2021-02-25 01:33:35

No, Dark, unfortunately you're not correct on this point. I'm literally reading Pet Sematary at the moment. When the movers first come, Louis mentions them moving a double bed in. Early in the story, when Louis and Rachel fight, Louis comments that when he gets home, Rachel will undoubtedly be huddled on the far side of the bed (single, one bed) with Gage, leaving him feeling alone. By the time he has the dream about Victor Pascow, however, they are lying in adjoining twin beds. There is even mention, later on, after Rachel confesses about her sister, that Louis brings her into his bed when she wakes in the night.
So nope, he gaffed on this one, pure and simple. Doesn't ruin the book or anything, but definitely a gaff.

Also, I'm pretty sure the Creed family vehicle changes from a Fairlane to a Civic to a station wagon throughout the novel. I could probably pick out other inconsistencies if I tried.

It's still quite a good book though. It was your talking about it that made me want to reread it, in fact, since it's been awhile. Also makes me want to watch the 2019 film version, since I hear it has a wickedly dark ending.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-02-25 02:23:35

Ah fair enough Jade, I'd certainly noticed several inconsistencies myself while reading like the name of the owner of the bull I mentioned.
I'm composing a formal review at the moment so will knock a mark or two off for that, as King; or at least his editor should've done a better job there.

I read the synopses for the 2019 film, and the ending sounded totally bonkers, and very schlocky horror to me. Of course, reading a synopses and seeing something done are two different things, though in the case of a book like Pet Sematary, because so much of the horror comes not from what specifically happens, but from how it's told; heck even the mention of the title of the books' third part gave me chills, I don't know how well this one translates into other mediums, which I suppose is why they tried to compensate with a bit more in the 2019 film.

Even when my lady and I did the BBC audio drama last year , it was nasty, and well acted, and had a lot of seriously freaky sound design (especially in the swamp), but didn't have quite that absolutely visceral sense of impending doom and utter dark despair which the book has, and didn't give either of us the creeps the way the book did, for all it followed the book very closely.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-25 02:51:06

The BBC version doesn't have enough time to really let that sense of doom drop over you. It's rushed, because it sort of has to be. Agreed, though, on the sound design and acting. Gage's scream when he goes into the road broke my heart when I heard it. Also, Timmy Baterman, sneering, "What do you think of that!" I was fourteen, remember. Also listening via headphones in a house that wasn't mine, after dark, when no one else was awake. Heh. I did it to myself.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-02-26 13:40:44 (edited by Dark 2021-02-26 13:43:37)

@Jayde, yep, it's odd, the Bbc version had great acting and sound design and the events all in the right order, and was probably as good as any adaptation could be, it just didn't have quite as much of the punch, which I suspect is due to just how much in Pet Sematary comes from the way it is told, rather than purely what happens (I'll never think of the title character of the Wizard of Oz quite the same way again).

On another note, Back in December I read Black house, the collaboration between King and Straub and sequel to the Talisman.
the webmaster of Fantasybookreview.co.uk has now put up my review which can be Found here,  ---- he's had a bit of a hiatus in posting lately, though hopefully this was just post Christmas blues and lockdown, and he and his family are all okay.

Sort of odd that my review of Blackhouse gets posted just as I'm completing one for another Stephen King novel, but so it goes, I do intend to read my way through King's  bibliography, or at least most of it, and bang out the odd review where I can, and where the site doesn't already have one, albeit I'll probably have a break from King for a while and do some stuff in different genres.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-02-28 12:47:52

Black house is one of those novels I like a lot, and dislike a lot. For instance, I love the characterization for a ton of characters - Jack is good, Beezer is good, Judy is also good in a way - but then, I have serious trouble with Henry. He grates on my every nerve almost all of the time. Fifteen percent of the time, he's just a cool cat doing what cool cats do. The other eighty-five percent of the time, he's a blind man in the hands of two guys who don't know how to write blind men, and who don't want you to forget that Henry is indeed a cool cat. I don't know why, but Henry really, really gets up my nose. I also have the sense - as I did during both Doctor Sleep and The Institute - that there is no possible way the good guys will lose, even when awful things happen and setbacks occur. In the aforementioned books, it's worse, but for me it was still present here. Just enough mystical woo-woo to make the good guys come out on top. But there were some horrific setpieces, and Mr. Munshun was disgustingly creepy, among other things. I think I liked The Talisman just a bit better, but Black House is definitely better put together on a structural level. Pound for pound, you can tell that Straub and King in the 1980s just don't quite have the same chops as Straub and King in 2000 or so.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-02-28 13:43:26

I agree the talisman was generally a better book, but Blackhouse had it's good points, however oddly enough my lady and I both really liked henry liden.

Yeah, he's a blind radio dj with an awesome voice, however on the plus side, he is never helpless, was married, shows sartorial elegance and is (according to my lady),actually quite attractive in the way he's written. Yet for all of that, they don't do the dare devil thing of making him unrealistic, indeed I quite liked the way that outside of his perspective, people couldn't get a lot of the systems he used for remembering things like where his clothes were.

By contrast, I was less a fan of Jack here. he started off realy well when he was lonely and suffering a general mid life crisis and forgetting his childhood, however he quickly becomes a total succeedinator, ),  who is fantastic at everything, contemptuous of people like Fred Marshal and even tyler, and just rolled over the powers of darkness with simple ease, (the less said about his romance in this book the better).

We also felt that it was more due to the authors wanting Jack to be totally awesome, that things became waaaay too easy towards the end of the book (despite a really horrific death).

Btw, one interesting fact, when I was composing my review for Blackhouse, I ran across the article about the real Albert Fish on wikipedia, and yee gods! I never thought I'd say this, but this is one instance where King and Straub actually seemed      to hold back, since the real world Albert Fish makes the fictional charlse Burnside look pretty tame by comparison!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-03-06 15:37:17

This is probably mildly superfluous as I've already discussed my thoughts about Pet Sematary earlier in this topic, but now you can Go here for my review, which says most of the same things I did before, just in slightly better, or at least more reviewery language, which probably means not making up words like reviewery big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-05-13 20:34:32

Fancying a short story collection, ---- or at least a collection of novellas, I thought I'd give four past midnight a try, and as I've just finished the langoliers, here are some thoughts.


Interestingly enough, this is the one story in the collection I have both read, and watched the miniseries of (I actually watched the series’ first in this case). Unfortunately, after finishing the langoliers, the next disk fouled up and the RNIB talking book service never sent me replacements, so I never got to read the rest of the collection, which fact I intend to remedy now, though first its time for the Langoliers.

