Doctor Sleep by Stephen KingMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It was a thrill to revisit Danny, all grown up and full of problems, and to watch as he finally overcame his demons and use his powers to help others. Then he mentors a child who is even more powerful than him and winds up helping defend her against the True Knot, a group of shining-eating entities that once were people.
There's a lot of great stuff in there. It's not a rehash of The Shining, but it certainly evokes memories of it. Doctor Sleep started a little slowly, and it definitely doesn't have the creepy feel that The Shining did. But Doctor Sleep is a more expansive story with a bigger picture. The character of Abra - the little girl that Dan helps - is very compelling and well-imagined. Her powers are incredible and, frankly, scary to imagine when hitched to the mind of a 12 year old.
No one can tell a story like King does, particularly when it comes to all the little stuff along the way and the dialogue that makes King so loved by the everyday reader. The tidbits of blue collar dialogue. The details of AA meetings and quotes. Snippets of well-placed lyrics and poetry. Little recurring visions.
From a writer's perspective, King had quite a few "point of view shifts", where the story suddenly jumps from one character's POV to another's. These annoyed me, but it's something King has always done. I prefer to stay in one character's POV until changing to another chapter. But this wasn't a big issue. The ending was satisfying to me, something I can't say about all of King's books.
One last comment: the book of Doctor Sleep follows the storyline of the book of The Shining. The movie does not. The movie for Doctor Sleep follows the storyline of the Kubrick movie for The Shining. And there are some HUGE differences between the book and the movie, like the ENTIRE ending. Both are equally satisfying, but in very different ways. Be sure to keep that in mind as you watch or read them back-to-back.
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Cheers and happy reading!
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