prop. Not that experiencing spinal meningitis at 10 years old is the horror— no, King ruthlessly and salaciously paints a scene reminiscent of The Exorcist, gorging himself on his own hatred of the sick and disfigured in a way that feels slightly embarrassing to read. Are we supposed to be afraid of a little girl in pain? Did this actually deliver in thrilling and chilling people? I wanted to laugh— this is it? The great and terrifying Stephen King is afwaid of sick widdle girls. And Rachel, in her monologuing, confesses to laughing, feeling happy and relieved, when her sister finally died. Because how dare someone have the audacity to be terminally ill for all to see and not die quickly and quietly. Sick people should hide, crawl in a ditch, and kill themselves to save their families from the horrors. There was only cruelty in this scene, no grace, this revelation which means to offer the root of Rachel’s trauma like some grand climax— but it falls flat. Zelda is a one-note monster, evil because that’s what happens, right? She haunts Rachel throughout the book, a malicious, malevolent entity hellbent on serving Rachel the same cursed fate she suffered (which, honestly, I was in full support of. Drag that bitch to hell!)
The “Indian Burial Ground” trope was misguided and ignorant at best. It’s haunted because Native people resorted to cannibalism, of course! The soil was dirtied and cursed because of the barbaric acts of the Natives, certainly couldn’t be because of the violence of genocide or anything like that. The lack of creativity in this plot device demonstrates the White Cis Male Normie bubble that King is so deeply nestled into, he doesn’t even realize it. And that’s what it comes down to. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and he grasps aimlessly and in the dark at material to jar readers. If Stephen King deems a subject “other” (aka not rich, not able-bodied, not white, not straight), that subject is a target for jeers and a potential extraction point for his macabre freak show.
It was the 80s, and I took it with a grain of salt. But this book, and King’s voice, has a certain mean-spiritedness that I can’t shake. In a weird way, it works in the context of the story. Bad things happen to bad people. Ignorance is a veil, and tragedy knocks everyone off of their normie pedestal. We are all normies until we are not. The world makes freaks of us all. Privilege cannot protect you from the harsh truths of the world.
All that being said, King is a VERY good writer, which is how I was able to power through this, and which proves that prose is a way more important factor to me than I thought it was. On a craft level, pure composition, this book is 5 stars. Especially part 2, which seemed to shift to decidedly more bitter, gleaming prose, as grief takes center stage. Page 217-218 was breathtaking. Certain passages twisted my stomach up with creative jealousy and zealousness. He is verbose and has a strong voice, two traits I love in writing.
But on vibes?? This book is a 2. Stephen King is not a celebrity I would take to dinner, for I fear he would drone on and on like a problematic, drunk uncle, while I glance apologetically around me at the servers.
Last thing: I have read some good horror this year, so I may be getting desensitized, but I didn’t get scared or have a single physical response to this material AT ALL. Not scary, which is fine, I actually don’t need my horror to be scary. I think this did provoke a sense of dread, which is enough for me. But just saying. 0 for 2 on being scared by Stephen King. I think his “scary” bits are honestly pretty stupid, almost campy.
I needed to get this out of my system. Most of this is from my notes app while I was reading, and that’s not something I normally do, but I had FEELINGS during this read.
I am CONFLICTED!! And am giving this 3 stars, or maybe 2.5.
First, I’ll just say that Stephen King is a hypnotic writer. He has a very engaging, mesmerizing narrative voice. It is easy to lose time reading him. I wanted to read a few pages before bed and stayed up until 2am reading 150 pages. I appreciate any author’s ability to steal my attention. I like his turns of phrase, his narrative devices like italicized thoughts (although sometimes it is too much), the way he slips into the character voice, and his use of foreshadowing (Tananarive Due does that too, and I can see how he was influential on her writing as she herself has said).
That being said, I wonder if he sucks as a person. His characters are insufferable normies, and othering is a big part of King’s storytelling. From Native Americans, to Louis’s Indian coworker, old people— ironic given his current age—, to Jewish people, to women, with perhaps at the center of it all an ableism smattered throughout (Louis is a doctor), but full throated in describing Rachel’s sister who died of spinal meningitis:
“Victims of long illnesses often become demanding, unpleasant monsters. The idea of the saint-like, long-suffering patient is a big romantic fiction. By the time the first sore crops up on a bed-bound patient’s butt, he— or she— has started to snipe and cut and spread the misery. They can’t help it, but that doesn’t help the people in the situation.”