I have to say, at the start I was finding this one slightly hard going. King was switching viewpoints so much, even within one conversation, I almost felt like I was reading Frank Herbert. Also, we had the unfortunate problem that so many characters just felt so typical.
Brian is the standard competent Stephen King everyman; albeit as a Stephen King everyman he has some nasty things in his past like losing his temper and slapping his wife who has now died, leaving him with a lot of confusion.

Indeed, I was rather surprised Brian's past didn't come up more in the story, though it did at least give him a pretty major flaw he was obviously trying to atone for.

Nick is a walking cliche, since however much he says he's not James bond, he blatantly is, albeit a rather thuggish, nose twist first, ask questions later sort of James bond, and Yee gods! King really should bloody try to bloody right bloody English people without so blatantly resorting to the jolly old clichéd dialogue what what?
This was a particularly spiffing wheeze, when old kingers went and got his bloody aphorisms in a twist? I mean didn't the bloody old man cotton on to the fact that to "put the wind up", someone is to scare, them, not to jolly well unnerve them? And that said old expression isn't actually employed in such a fashion in old blighty you know?

Okay, fun as that is, I'm going to stop now, but I think people get the point; though Btw, I have never heard the descriptive term “buggerdly”, in my life before, but definitely intend to use it more in future big_smile.

Bob is the explaining old mentor, and Craig Toomy was a standard arse hole from the second he woke up, while both Laurel and Bethany were pretty standard King wet tissue female characters (especially Bethany with her repeated faints and crying).

Only Albert really seemed real at the start, mostly due to the wonderful contrast between his hilarious "fastest Jew in the west" cowboy fantasies, and just being a rather nice natured music student.

So, at the start that was where I was.

However, as the story went on, things started to change, since this is a good mystery which gets progressively more unnerving as time goes on, cities with missing lights, dead sound, tasteless food.

also, while the characters don't really develop, or show many new traits, King played a lot of them so well they just came to life a lot more. Nick showed fear and a softer side, Bethany had her rather lovely blossoming feelings with albert, not to mention her fight with toomy after she was grabbed (albeit this was the only time she didn’t respond with tears),  Albert has his own rather sweet hero’s journey, and craig toomy graduates from annoying corporate arsehole to wonderfully paranoid psychopath!

Actually, King cutting to toomy's backstory mid way through is one of these author things that writing resources tell you not to do, and yet King pulls it off by being just so good at prose and metaphors; (I liked the repeated deep sea fish image), especially when you realise the all-important meeting toomy is obsessing about is actually the end of his career.

Laurel's feelings for Nick, and her hole "going after badboys", thing  sadly didn't get as much attention as it needed, but by the time we were at that point we were fully through the looking glass and into the land of weird. And wow! did things get weird!
Actually, I just plane love the time premise to this one! It’s one of those ideas that seems so simple you wonder why nobody has thought of it before. Even for someone who has gone through an inordinate amount of the whoniverse, and so has seen a hell of a lot of stories about time travel, time moving slowly, or quickly, or getting stuck, or going round corners, or doing all sorts of other crazy things, this one stands out! Since the idea of the present moving on, and the past running down behind before being eaten by monstrous reality munching balls is just so fantastically strange!
King also just plays it so plane horrifically.

I remember being disappointed at the actual appearance of the Langoliers, when I read this before, but this time around, they were as awesomely scary as expected, especially with the way they chewed through the world itself!

Then we have the ending, Knick’s sacrifice, and that wonderfully transcendental moment when the future catches up, and its just a perfect capper to everything they’ve been through.

Okay, all of this is great, but you notice I’m sort of avoiding the elephant in the plane here.
The blind elephant, the very very blind elephant! The very very blind elephant who is blind, because its eyes don’t work, and it is therefore blind and does blind things blindly!
That! Elephant who is actually a little girl (a little blind girl no less), called Dyna!

I’m actually tempted to write a hole article on Dyna, just because she’s probably the best example I can think of how not! To write a blind character.

King has always had a tendency to hammer on descriptors, ---- we’re told fairly often about Ben being fat or Eddy having Asma in It. Sometimes, this can be pretty jarring; I did rather wince when King kept mentioning dick Haloran’s “black hands”, or “black face”, in the shining, which seemingly had little to do with his actual skin tone.

However, dyna is blind! The narrative repeatedly tells us she’s blind! She wears huge dark glasses because she’s blind, which again the narrative keeps reminding us of, ----  a narrative which seems pretty omniscient much of the time, and doesn’t do this with other characters, (Albert’s yarmulka is mentioned a few times, far less than Dyna’s glasses, but he’s not constantly called Jewish).

Chapter titles have things like “the little blind girl’s warning”, indeed she gets called “the little blind girl”, endlessly. This was particularly amusing for my lady, since she remembered an occasion when she was twelve, and described someone as “the big black dude”, her teacher admonished her, and asked her how she’d feel if people called her “The little blind girl”, whereupon she pointed out people called her “the little blind girl”, all the time!

Again, when the characters were doing this, no problem, fair enough, but when it’s the omniscient narrator who frequently dips into Dyna’s head? No! Naughty narrator!

Aside from that, everything she does is blind.

Okay, I could understand someone freaking out, waking up in an empty plane, but what does Dyna do? She stands up and loudly declares that she needs some help because she’s blind!
She then gropes blindly along the seats, expecting to blindly poke someone’s face, while reminding herself what her blind teacher taught her, and reminding the audience how blind she is. She begins to go into blind panic (pun intended), because she’s blind.

Actually, this made the hole freak out, screaming fit about the wig almost superfluous.

This scene could’ve been so good if written differently.
Dyna wakes up, realises her aunt isn’t there. Sits for a while waiting for her to come back and ignores lack of people sounds. She then decides to go and look for her aunt, so starts counting rows forward on the plane, slowly she realises there aren’t any people, so puts a hand over one seat back? No people, another? No people.
She begins to get edgy, and starts to make her exploration less careful.
She throws embarrassment to the winds and asks for help out loud, but freaks when she gets no answer, then! She finds the wig and loses it completely.
Start! With dyna as a competent blind person, then slowly show that competence eroding under stress, as the full impact of her situation kicks in and you have something much more horrific.
but No! King, the mast of horror, just makes her a poor, terrified, little blind girl!

When she meets Laurel, she blindly grasps her hand and is constantly lead around, because she is (as we remember), a little blind girl! Who is blind!
Indeed, after that first freak out on the plane, she only once in the story actually walks on her own, and even then, she does so blindly with her elbows stuck out and her hands over her ears, because of course, blind people have weird enhanced hearing, as part of their weird blindness!

