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A review by dannys_book_corner
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King, Owen King
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Sleeping Beauties asks the question: What if all the women fell asleep and didn’t wake up?
Set in an Appalachian community the story follows an ensemble cast that includes drug addicts, sleaze-bags, murderers, adulterers, and yes, some good-natured people too. Sleeping Beauties really is a book about the people in Dooling and at times the story is just a passenger along for the ride.
It’s a long book, reading at over 700 pages and 26 hours on audio. It demands a significant time investment in doing so. But is it worth that time?
I’ve split this review in three sections. I’ll be covering plot, characters, and pacing, as I think they are three of the most important aspects coming out of this book.
Plot
The plot itself is sprawling, starting as the magical sleeping disease - later dubbed Aurora - begins to affects the world’s population of women, inducing them into a wakeless sleep, cocooning them in a webbing like organic mummies. The book covers the town of Dooling and it’s residents, how they cope with the impending shift in dynamics that results in a world where half the population is rendered comatose. It’s a tight plot, with few holes, and for the most part was what kept me interested in Sleeping Beauties. There was one aspect of the story I didn’t like because it felt, let’s say out of place. The King’s choose not to answer all your questions and I like that mystery about the story, it leaves some of the plot to the reader’s imagination.
I enjoyed the what if questions, I thought it was intriguing and could form the base of a clever novel which the King’s largely succeed at writing. But the what if isn’t the only subject of Sleeping Beauties. It touches on other subjects like toxic masculinity, police brutality, racism, sexism, adultery, redemption, fake news, manipulation, over-thinking, addiction, among many others. Some are tackled superbly and provided cornerstones to believable characters, others not so much. There was one plot-point towards the end that came across as shoe-horned in. It happened and was considered again later, but not adequately. Some of these ideas would have benefitted from being saved for another story.
Characters
I enjoyed following most of the characters but there was just too many. So many, in fact, that an index was needed, and even with that to reference I still found myself asking “who are you?” when some characters pop up. Many characters are afforded pages upon pages of this book, particularly the two main characters in Clint and Lila Norcross, others get relegated to mere sections. It’s these that are intended to give life to Dooling and it’s expansive population. It’s add an unnecessary complexity to the book that isn’t all that rewarding. I will praise the elder King’s ability to create realistic American characters, he is able to flesh out the most minor of them into vivid people. In growing the list of characters we run into issues with pacing, which I’ll cover in the next section.
Pacing
The pacing is one of my gripes with Sleeping Beauties. It’s leisurely at best until the climatic ending. The large cast and weaving of many stories meant constant divergences from the main plot that would introduce me to a character, just to not see them again in any significant way for 200 or so pages, if at all.
The first quarter of the Sleeping Beauties was sluggish, had me wondering if it was going to end up on my did not finish pile but I stuck with it as the story finally progressed. That’s the benefit of being an established author with a track record of writing some exceptional novels, readers will at times persevere beyond what other authors are afforded.
When the story did pick up I was compelled to read and find out how the world of men was going to cope without the women and what lengths the few women still awake would go to to stay awake. It was in reaching the red lights, do not pass until we’ve given this character their 15 minutes of fame, that I willed it hurry up.
Conclusion
If you’re a Stephen King fan then absolutely give Sleeping Beauties a chance because there is an enjoyable book in there. It’s got his voice, so it’s familiar and thought-provoking, provided some fun and entertaining characters. They’re believable, flawed, frustrating. But, there is an issue with how long this book is. There’s a lot of filler that could have been removed, or at least had the fat trimmed off, with more ruthless editing.
If you’re new to Stephen or Owen King and want to get into them, there are other, better places you could start(such as Salem's Lot, The Stand, IT, The Shining, Carrie). I’d pass on this one because of its heavy time commitment.
Set in an Appalachian community the story follows an ensemble cast that includes drug addicts, sleaze-bags, murderers, adulterers, and yes, some good-natured people too. Sleeping Beauties really is a book about the people in Dooling and at times the story is just a passenger along for the ride.
It’s a long book, reading at over 700 pages and 26 hours on audio. It demands a significant time investment in doing so. But is it worth that time?
I’ve split this review in three sections. I’ll be covering plot, characters, and pacing, as I think they are three of the most important aspects coming out of this book.
Plot
The plot itself is sprawling, starting as the magical sleeping disease - later dubbed Aurora - begins to affects the world’s population of women, inducing them into a wakeless sleep, cocooning them in a webbing like organic mummies. The book covers the town of Dooling and it’s residents, how they cope with the impending shift in dynamics that results in a world where half the population is rendered comatose. It’s a tight plot, with few holes, and for the most part was what kept me interested in Sleeping Beauties. There was one aspect of the story I didn’t like because it felt, let’s say out of place. The King’s choose not to answer all your questions and I like that mystery about the story, it leaves some of the plot to the reader’s imagination.
I enjoyed the what if questions, I thought it was intriguing and could form the base of a clever novel which the King’s largely succeed at writing. But the what if isn’t the only subject of Sleeping Beauties. It touches on other subjects like toxic masculinity, police brutality, racism, sexism, adultery, redemption, fake news, manipulation, over-thinking, addiction, among many others. Some are tackled superbly and provided cornerstones to believable characters, others not so much. There was one plot-point towards the end that came across as shoe-horned in. It happened and was considered again later, but not adequately. Some of these ideas would have benefitted from being saved for another story.
Characters
I enjoyed following most of the characters but there was just too many. So many, in fact, that an index was needed, and even with that to reference I still found myself asking “who are you?” when some characters pop up. Many characters are afforded pages upon pages of this book, particularly the two main characters in Clint and Lila Norcross, others get relegated to mere sections. It’s these that are intended to give life to Dooling and it’s expansive population. It’s add an unnecessary complexity to the book that isn’t all that rewarding. I will praise the elder King’s ability to create realistic American characters, he is able to flesh out the most minor of them into vivid people. In growing the list of characters we run into issues with pacing, which I’ll cover in the next section.
Pacing
The pacing is one of my gripes with Sleeping Beauties. It’s leisurely at best until the climatic ending. The large cast and weaving of many stories meant constant divergences from the main plot that would introduce me to a character, just to not see them again in any significant way for 200 or so pages, if at all.
The first quarter of the Sleeping Beauties was sluggish, had me wondering if it was going to end up on my did not finish pile but I stuck with it as the story finally progressed. That’s the benefit of being an established author with a track record of writing some exceptional novels, readers will at times persevere beyond what other authors are afforded.
When the story did pick up I was compelled to read and find out how the world of men was going to cope without the women and what lengths the few women still awake would go to to stay awake. It was in reaching the red lights, do not pass until we’ve given this character their 15 minutes of fame, that I willed it hurry up.
Conclusion
If you’re a Stephen King fan then absolutely give Sleeping Beauties a chance because there is an enjoyable book in there. It’s got his voice, so it’s familiar and thought-provoking, provided some fun and entertaining characters. They’re believable, flawed, frustrating. But, there is an issue with how long this book is. There’s a lot of filler that could have been removed, or at least had the fat trimmed off, with more ruthless editing.
If you’re new to Stephen or Owen King and want to get into them, there are other, better places you could start(such as Salem's Lot, The Stand, IT, The Shining, Carrie). I’d pass on this one because of its heavy time commitment.