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dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Suicide
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is one of my book club’s choices for October. We had this as the darker, spookier read and The Phoenix Kepper by S.A. MacLean as our cosy, autumn read. This is the first book of Stephen King’s I read, and I was very disappointed.
This book is based on Jamie Morton, he lives in a small New England town. In the early 60s, a shadow falls over Jamie whilst he was playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie looks up to see a striking man, he is the new minister, Charles Jacobs. Soon they forge a deep bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity. Decades later, Jamie is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Now an addict, he sees Charles again – a showman on stage, creating dazzling “portraits in lightning.” and their meeting had profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.
One of the things I struggled with is there was a lot of information but not a lot going on. It starts with Jamie being 5/6 years old and ends with him being in his late sixties. A lot happens, but it’s more of a biography of a kid who was groomed, became an addict, went back to his groomer, realized how messed up that was, tried to stop him from being a fraud, got blackmailed into helping him, then him getting therapy. I couldn’t figure out what type of villain Charles was supposed to be, I went into this book being like don’t trust anyone besides Jamie so at first, I thought this was going to be a typical religion is evil and the priest is a groomer, but then it shifted and he was a fraud, but was curing people. I was just completely lost. I went into this book hoping I would be freaked out because of what you hear about Stephen King’s work. However, I was really freaked out or even scared and it wasn’t gothic either – it was just long with not a lot going on.
When there was action and things happened, I was sort of kind of on the edge of being hooked but then the next chapter would happen, and it was a whole back story to do with a family reunion that I didn’t care about. The storyline kept me hooked only because I wanted to know what the hell Charles’s endgame was. I wanted to know why he was doing this because as it went on, you realized he didn’t want to be rich and famous; he wasn’t dying so that was the question that kept me reading this book. I felt sorry for Jamie throughout the whole book with the way his life had turned out and I wanted to hug him and wanted him to be happy at the ending, which we didn’t get.
I would say this would be the first and last book of Stephen King’s that I read; however, Misery is on the list of 100 books to read in a lifetime. So, I will be giving Stephen King another chance to impress me, but right now, it’s not looking so good.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug abuse
Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Grief
Minor: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Suicide, Murder
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
How was this published in 2014 and this man STILL uses slurs???
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Suicide
Moderate: Cancer, Child death, Car accident
Minor: Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Racial slurs
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence
Minor: Cancer, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Cancer, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Self harm, Suicide, Violence, Medical content, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Injury/Injury detail
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I've read a lot of Stephen King, though most of it half my life ago, around when I started writing my own fiction. I don't know if all that reading built up my tolerance for horror, or whether I always had it, but I can count the times I left one of his novels feeling genuinely unsettled on one hand.
Which is to say, the level to which Revival wormed under my skin is a testament to both the strength of its core idea and the measure and focus of its narrative. King pares down his usual overwhelming imagery and spiraling tangents to deliver something distilled to its bare essentials — which is mostly a character study of two men, orbiting each other like a DNA strand, across sixty years of their respective lives. This isn't a thriller for most of its length. It reads like something you'd find on a general fiction shelf. But that's all necessary, because when it finally turns to horror, that horror is built on a foundation of a full life's worth of experience, knowledge, and most importantly nostalgia, all of which it weaponizes in a way King usually seems to care too much about his characters to do. When it does start twisting and turning near the end, its beats feel obvious in the way a rollercoaster's drop would. In that you may not be able to see it as you're being lifted, but you always know it's there, and that inability to see what's coming makes the heart race more.
At its core, Revival is a story about a wounded man who wants nothing more than to reveal the afterlife as a saccharine grift, only to find his own imagination had nothing on the truth. That story is told by a should-be bystander who had been bound to him, without choice, from his earliest memories. That thread of destiny — of choicelessness and a kind of inexorable, souless determinism built into the universe — is what ties the narrative together, from when it appears to be a story about addiction and when it develops into something even bleaker. And the horror rests in how it never truly provides a way out.