Only once did Dyna actually feel real to me, when she heard whispered comments about her hearing and mimicked them back, showing a little more sas and something approaching personality, however she had to completely undo this by going into a ridiculous sobbing fit about not being crazy just afterwards, because as well as being blind, she’s also a little girl and therefore must cry!

And what about backstory and motivation?
She’s of course going to have a sight saving operation, since manifestly the only thing all blind people think about all the time is being able to see.

She has weird mystical blind powers, and finally gets to tragically see before she goes off to heaven, ah, how heart warming! The little blind girl got to see something, indeed her last words are how wonderful it is just to see!

This isn’t to say a blind person desiring to see is a bad thing, ---- I certainly would love to get my sight back, but it is not the only! Thing! On someone’s mind! Indeed, I honestly can’t think of any other details of dyna (even her last name), other than the fact she is, ---- you’ve guess it, blind!

Nick Andros in the stand had a lot of character and personality. Yes, he got some mystical communication with Tom cullan at the end, but only after doing, feeling and showing a heck of a lot of other things, being in short definitely a character who was also deaf, rather than just “the deaf guy!”

Really, Dyna has to be one of the single worst examples I’ve ever seen of a blind person in fiction.

Indeed, she’s very much a “blind! Person!” and certainly not! A person who is also blind!

Bad! Bad! Bad! BAD King!

I won’t say Dyna completely spoiled the story for me, but she was a pretty huge minus, which is a shame, since if King had just done a better job at writing an actual character rather than a walking set of touching blind assumptions, this one really could have worked.

Okay, ranting hat coming off now, though I am as I said, very tempted to write an article on this.

We’ll next see what secret window, secret garden has to offer.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-05-13 21:17:19

So I figured I'd post here, even though this has probably already been discussed before, but I'd rather not look through a topic full of potential spoilers to other books.
What are your thoughts on it? That's it, the book, by the way. I barely, and I mean barely finished it today. I've got to say, I'm conflicted. I've been reading it on and off for the past 6 months or so, frequently getting bored of it because of it's incredibly slow pacing, which in my opinion really does spoil what is otherwise a quite interesting story. This was my first Stephen King book, and while his attention to detail is excelent, I found that the book was just so much build up to an ending that, really didn't cut it for me.
I'll probably write another post once I've had time to organise my thoughts a little better, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts first.

2021-05-13 22:02:43

It is a sprawling, stomping, splattery monster of a novel, and that's both good and bad.
This book doesn't do subtlety. Ever. Everything it does, it does with huge, hammer-blows and visceral screams. Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, and there isn't a lot of room for anything or anyone else.

Now, you might think this is damning. But it isn't, and here's why.

It is the sort of novel that wants to suck you in, wants to make you live, breathe and sweat two different time periods. References, grace notes and back story is absolutely everywhere. This is Stephen King yanking you by the hair into the world he has created and, to some extent, has lived in (bear in mind, he would have been a child in the late 1950s, and it shows). He wants you to smell the stink of the canal, to feel driving rain, to see the splatters of blood on bathroom tiles that cannot, must not, be real. Fear of the sort that King is trying to evoke in his readers with this novel is the sort of thing that wants to get right in your face and snarl, and the only way he saw to doing that was in arterial gouts of prose...even if he definitely overdid it.

The ending, believe it or not, was one of the things I liked best about the novel. The entire downtown is starting to fall apart, suggesting that Pennywise was tied much more deeply to Derry than anyone realized. Audra coming out of her coma as Bill rode his bike was a bit cliched, but it worked for me. The use of fear and ritual to defeat the evil at the heart of this book was fairly well executed. And yes, even the weird, cringy sex thing worked, at least to some extent. Lots of folks will probably disagree with this - and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I found the scene fun or comfortable to read, either - but the point is, sexuality is one of the things that separates children from adults. It's sort of a rite of passage that most young people go through - though obviously not at the age of eleven, because eww - so for King to put it here, in a book about maturation, growing up, fear, taboo, secrets and all the rest? It made sense. Could he have done it better? Sure he could. Did he have to put it here? No, he didn't. But I do think it served a decent purpose, and I think the very discomfort some people feel when reading that scene, in particular, is partially the point. Clearly, Mr. King is not advocating that eleven-year-olds should be engaging in anything illicit; average eleven-year-olds, after all, don't usually find themselves lost in the sewers after banishing an extradimensional terror from their home.

I think this novel would have been better, stronger, leaner, with about two hundred pages trimmed out of it. Sometimes, the way Pennywise manifested felt repetitive. Sometimes, the back story stuff should have been toned down (still included, but definitely clipped a bit). This is vintage King though; he's infamous for telling everything, sometimes thrice.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-05-13 23:53:31 (edited by Dark 2021-05-13 23:57:21)

its been over a decade since I last read It, though its one of my lady's favourites, so its not inconceivable that I'll be reading it again in the future.

I agree with jayde's conclusion, but just to be contrary and show just how damnably contradictory the book is a couple of things he mentions as weaknesses I found strengths, EG I loved seeing pennywise different manifestations, and how each of the gang got a separate terror to tangle with.

Is it the most focused story? or even the most focused Stephen King story? Heck no! But as Jayde says, what it does, it does all the way! from bullying, to terror, to history.

I can't go into too many aspects given I've not read the book myself for over a decade now, although I have read it twice before (once when I was sixteen).

One of the few things I do remember, was the conclusion. Again, I agree with Jayde that I loved the ritual, sacrifice and metaphysical entity of things, though for me, Audra coming back actually felt okay.

My only major issue with the end, was the sex scene.
not the scene itself, but the fact that beverly had sex with all of the boys.

this is imho my one really major issue with It, that in a book about growing up, there is only one girl character. She's a pretty good girl character, (even if she is a bit of a wet tissue), but there is only one of her.

could I buy her having a special connection with ben, and maybe even Bill (although Bill always felt a bit too idealised hero), yes probably. Could I buy that this connection causes eleven year olds to have sex? Well, possibly.

but could I buy that Beverly connects all five boys by having sex with all of them, even those like Mike, and Richy whom she was just friends with? ---- That one is a bit too much of a stretch for me.

I personally think the book would've been better if there was at least one other girl, possibly two ((richy, Stan or potentially Mike could all have fulfilled the same plot function  and still been female), And then matters could have been a bit more even, and it felt slightly less that beverly was distinguished only by the fact she was female (especially in that scene).

then again, there's so much else in the book. Indeed, I only mention that scene specifically because I've seen so many people alternately damning and praising that scene that its one I've discussed with my lady a fair amount, but there is so much more going on, perhaps even too much.