I’m kind-of speechless at this. And I don’t believe it was characterization, because King goes on in the next pages after that passage, using a sick and dying 10 year old as a horror prop. Not that experiencing spinal meningitis at 10 years old is the horror— no, King ruthlessly and salaciously paints a scene reminiscent of The Exorcist, gorging himself on his own hatred of the sick and disfigured in a way that feels slightly embarrassing to read. Are we supposed to be afraid of a little girl in pain? Did this actually deliver in thrilling and chilling people? I wanted to laugh— this is it? The great and terrifying Stephen King is afwaid of sick widdle girls. And Rachel, in her monologuing, confesses to laughing, feeling happy and relieved, when her sister finally died. Because how dare someone have the audacity to be terminally ill for all to see and not die quickly and quietly. Sick people should hide, crawl in a ditch, and kill themselves to save their families from the horrors. There was only cruelty in this scene, no grace, this revelation which means to offer the root of Rachel’s trauma like some grand climax— but it falls flat. Zelda is a one-note monster, evil because that’s what happens, right? She haunts Rachel throughout the book, a malicious, malevolent entity hellbent on serving Rachel the same cursed fate she suffered (which, honestly, I was in full support of. Drag that bitch to hell!)
The “Indian Burial Ground” trope was misguided and ignorant at best. It’s haunted because Native people resorted to cannibalism, of course! The soil was dirtied and cursed because of the barbaric acts of the Natives, certainly couldn’t be because of the violence of genocide or anything like that. The lack of creativity in this plot device demonstrates the White Cis Male Normie bubble that King is so deeply nestled into, he doesn’t even realize it. And that’s what it comes down to. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and he grasps aimlessly and in the dark at material to jar readers. If Stephen King deems a subject “other” (aka not rich, not able-bodied, not white, not straight), that subject is a target for jeers and a potential extraction point for his macabre freak show.
It was the 80s, and I took it with a grain of salt. But this book, and King’s voice, has a certain mean-spiritedness that I can’t shake. In a weird way, it works in the context of the story. Bad things happen to bad people. Ignorance is a veil, and tragedy knocks everyone off of their normie pedestal. We are all normies until we are not. The world makes freaks of us all. Privilege cannot protect you from the harsh truths of the world.
All that being said, King is a VERY good writer, which is how I was able to power through this, and which proves that prose is a way more important factor to me than I thought it was. On a craft level, pure composition, this book is 5 stars. Especially part 2, which seemed to shift to decidedly more bitter, gleaming prose, as grief takes center stage. Page 217-218 was breathtaking. Certain passages twisted my stomach up with creative jealousy and zealousness. He is verbose and has a strong voice, two traits I love in writing.
But on vibes?? This book is a 2. Stephen King is not a celebrity I would take to dinner, for I fear he would drone on and on like a problematic, drunk uncle, while I glance apologetically around me at the servers.
Last thing: I have read some good horror this year, so I may be getting desensitized, but I didn’t get scared or have a single physical response to this material AT ALL. Not scary, which is fine, I actually don’t need my horror to be scary. I think this did provoke a sense of dread, which is enough for me. But just saying. 0 for 2 on being scared by Stephen King. I think his “scary” bits are honestly pretty stupid, almost campy.
I needed to get this out of my system. Most of this is from my notes app while I was reading, and that’s not something I normally do, but I had FEELINGS during this read.
I am CONFLICTED!! And am giving this 3 stars, or maybe 2.5.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism
mlkao94697's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
The worst crime of this book was just how boring it was. The exploration style of writing that is used to try to connect us to the characters and set up the plot of the story might work for some people, but not for me. It just made the plot feel really meandering. About 70% of the way through the book, after Gage died , things started to pick up a bit, but even then there were only a few parts that were really engaging and the rest just more or less dragged on. The ending did not make up for the rest of the book either. I thought that the influence of the Wendigo just kind of took the gas out of the whole plot, and in a way, it removed a lot of the responsibility of the events of the book from Louis, which I found kind of annoying. The other characters besides Louis and Jud were so one-dimensional and basically felt only like tools for the plot. The passive sexism and racism were also super grating. The female characters could basically just be boiled down to sex objects. This was especially prevalent with Rachel, who was only there to serve as a source of pleasure for Louis and her main contribution to the book is her childhood trauma, which is used as a horror device later in the book . Also, the evil "Indian" burial grounds wreaking havoc on the poor white people premise is so overdone.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, and Terminal illness
Minor: Infidelity and Racism
chelseachips's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Grief, and Car accident
Moderate: Ableism and Chronic illness
Minor: Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
lillowo's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
Tldr: if you're interested in Reading as much of King as possible, or some of the highlights of his writings, this could be a good book for you. I felt like it was very dated and the characters who we most engaged with were not the most enjoyable. The basis of the plot and the story are super cool, but I didn't feel like it was explored fully.