Which is to say, the level to which Revival wormed under my skin is a testament to both the strength of its core idea and the measure and focus of its narrative. King pares down his usual overwhelming imagery and spiraling tangents to deliver something distilled to its bare essentials — which is mostly a character study of two men, orbiting each other like a DNA strand, across sixty years of their respective lives. This isn't a thriller for most of its length. It reads like something you'd find on a general fiction shelf. But that's all necessary, because when it finally turns to horror, that horror is built on a foundation of a full life's worth of experience, knowledge, and most importantly nostalgia, all of which it weaponizes in a way King usually seems to care too much about his characters to do. When it does start twisting and turning near the end, its beats feel obvious in the way a rollercoaster's drop would. In that you may not be able to see it as you're being lifted, but you always know it's there, and that inability to see what's coming makes the heart race more.
At its core, Revival is a story about a wounded man who wants nothing more than to reveal the afterlife as a saccharine grift, only to find his own imagination had nothing on the truth. That story is told by a should-be bystander who had been bound to him, without choice, from his earliest memories. That thread of destiny — of choicelessness and a kind of inexorable, souless determinism built into the universe — is what ties the narrative together, from when it appears to be a story about addiction and when it develops into something even bleaker. And the horror rests in how it never truly provides a way out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
dark
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I might be overrating this one, but I gotta be me and I can’t help but love it when Stephen King combines slice-of-life melodrama with The Unspeakable Horrors. Most people have reviewed this book as slow-paced, which I get given the amount of time dedicated to the minutiae of Jamie’s childhood and adolescence and how long it takes the actual horror elements to seep in, but I still couldn’t put it down. Ended up finishing the 14 hour audio book in 4 days. King has his manifold flaws, but he knows how to grab you.
That all being said, the usual King caveats still apply here. He’s Weird about race, cannot resist fatphobia, and… struggles with realistically depicting women as fully dimensional human beings, although with the first person narration (a relatively rare choice for him), some of this could charitably be attributed as characterization of Jamie.
Again, the real strength of this book is as a cosmic horror story that actually feels grounded in material reality. I’ve always struggled with finding the “horror” in Lovecraft’s work (other than the horrifying racism), where the bloodless narrators and their “you just had to be there, trust me it was sososo much scarier than anything you could imagine” narration leaves me at an alienated remove. King might occasionally *over-elaborate* his horror elements to the point of silliness, but it just works for me when it’s grounded in world that feels painfully real. The ending is one of the bleakest King’s ever written, and it provides a kind of existential horror that’s stuck with me.
That all being said, the usual King caveats still apply here. He’s Weird about race, cannot resist fatphobia, and… struggles with realistically depicting women as fully dimensional human beings, although with the first person narration (a relatively rare choice for him), some of this could charitably be attributed as characterization of Jamie.
Again, the real strength of this book is as a cosmic horror story that actually feels grounded in material reality. I’ve always struggled with finding the “horror” in Lovecraft’s work (other than the horrifying racism), where the bloodless narrators and their “you just had to be there, trust me it was sososo much scarier than anything you could imagine” narration leaves me at an alienated remove. King might occasionally *over-elaborate* his horror elements to the point of silliness, but it just works for me when it’s grounded in world that feels painfully real. The ending is one of the bleakest King’s ever written, and it provides a kind of existential horror that’s stuck with me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Car accident, Murder
Moderate: Addiction, Fatphobia, Racism, Terminal illness, Toxic friendship
Minor: Alcoholism, Racial slurs
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book spans decades and reminds you that even in the present day, there is still so much we do not know. King killed it with this one. It’s a slow burn but worth the emotional and horrific payoff.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Car accident
Moderate: Addiction, Body horror, Gun violence, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, Murder, Gaslighting
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use
Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Death, Grief, Medical trauma
Minor: Death of parent
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Estuvo bien tremendoooo, es una historia para releer definitivamente, los personajes me gustaron mucho, incluido el prota y en unos tiempos también el llamado quinto en discordia, estuvo triste, y bonito, y gracioso de a ratos, no dio miedo exactamente pero si me hizo sentir algo tensa y a la expectativa. Me gustó mucho, igual y me lo compré :) <3
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Drug use, Violence, Car accident, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Suicide