Btw, as an interesting point, floating Dragon by Peter Straub was published four years earlier, and shares a lot of similarities with It. Extra dimensional evil coming back each generation, three male characters and one female character who come together to defeat it, looks back into history, and even a run into the sewers just before the final confrontation.

Several things I thought It did better, EG floating dragon is pretty thin on explanation, but one scene which is very lovely in Floating dragon which definitely scores over It, is that Patsy, the one female character, brings together the three male characters in a poetically and beautifully described act of psychic joining, not by having sex, and gets far more to do during the conclusion and after.
Not that I think It should've done the same thing, but its an interesting difference in a book that planely inspired Stephen King.

To be honest though Haily, if your looking for more focused, easily readable King horror, I'd suggest the sadly under rated rose madder (horrific for several reasons), pet semetary,  or the shining myself. It, might be one of his most famous, and it has some awesome moments, but if your not a quick reader and aren't keen on digressions, It probably isn't the best example of King's work.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-05-14 02:51:26

Ooh! Ooh! I can be contrary too!

The Shining is among King's best works.
Rose Madder, however? I'm sorry...but not so much. It has good points, but it's very paint-by-numbers, and this hurts it a lot. You practically know how it's going to go by halfway through the book. Norman Daniels is one of King's nastiest (but worst) villains, in the sense that he's just too over-the-top evil and awful. Rose herself...doesn't have a ton of character to her. She sort of floats through the story, being alternately frightened, determined, angry, overawed and grateful. Again, there are bits that make it work - some of the biplay between characters is nice, and some of the setpieces in the other world are well done - but it just doesn't rate high for me. Bottom ten for sure. And King himself doesn't like that book very much.

I've never seen Beverly as a particularly wet tissue either, by the way. I mean, she was the one with the slingshot, and she bloody well knows how to use it, too. Yes, she does cry a fair bit, but she's also being abused by her father, so it stands to reason that she might be a bit emotionally wild in that sense. I wouldn't rank her among King's worst wet-tissue female characters. I do think that It could have been done with one or two fewer characters; Stan, sadly, felt pretty extraneous for most of it, and as much as I hate to admit it, Mike did too.

Floating Dragon is one of those books that I've read eighty percent of, twice, and have just never finished for some reason. One of these days, I've got to just sit down and plough through the bloody thing, because it's fairly good. Straub has always struck me as being slightly more high-brow, complex King, with literary aspirations but slightly less resonant prose.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-05-14 03:16:59

Beverly is, interesting. Not great, character wise, though she certainly did have some interesting development.
I particularly liked King’s characterisation of domestic abuse. The scene where Beverly escapes from her husband’s house was one of those that managed to both intrigue, excite and repel me at the same time.
That goddam sex scene though...
I’d say my favourite character over all has to be Bill. He’s extremely endearing to me as a character, not to mention relatable in a lot of ways. I have a stammer, too. Ah, there’s another piece of excellent characterisation on King’s part, if I didn’t know better, I’d strongly suspect he was writing from personal experience.
I’ll probably check out the shining next, once I’ve at least kind of cleared out my already mounting list of stuff I need to read, anyway. What can I say, I love reading far too much.

2021-05-14 07:15:18 (edited by Dark 2021-05-14 13:12:59)

Beverly wasn't as bad as say franny goldsmith in the stand its true, but she did overdo things a lot, which again, wouldn't have mattered as much if there were other girls in the story. Again, how damselly beverly actually is is something I'd need to check when I reread it, whenever that might be.

Bill I tend to alternate on, since sometimes he's awesome, sometimes he feels just a bit too much plane noble, indeed my lady is rather convinced King himself had a stammer as a child and Bill is at least partly an author insert character.
One reason she tends to prefer Ben big_smile.

While I agree about Norman in Rose madder being rather overthetop eeeevil! It didn't take away from a lot of the good points for me, since there was so much else in the book I liked, especially in Rose's very realistic experiences of   abuse, (the losing time thing made me wince), her gradual recovery and how she started to piece things back together, even how there were lasting consequences, even after she'd met a decent guy.

Floating dragon is indeed a little harder going in places, but the payoff is worth it in the endd, especially when things go to hell and you literally feel as if your in another world.

I said a lot of this in my floating dragon and Rose madder reviews though, which you can find under my website link.

A childhood lack of easy access to reading materials means that I have got into the habit of always finishing books when I start them, one reason why my first experience with four past midnight and bust disks was so strange, plus of course these days, even if I don't like a book, I still get to finish it and write a review saying why I didn't like it big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-05-14 11:13:29

Yeah, bill is a bit too ideally perfect, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if King did indeed have a stammer as a child.
My thoughts on Ben were, mixed. His backstory was fascinating, but actual present day Ben just seemed, weird. Although admittedly I did rather enjoy the scene where he drinks an ungodly amount of alcohol right in front of the flabbergasted barman, and then just drives off to the airport, cool as you please. big_smile
While I didn't think much of Richie as a character, Stephen Weber's imitations of his various, uh, imitations, were pretty amusing, especially JFK. Stephen Weber is also the same person who plays Jeremy in we're alive, lockdown, which is pretty cool.

2021-05-14 15:31:36

Oh holy shit! I knew I knew that voice from somewhere!
For my money's worth, Webber's reading of It was a little overdone in places (well, a lot overdone in places), but he also did some parts of the reading extremely well.

Dark, I agree with you re: Rose's abuse situation, though again, the whole thing has a bit of a paint-by-numbers feel to it. Middle-aged white dude writing about abuse, and it kind of shows a little bit. I am very glad he did talk about the issue in the first place, and for all my criticism, he did some parts of it very well.

I just went back to see where my copy of Floating Dragon had got to, and now I can't find the bloody thing!

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-05-14 15:38:01

Yeah, the narration was definitely varied in terms of quality, though to be fair this was his first, and only, audiobook narration. The giveaway for me was his pronunciation of the word water as worter, he does the same thing in we're alive.

2021-05-14 15:54:42

Where I struggled with Webber reading It was actually in all the times where he'd yell or shout. Eddie's mom, Eddie's wife, the kids getting scared. When his voice is in a conversational register, he's spot on though.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-05-14 16:32:17

Yeah, agreed. He's an actor of the more theatrical kind, and it definitely shows.