I totally understand why when this book came out it was really popular. It blends the hard conversations of talking about death with children and the horror of losing a child and really interesting ways.
That being said, if you are not intending to read a King book because you want to read King's stuff, I would suggest the book How To Sell A Haunted House instead. I found there was a lot of dated language used (the r slur as a major example and ableism generally, the use of an "ancient indigenous burial ground" that brings people back to life), and the perspective of Louis that we got, felt like the idea of her King was looking at was grit and dark things to say to make it feel like a darker read. There were multiple comments that were just made offhandedly that gave the main character this air of being incredibly cynical but without much to back it up. I also felt like some of the through lines that were there weren't fully explored for the sake ofa darker ending. Two of the four family members die, and I brought back to life, and we had no real exploration after the initial moment of how do you talk about death with children.
I also felt like a lot of the logic that the characters explored in the book were very half-hearted at best.the idea of exploring death through this cemetery that brings dead things back to life, is super interesting! I just don't think the logic that was used to explore the impact of it really made sense. Jud decided that it would be a good idea to bring a cat back to life because it's a way to teach kids about death and to make them less scared of the fact that people and creatures die because you just stop liking them. Which also to me felt like King did not really understand cats. Like at one point there's a line about how he's glad that cats are such independent creatures because no one notices that church is different. If my cat started acting like church, I would immediately know something is wrong. They are the snuggliest babies ever. As I was reading that line I had a cat begging for affection. They're also isn't much exploration of this mysticism around the burial ground. It's become a trope in my lifetime, but I don't know if it was a trope then. I do know that it felt very tropy and a mystical element that with the knowledge of the 20th century, felt gross and something that I intentionally distanced myself from on a cognitive level. I think there could be a lot of ways to explore a burial ground that brings people back to life that doesn't engage on tired and egregious tropes around mysticism of indigenous peoples practices.
I totally understand why when this book came out it was really popular. It blends the hard conversations of talking about death with children and the horror of losing a child and really interesting ways.
That being said, if you are not intending to read a King book because you want to read King's stuff, I would suggest the book How To Sell A Haunted House instead. I found there was a lot of dated language used (the r slur as a major example and ableism generally, the use of an "ancient indigenous burial ground" that brings people back to life), and the perspective of Louis that we got, felt like the idea of her King was looking at was grit and dark things to say to make it feel like a darker read. There were multiple comments that were just made offhandedly that gave the main character this air of being incredibly cynical but without much to back it up. I also felt like some of the through lines that were there weren't fully explored for the sake of
I also felt like a lot of the logic that the characters explored in the book were very half-hearted at best.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Racism, Sexism, and Murder
draven_deathcrush's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I've owned this book for so long and I'm so glad that I finally read it. I can definitely see the appeal and I can see why people love this book so much, but it's definitely not one of my favorites. This is one of the only Stephen King books that I've read that I actually thought kinda dragged on, but I didn't mind it as much as 'Salem's Lot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, and Death
Minor: Ableism and Infidelity
jaimc's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Blood, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Ableism, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Sexual content, Terminal illness, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
ddspirittt's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.25
It is the most expository, dull, and boring book I have ever read. I was thankful to avoid any and all plot points before picking this up, but it was so predictable! I got so excited to see where it would go because of that.
Then I read. And read. Read. And read. Read some more. Read. The end.
People keep recommending this as the "scariest" story by King. But if the emotional payoff or lack thereof is "scary" to some, then dear lord, go read some more. The action at the end was neither suspenseful nor emotional but laughable.
Part two could be interesting, but this was the biggest letdown and snoozefest of a book ever. I don't want to read King again because of it.
Then I read. And read. Read. And read. Read some more. Read. The end.
People keep recommending this as the "scariest" story by King. But if the emotional payoff or lack thereof is "scary" to some, then dear lord, go read some more. The action at the end was neither suspenseful nor emotional but laughable.
Part two could be interesting, but this was the biggest letdown and snoozefest of a book ever. I don't want to read King again because of it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail
bomenvernietiger's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This isn't a book it's a depression machine. Jesus Christ Stephen. Incredible
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Antisemitism, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Infidelity
Louis says some ableist shit. You could interpret this as the author agreeing with that stuff, but since Louis is an asshole in other portions of the book too, I think it's just a symptom of the assholery.aleesquer's review against another edition
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Grief, Car accident, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Ableism, Chronic illness, Blood, Antisemitism, Cannibalism, Alcohol, and Colonisation
madamenovelist's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Racism and Xenophobia
Minor: Antisemitism