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A review by bbrassfield
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King, Owen King
3.0
Sleeping Beauties is difficult for me to write about. It's a long book and my feelings about it changed as I read through the lengthy tome. The beginning is slow as it takes time to set up a novel of this scale with so many characters. Slow, but not uninteresting. I mean anytime there is crazy supernatural murder going on at a meth lab/trailer that also goes up in flames, well how much is there really to complain about. The story takes place in Dooling (fictional) WV. Having lived in western Maryland I have a little knowledge of what living in Appalachia is like. The novel captures the rural nature of the context and characters pretty well.
As we move towards the middle, things really get moving and we find ourselves in the midst of a full blown epidemic, a supernatural one at that. How does the supernatural-ness of the story rank up there in King's long and glorious career? Well, I think it likely that Owen King did the bulk of the writing here and as such the core idea of having all the women in the world go to sleep and wake up in another reality to be (probably) uniquely his. I like that a bulk of the action takes place at a women's penitentiary. It allows the writer to focus on a diverse set of characters in a compact space and here is where the story and the writing are at their strongest.
The final third of the book drags, at least I thought so, and the ending coda takes too long to wrap, like Peter Jackson's Return of the King film forever ending long. Ultimately I like what the writer(s) are trying to do with the main theme and its examination of male female relations not only to one another but to the planet as a whole. I think the end could have been a little more satisfying and succinct. At least one character should have stayed on the Other Side!
Favorite character: Angel Fitzroy. Inmate.
As we move towards the middle, things really get moving and we find ourselves in the midst of a full blown epidemic, a supernatural one at that. How does the supernatural-ness of the story rank up there in King's long and glorious career? Well, I think it likely that Owen King did the bulk of the writing here and as such the core idea of having all the women in the world go to sleep and wake up in another reality to be (probably) uniquely his. I like that a bulk of the action takes place at a women's penitentiary. It allows the writer to focus on a diverse set of characters in a compact space and here is where the story and the writing are at their strongest.
The final third of the book drags, at least I thought so, and the ending coda takes too long to wrap, like Peter Jackson's Return of the King film forever ending long. Ultimately I like what the writer(s) are trying to do with the main theme and its examination of male female relations not only to one another but to the planet as a whole. I think the end could have been a little more satisfying and succinct. At least one character should have stayed on the Other Side!
Favorite character: Angel Fitzroy. Inmate.