2021-05-21 09:46:30 (edited by Dark 2021-05-21 09:48:25)

Okay, as I said in 233, I've now started on four past midnight.
its been a while, what with me doing a few other things, but I've now got around to reading secret window, secret garden, so thoughts incoming, and as usual, spoilers off the port bow! So hove too lest ya be spoiled by them thar spoilin' spoilers maty! big_smile.
Okay, I admit this one I didn't like as much. Where The the langoliers was a really good story flawed by a terrible blind character, this one just didn't grab me.
narrative was slow and ponderous, and Mort Rainy wasn't a particularly nice person to be around for such a long while, which would've been fine if there was a mystery or ongoing plot to hold attention, but here just not as much.

Maybe King had metaphorically shot himself in the foot with "evil writer's characters/alter egos", since literally the first thing I was thinking when John Shooter showed up was that he might not be real, indeed, actually just making him some disgruntled psychopath who was the victim of a terrible coincidence would actually have been a more unexpected way out here, especially after the dark half, rest stop etc.
Not that doing a familiar plot again is always a bad thing, but here, King left most of the clues and connections about the mystery till the final hour, meaning most of the time I was just waiting for the narative to catch up to the direction I was expecting it to go.

Actually King saying in 1990 that this would be his last story about writers and writing is sort of amusing in itself big_smile.

Mort as I said, I just didn't like. King did do a fairly good job of showing a divorce where there was still affection, but it was pretty difficult to sympathise with a man who showed very little compassion for anyone or anything, and just went on about his own success as much, indeed I actively winced when he was having tea with his jolly agent chummy, though I admit some of that is personal irritation at literary agents in general on my part.

As far as success goes though, King really needs to remember that when writing a stupidly wealthy and successful protagonist, readers actually need reason to care about someone, since while it would've been easy to sympathise with Mort losing his old manuscripts and his wife's mother's patchwork quilt in a house fire, his complaints about the loss of all his wife's fir coats, their expensive antique furniture, and all the wine in their wine room were just not matters I cared about.
King has done a good job of having us sympathise with hideously wealthy people previously, especially in Dooma Kee, but here he definitely failed.

I might have cared if characters had been a bit more likable, but mostly not.
similarly, as with lawnmower man, King really needs to consider why! things are scary, since Mort's dream of John Shooter, ---- shock horror! throwing blood oranges at a blackboard! really did not land the disturbing punch King wanted, maybe if he'd established some previous fear of oranges or some memory of Mort having his work defaced, but as it was, this was definitely more weird than scary, which actually covers a lot in this story that didn't involve death or murder.

even the climax was a bit of a disappointment, indeed I found it a bit strange that we suddenly changed to Amy's point of view, just apparently so King could reinact one of those injured psycho chases victim moments he likes so much and have the cavalry turn up at the last moment, actually, it would've been much more interesting to tell this from either John Shooter's perspective, or even Mort's, perhaps experiencing it as a dream.

So all in all, not a particularly good story. Not terrible, but feeling actively a little board is not exactly the sort of thing I expect from Stephen King, especially in his shorter fiction.

Still, my lady says the next story is rather better, so things should hopefully be picking up now.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-05-23 07:32:10

Okay, due to a long time spent reading yesterday, I've now finished the library policeman, so thoughts incoming, and as always, go no further lest yee be spoiled by the spoiling spoilers of spoileriness!

First thing to say, this one was good! As in really good! As in really really good! I remember once reading a comment by the editor Terry Carr, that every short story was an epic waiting to happen, and this one absolutely fulfils that description, indeed in many ways The library policeman feels like It or Duma Key rit small with all of the elements necessary to make a great horror novel, but none of the exesses.

Creepy onset with a down right disturbing library, but nothing to put your finger on? Decent protagonist who we learn more of during the story, indeed the way King scattered clues, signs and little symptoms, even going as far as Sam's lackluster dates with Naomi and the fact that he was putting up a facade in general was masterfull.

Possibly an even more compassionate handling of alcoholism and the logic behind alcoholic's anonymous than in Doctor sleep years later. Indeed, I loved how Sam himself had to learn lessons here, especially about Dave being far more than what he appeared, even though King didn't pretty up just how devastating long term drunkenness could be.

Some fascinating and creepy insites into the ideas of childhood fears, nindeed judging by King's own explanation of how he wrote this story, its pretty clear where his mind was.

and to top it all off one of the most down right disturbing monsters King's ever written, heck the connotations of a woman who uses the façade of a sweet children's librarian to get kids alone to do horrible things to them, especially combined with Sam's own history had some very disturbing resonances.

I remember the nurd girl power blog, once remarking of Pet semataray, that Stephen King was at his best where his stories had very real world scary stuff and so would almost work even if you took the supernatural away, loss of a child and coping with grief in pet Sematary, domestic abuse in Rose Madder, drug addiction and racism in the dark tower etc, and The Library policeman definitely falls straight into that category.

If I was going to criticise slightly, I might say that Naomi hovered on the edge of being idealised, then again, firstly Sam's smouldering feelings for her were pretty clear even from the first chapter, and secondly, she certainly had her own share of flaws, alcoholism not the least, oh, and she also very much avoided wet tissue hood as well, which was nice, having her own history and motivations.

I thought King might be going to drop the ball in the conclusion, especially with how Sam was getting a little too close to resolute hero wielding the power of light, but even here, no, not with poor Dave's death, a just wonderfully cinematic trashing of the library, and the final damage which was almost done to naomi and took a little extra tole, albeit one they'll hopefully recorder from.

Finish with a really uplifting ending, and an over all moral that nearly brought me to tears, and you have one absolute, hands down win!

Its stories like the Library Policeman that make me remember why Stephen King is such an awesome writer in the first place, especially after the decidedly lackluster secret window, secret garden, and the good, but almost fatally flawed langoliers.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-06-01 19:52:45 (edited by Dark 2021-06-01 21:39:05)

It took me a bit longer to do, but I've now finished the Sun dog, so thoughts, and a hole spoiled cart load of spoiled spoilers, incoming!

I admit, this one sort of threw me in the middle. The initial setup was nice, actually King managed to very quickly create a quite personable family all of whom were distinct characters; indeed eleven year old Meg puts dyna to shame as being a little girl with a lot of personality despite being in the story far less. I'm no authority on photography, though I would guess that instant polaroid cameras are probably about as obsolete in the digital age as dedicated word processors, but as Edgar Alan Poe proved several times, you don't need uptodate modern technology to be scary, and the idea behind this one is both freaky and interesting.

