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A review by monitamohan
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King, Owen King
3.0
I only occasionally read Stephen King as some of his books can be more of a miss than a hit for me. But there’s no doubting that the man’s imagination has no bounds. Together with his son, Owen, they wrote Sleeping Beauties, a story about the women of the world falling asleep and becoming encased in cocoons.
In the meantime, a powerful and strange woman calling herself Evie Black appears in a small town and turns the lives of everyone upside down. Is Evie behind this phenomenon, in which case how do the townspeople stop her from affecting more women?
Conceptually intelligent, the plot doesn’t try very hard to be poignant or relevant. Why are the women cocooned and left helpless? How does that benefit them? The men continue to be terrible - to each other and to the women. Yes, the comatose women do attack when directly threatened but they’re left vulnerable to men in any case. They’re set on fire with no recourse, so who won in this uncalled for war?
While the women characters are superb - layered, imperfect and compelling - there isn’t enough focus on them once they start falling asleep. I loved those characters and the book should have been about them investigating a scary phenomenon and delving into the myths and impact of patriarchy.
Evie’s agenda makes no sense, irrespective of how the authors try to dress it up in the end. She supposedly changes the world for the better but those utopian steps aren’t earned. Here’s why. The story spends too much time focusing on a group of people investigating the phenomenon or attempting to fix the problem that it forgets to focus on the actual fears or concerns of the characters.
Terry goes into depression after his wife is cocooned, but we hardly even read about Terry so his downfall didn’t resonate. Most of the other male characters were written solely as despicable and disgusting characters. The authors are eerily accurate in their descriptions of how toxic masculinity works and how some men think, which is great but there’s so much page space given to these characters at the expense of the much more interesting women.
The good guys are the other opposite - Clint and Jared are veritable saints, which was a relief but it’s sad how their endings went. More than them, I think Lyla deserved better. She was an amazing character. All the women deserved better especially given their eventual choice.
The women were stuck between a rock and a hard place, another black mark against Evie. Honestly, what was the point of it all? The ladies were miserable on either side of their coma and all of them were handed bad cards following their decision. The writers try to suggest that life is idyllic in the final act, but most of those women’s new lives would be considered a living hell to many.
What bothered me a lot about the book was that the authors reiterated that only people with the XX chromosome were affected by the phenomenon - I kept expecting that the authors would showcase the gender spectrum, perhaps with trans and non-binary/gender fluid characters coming to the fore discussing how their community was impacted or not by this and of course, about them being left out of the conversation. But the writers only deal with cis characters. Not a mention of any other gender. When Evie Black seems to be defying the odds no one wonders about how her chromosomes could be the cause. Why not?
In the end, it feels like the book capitalizes on the popularity of Orange is the New Black and attempts to be woke but refuses to actively engage with women’s issues and the landscape of characters. The book is very entertaining, downright enthralling, but we need more.
In the meantime, a powerful and strange woman calling herself Evie Black appears in a small town and turns the lives of everyone upside down. Is Evie behind this phenomenon, in which case how do the townspeople stop her from affecting more women?
Conceptually intelligent, the plot doesn’t try very hard to be poignant or relevant. Why are the women cocooned and left helpless? How does that benefit them? The men continue to be terrible - to each other and to the women. Yes, the comatose women do attack when directly threatened but they’re left vulnerable to men in any case. They’re set on fire with no recourse, so who won in this uncalled for war?
While the women characters are superb - layered, imperfect and compelling - there isn’t enough focus on them once they start falling asleep. I loved those characters and the book should have been about them investigating a scary phenomenon and delving into the myths and impact of patriarchy.
Evie’s agenda makes no sense, irrespective of how the authors try to dress it up in the end. She supposedly changes the world for the better but those utopian steps aren’t earned. Here’s why. The story spends too much time focusing on a group of people investigating the phenomenon or attempting to fix the problem that it forgets to focus on the actual fears or concerns of the characters.
Terry goes into depression after his wife is cocooned, but we hardly even read about Terry so his downfall didn’t resonate. Most of the other male characters were written solely as despicable and disgusting characters. The authors are eerily accurate in their descriptions of how toxic masculinity works and how some men think, which is great but there’s so much page space given to these characters at the expense of the much more interesting women.
The good guys are the other opposite - Clint and Jared are veritable saints, which was a relief but it’s sad how their endings went. More than them, I think Lyla deserved better. She was an amazing character. All the women deserved better especially given their eventual choice.
The women were stuck between a rock and a hard place, another black mark against Evie. Honestly, what was the point of it all? The ladies were miserable on either side of their coma and all of them were handed bad cards following their decision. The writers try to suggest that life is idyllic in the final act, but most of those women’s new lives would be considered a living hell to many.
What bothered me a lot about the book was that the authors reiterated that only people with the XX chromosome were affected by the phenomenon - I kept expecting that the authors would showcase the gender spectrum, perhaps with trans and non-binary/gender fluid characters coming to the fore discussing how their community was impacted or not by this and of course, about them being left out of the conversation. But the writers only deal with cis characters. Not a mention of any other gender. When Evie Black seems to be defying the odds no one wonders about how her chromosomes could be the cause. Why not?
In the end, it feels like the book capitalizes on the popularity of Orange is the New Black and attempts to be woke but refuses to actively engage with women’s issues and the landscape of characters. The book is very entertaining, downright enthralling, but we need more.