I had already got from Needful things that Pop Marrel wasn't quite the philosophical old codger he appeared, though actually, the way that King, usually the first person to delight in writing wise, fatherly old codgers slowly revealed Pop's feet of clay was rather nice, with Kevin, and us, realising at roughly the same time just how much of a sleazy crook he was.

My only miner issue, was that the story seemed to stall in the middle, after Pop got the camera, but before he tried to sell it.
King seemed to think that slowing the action here to give more of a view of pop was a good idea, but at this point, I just wanted to get on with the horror, especially since we'd largely lost the much more likable Kevin.

On the plus side though, once Pop started trying to sell the camera, things really picked up. I liked both the rich eccentric, and less than pleasant people Pop tried selling too, all levened by Pop's decidedly jaundiced perspective, and the fact that we got to realise over time just what a mistake Pop had made. Actually, seeing the old fraud trying to con people into buying the camera, only for every sale to turn on him was sort of kalmically satisfying big_smile.

That being said, I do sort of wish we'd cut back to Kevin and King had thought of a better way to get him back into the story, not  that King failed with the freaky dreams, especially when we understand not everything in the freaky dreams was actually malevolent, (I liked the two dimensional fat lady, who finished up giving Kevin the best advice). However, a bit more of an awake Kevin, and perhaps some path crossing between him and Pop marrel might have been good, especially because  the closeness between Kevin and his father that developed was genuinely nice to see, and the eventually connection between Kevin and the Camera that lead him back into the story was rather more tenuous than it might have been.

Then again, even if the climax was a little blatant in terms of the hand of the author pushing characters where he wanted them, it was well worth it, with a nasty fate for Pop Marrel, actually so nasty that I thought even such an unpleasant character didn't quite deserve that, and a bloody evil, reality bending monster of the type that King can right.

while he was straying towards the line of having Kevin a bit too empowered by light at the end, at the same time, the setup in the dream sequence did pay off, even if I'd have liked a bit more time for it to pay off more fully.

My only really major irritation, is that King was a bit too blatant in advertising needful things here, for example the time he mentions Polly chalmers and then literally says: "A woman who we will speak more of another time!"
King's habbit of connecting all the dots in his universe, and letting you see, even if breifly characters from previous books is a strength, but here, this felt a little too obviously: "coming soon! In the next new novel by Stephen King!", which, (given I'd read the novel in question, good though it was), was mildly urcsome.

Again, like the library policeman, the Sun dog feels like an idea that could have been extended to fit a novel, but where the library policeman felt like a novel with all of the flab cut out, and all the pieces locked tightly together, this felt like a novel with all of the pieces present, but not quite screwed in tightly enough.

That being said, it had everything one could want, colourful characters, both main characters and secondary, a creepy premise leading to a down right awesome conclusion, oh, and a bit of stephen King's trade mark, occasionally crass, out of place humour which you laugh at anyway even if you shouldn't! Like when Pop Marel has the nightmarish  impression that he'd just told two rich, prissy old ladies they were "chicken shit old cunts!", not that Pop Marrel cares about their feelings, but of course saying something so offensive would preclude him ever being able to swindle them again! Oh what a disaster!

So, that's it for four past midnight.

one exceptional story; the library policeman, one story which might have been exceptional but for a humungus flaw (the Langoliers), one pretty good story; the sun dog, and only one major clunker, the pedestrian and ponderous, secret window, secret garden!

All in all a pretty good collection, with some stand out moments.
I'd possibly rank it above the last King collection of Novellas I read, full dark, no stars, which was more even in tone, but had less major stand outs, though I still have a few collections like this such as different seasons to go, and like any collection, its pretty hard to judge the collection as a hole anyway, since for me at least, each individual story always is an entity in and of itself.

this btw, is why I don't write formal reviews on fantasybookreview.co.uk for short story collections, since I'd effectively have to write one review per story to be absolutely fair, which would be impractical.

As to what king next, we'll see! though I'll as usual have a break from horror, and indeed from King for a while before I tackle some more.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-09-26 12:37:17 (edited by Dark 2021-09-27 04:47:11)

My lady suggested reading one of her favourite King stories together, the Breathing method from different seasons, which indeed we did last night and this morning.

needless to say, before I get to my thoughts on the story, spoilers spoilers spoilers!

This one was indeed really good. The weerd club didn't really register on me in the man who would not shake hands, but here I got the idea of it as a really real, and slightly creepy place, indeed much of the story's appeal comes from the club, even though it's just a framing device for the story itself.

I also liked how we got to see David and his wife, indeed this is one of the times King quite successfully painted a picture of a very happily married, indeed long married couple without there being side or snark, yet with them painted as very real and believable people rather than architypes.

The story itself is a really quite lovely one. Writer of one king related blog I follow, nurd girl power, once remarked in her review of Pet sematary that King is great at covering real world nasty stuff in his horror novels, meaning that even if you took the horror elements away, you'd still end up with something disturbing to deal with.
here, King's very compassionate treatment of the problems of a pregnant, unmarried woman in America of 1930's were presented very sensitively, indeed even though Emelyn was obviously falling in love with Sandra, even if he claimed he wasn't, King's ability to make the reader admire someone trying their best to cope with an amazingly difficult situation, by simply having the teller of the tale admire them was masterful, especially compare to so many books I've read where the author as omniscient narrator simply tells us to admire the protagonist (as happened with Jack in Blackhouse for example).

Actually, with the way the story clearly told you of her death, and even Sandra's own presentiment of doom, I was getting vibes of Laura in floating dragon.
I did wonder how the breathing method for controlling contractions would tie things together, and yee gods! I couldn't have seen that coming, even though King was building on elements he'd already set up, Sandra's incredible determination, the regularity of the breathing method.

How something at the same time could be both disgustingly ghoulish, and amazingly beautiful I don't know, but King somehow managed to pull it off.

My only real criticism, is that I do wish the baby had tied into things a little more as an adult, or there had been some implication that he was perhaps someone at the club. Of course, seeing him as a successful literary professor with his mother's determination was perfect simply from the perspective of seeing that Sandra's efforts to bring him into the world against all odds had obviously gone so right, however from a story perspective, it might have been nice to tie things together, EG have him be a character introduced at the start, the circumstances of whose birth was revealed.

My only other problem was with the club itself.

Not the club as an idea, or the notion of it being both a place where older men get together to relax and share weird tales, and yet something else ontop of that, but simply because of the amount of time spent on it.

it's obvious why, from a purely structural point of view, Sandra's story had to be told from someone else's perspective, because there was no way she could both die and be the central figure in the unusual birthing, and there wasn't really enough in the events to go switching around too many perspectives.

However, there was no real need for King to have Emelyn tell the story at the club. He could've just been at a generic dinner party, like that in ballad of the flexible bullet, or just chatting to someone out on his porch, as in Mrs. Tod's short cut.
However, King made the framing story fully as major to the events as the central story, with the end of the story spending as much time on David's possible incites into the club being something otherworldly, as the climax of Emelyn's tale. Those insites were awesome, since nobody writes creepy worlds quite like Stephen King, but equally didn't seem to have much to do with the story of Emmalyn and Sandra.

I actually wonder, given the amount of time spent on the club here, as opposed to the far shorter amount of time spent on it in the man who would not shake hands, if King intended more for the club, perhaps intending the breathing method to be the first of a number of stories centred around it, perhaps stories which would eventually reveal more about what the club, and the weirdly prescient steward Stephens are. Maybe King even intended the club for the setting of a novel containing a number of weird tales told there.

Obviously, and sadly, this never happened, but with so much time given to what is essentially a framing story, it did make the breathing method feel a wee bit lopsided.

All that being said, the introduction of the club grabbed me from the start, and I really liked what we saw of the character of David, so while rewriting the context of how Emmalyn relates Sandra's story might theoretically be better in a purely structural sense, it would've cut out a lot of good stuff too.

So all in all, a pretty  dam good story!

Definitely a horror story, as King himself admitted in his afterward, but like most of the best of King's horror, one that does more besides.
My lady considers The breathing method the best story in Different seasons, and so I'll be reading the other three on my ownn over the next few days.

Next I'll go back to the start of the collection and read  shawshank redemption,

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-10-01 05:31:05 (edited by Dark 2021-10-01 06:41:39)

Okay I've now read both the shawshank redemption and apt pupil so thoughts incoming, and needless to say, spoilers ahoy for both stories! stop here lest the stories be spoiled by the plus sized spoilers of spoiling! Oh, and this post also contains a frank discussion of bad language, including racial slurs, which I will be using as part of the conversation, so if people are likely to be upset by that, please take care with this post.

It's odd, king states that he was trying to move away from horror, and yet Shawshank felt a very familiar horror setting. maybe it's just that %99 of the books I read are speculative fiction, IE books with an element of the alien, wondrous, epic, or in this case the horrific and disturbing, but Shawshank felt rather closer to a speculative fiction novel to me, just because of how down right horrible, and yet baldly realistic King paints the environment of Shawshank prison.

I suspect there probably are prisons like Shawshank out there, and well, duh, it's a prison, it's not supposed to be a nice place, but King manages to give the impression of the grinding routine, the background sadism, and the daily occurrence of rape, brutality and unjust punishment really well, without feeling as if he was getting gratuitous or trying just to shock.

I also find it interesting that King did the unthinkable and used the word "nigger", a word which has grown more unforgivable these days than the word "fuck", to denote the relationship of prisoners to guards, which spoke both to the ugliness of the situation in Shawshank redemption, and the ugliness of the social context the word was used in.
Sometimes, King revels in the bad language to what seems an excessive extreme, heck much as I enjoyed Rose Madder, Norman Daniel's was so offensive he became almost a stereotypical caricature, yet here, particularly because King doesn't hammer on the comparison but let it stand, I thought the bad language worked effectively for what King intended.

One problem I did have in Shawshank redemption, is that by nature of the story taking place over nearly 30 years, much of it felt like time skipped, described action, which general changes being described rather than specific incidents, meaning that for example of the three  head wardens (all degrees of bastard), who run the prison, only Norton felt like a real character who we actually saw interact with the other prisoners, even though we were told the first two were just as bad.

Actually, I don't know whether King's more nuanced portrayal of the screws in Green mile, going from the vile Percy Wetmore onwards, was a reflection of him wanting to give some more nuance to the guards, or whether Shawshank is just a particularly grim prison with a turnover of overly scummy staff, as unfortunately happens in a lot of institutions, or whether it's just that we're seeing things from the prisoner's perspective, who obviously have a vested dislike of the guards, and so see all of them in the worst light, however nasty they happen to be.

One thing I really did like here, was King's misdirection. At the start, I pretty much knew Andy was going to turn out to be innocent, both because Red told us he was innocent, and because (like John Coffee), the evidence paints him as so very very guilty. I was initially disappointed at the revelation that oh, look, this other guy we haven't heard of before, and who we have no reason to suspect was even there  might have killed Andy's wife and her lover, really the thing was so sloppy and out of left field I was almost surprised, since King doesn't usually make such obvious mistakes in plot structuring. Then, after Norton gets to be more of a bastard bang! It turns out King was doing a slight of hand all along, with the focus on Andy's possible innocence being the big obvious lure to get us to look away from his rock hammer and poster.

King even does a bald faced info drop and tells us that it'd take 600 years to break through the prison wall with the rock hammer!

Equally, though king protests the book isn't horror, again the thought of someone crawling through a two foot wide sewage pipe (apart from providing some surprising levity with the guards; I loved the "oh shit! it's shit!" moment, is pretty horrific. Sometimes horror stories work on our imaginations, and just imagining crawling through a small dark space full of sewage is pretty horrible.

The ending was surprisingly lovely, indeed Red feeling so lost and disconnnected upon leaving prison was quite frightening, since King recognised that people, even in bad or abusive situations can become so used to the situations, change can feel pretty awful, even change for the better, and yet Andy's note provides Red that tinge of hope, actually I'll admit this was one which actually made me shed a tear or two, not an unheard of occurrence, but rare enough for me to notice it.

Btw, interestingly enough, I once caught my brother watching the start of the Shawshank film, with Morgan freeman monologuing about how difficult life was outside, and I actually had to leave the room since I found the discussion so upsetting. Part of that is that Morgan freeman could probably act tears from a stone if he wanted given that he is literally god! (I've seen bruce almighty), part of it though, is just how profoundly, gut wrenchingly horrible the idea of getting out of prison and finding the outer world almost as bad actually is.
Indeed, my lady and I will likely be watching the Shawshank film fairly soon (maybe even this weekend), so it'll be interesting to see how that translates to the screen, especially after the absolute triumph that is the green mile.

So all in all, a very good, if very grim story, despite the time skips. Actually, to say that in his afterword King rather amusingly characterises Novellas as the hardest structure of fiction to publish, Shawshank redemption wouldn't have worked if it weren't a novella.
too long, and it'd just feel a grind, particularly with the endlessly bleak and brutal setting, too short, and it would feel too much of a summary and too little a story.

Was it horror? I don't honestly know. According to one definition I once heard in a horror anthology, which defined horror as a genre whose intention was to illicit feelings of dread, disgust, terror and anticipation in the reader, definitely! Then again, according to that definition, nearly everything would be horror at some point.

Ultimately though, was it a good story! Yes, most definitely! Maybe not among King's absolute, ten out of ten best, not with the generally grinding pace and slight lack of characters, but certainly top tier, and  one of his most moving.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2021-10-01 06:28:29 (edited by Dark 2021-10-01 06:57:08)

Okay, now for my thoughts on apt pupil, King's portrayal of the touching relationship between a Nazi war criminal and a teenaged sociopath.  Again, just in case people didn't read the previous post! Achtung! Hier kommt das spoilerin! Btw, when she is awake, I will ask my lady for the actual German translation of here come the spoilers.

Oh and again, oddly enough more racial slurs in this post I'm afraid.

I might have been biased on this one going in. My lady, a huge Stephen King fan though she is, really dislikes this story, regarding it as one of King's absolute worst, so it is possible that I was inclined against this one from the beginning.

On the one  hand, king was rather heavy handed with Tod's portrayal at the start of the book. As with overly fervent Christian girl, Sally Ratcliff and her nauseatingly apple pie American boyfriend in needful things, it's pretty obvious when King is hammering on the cookie cutter stereotype button to create a character the reader is intended to dislike, and it's often  rather too obvious. Indeed, I might've preferred in this case for Tod to initially come across as a sympathetic kid, and for us only slowly to realise just how wrong he was over the course of the story, or indeed for him to slowly go wronger and wronger over the course of the story, rather than it being sign posted from the get go.

It's odd, because initially King seemed to be playing with the idea that Dussander might regret his crimes and not want to talk about them, even though Dussander, as, well a Nazi mass murderer is obviously the one we are likely to suspect.

despite this, the first half of the story I actually liked. There is a horrid fascination about something so profoundly and twistedly evil as the Shoah (holocaust), was. Indeed, I was fascinated and appalled myself at thirteen, though in my case this lead me to getting involved with the council for Christians and Jews, and Beth Shalom memorial centre in the UK.

I was actually enjoying the twisted power dynamics between Tod and Dusander, the strange relationship between the two, and the idea of a rabid old Nazi forcing a sullen psycho to get on and do his school work or risk being found out I found sort of hilarious! The ways the two kept trying to one up each other, and both planned murder was genuinely entertaining to watch, indeed I would've liked to see them polish each other off, or maybe for Tod to get a sudden scare, and be forced to realise just what sort of evil he was dealing with.
I also liked the little nod to Andy in the story as well, especially with this following the Shawshank redemption.

If King had kept this one short and kept it to Tod and Dusander's interactions, just using characters like the school councillor or Tod's parents to enhance the dynamics, that would have been fine. However, he had to drag things out, and in one of the dullest ways possible.

First, Tod's nightmares, a genuinely interesting part of the story, in which Tod's status changes from victim to Nazi perpetrator and back again, turn into the contents of a fetishistic slash fic, complete with giant electric dildo! Because of course the story of a young man overly interested in lurid history, has to instantly devolve into a sadistic psycho who gets off on pain.
And of course, getting off on pain means not being able to have sex properly, being vile to an admittedly promiscuous girlfriend, and going around stabbing homeless people for fun! Indeed, I was actively surprised Tod didn't start murdering women or enacting his torture fantasies on his girlfriend, just to prove how eeeeeevil! he was.

Actually, the way both Tod and Dussander turned into simple psycho slashers was really disappointing here, and then of course we simply go into a story of two murderers trying with increasing desperation to cover up their crimes, and the inevitable march of justice catching up with them, because awe all know murder will out, even if the inevitable march of justice needs to be helped by Dussander just happening to share a room with a Shoah survivor, who just happened to break his back at the wrong time!

This leads to Dussander going out as a damp squib, simply committing suicide, and Tod going from mad slasher to mad shooter, again, dropping any possible connection with Nazism.

The frustrating thing about Apt pupil, is there are the seeds of a genuinely interesting story here.
The idea of someone growing overly interest in details of the second world war atrocities, which then sends them wrong, the idea of Dussander being partly pursued by his past, even in his dreams, and yet glorying in that past, even to the point of looking familiar and menacing wearing a faux SS uniform from a costume shop.

I also liked the way that Dick, tod's dad, was portrayed as a really nice guy who also happened to be just a bit racist, referring for example to Tod's mother Monica's "Pollack grandmother", or talking about his father's store being in a n eighborhood with "the crouts", and "the jigs", and yet, noting that the people of the neighbourhood; the very people he was insulting, saved his father's store from ruin when his father was ill.

This again could've been a fantastic nod to how the Nazi's gained power, indeed if Tod had started adopting Nazi attitudes rather than just turning into a fairly bland and generic psycho, having Tod's father shocked at the sight of racism, after his own attitudes could've been a nice moment.

I wouldn't say apt pupil is King's worst story, I did have moments of interest, as compared to the boar fest which was secret window, secret garden, but it is a frustrating story, since it starts with an interesting idea and an interesting relationship, and then develops that idea in the most predictable way, and what is worse, drags that idea out so slowly that you can see where it's going a mile off, and are just waiting for it to get there.

Indeed, that's another major problem in this story, since essentially Tod's self destruction simply takes a lot of innocents (like the perfectly nice, if ever mocked school councillor), with him, and never really saw a real moment of revelation or even awareness of his self destruction.

if Tod had met some sort of ironic justice, heck if Dussander had met some sort of justice; the nightmare sequence at his death implied it, but was for king rather gutless as compared to the likes of 1922, I might have been somewhat on board with the ending, but having a paragraph footnote tell us that a swat team shot him after a rampage really felt unsatisfying, especially if the rampage had been as extreme as King said.

Where the breathing method felt like a short story contained in a longer framing story, both of which were interesting in their own right and needed the time taken with them, and Shawshank felt it had to be novella length, Apt pupil really could, and indeed should have been much shorter. If King wasn't going to do anything more with his exploration of Nazi fascination than turn it into a fairly standard "catch the psycho", story, he could have at least used ramping tension to make that story a bit more gripping, not to mention given it a slightly better ending than one peaceful drop into sleep with a few miner nightmares, and one off screen shooting.

I'm not sure if I agree with my lady that this is King's absolute worst, imho Secret window, secret garden, or that terrible school shooting story from skeleton crew were worse, but, despite a few interesting moments, I'd say it still rounds out as below average, especially for Stephen King.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)