Powerful Pages - Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)

Powerful Pages - Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)

I started reading Stephen King novels when I was 8 years old.  When I started on this voyage, it seemed like I would never run out of books from the maestro to devour.  But, inevitably, at some point, I approached the finish line.  I put Pet Sematary aside because I always wanted to have one last vintage yarn from Uncle Stevie to dig into.  Decades passed.  And the time came.  I just had to give it a go.  First off, I'm sure glad that I finally took the plunge; Pet Sematary is a demented masterpiece, and it is as entertaining as it is unspeakable.  Secondly, this was probably a good one to set aside, for it is as dark and haunting as anything King has written.  It is maybe as dark and haunting as anything I've ever read, and that puts it right up there with The Exorcist* and Lord of the Flies**.  Pet Sematary is all kinds of heavy, and it puts the characters (a really likable family and a friendly neighbor of the highest degree) through all kinds of awful shit.  And the whole time, you sense the storm brewing, and somehow knowing that these people will suffer in abhorrent ways makes them that much more endearing.  I guess that makes Pet Sematary as much of a tragedy as it is a horror novel, and it does operate on a grand scale that it isn't altogether common within the genre.  King dares to grapple with some of the most difficult questions we all face in this life, and his answers here are as brutal as they are blunt.  At the same time, the prose is warm and inviting, and the book itself unwinds like a tale spun by that remarkable neighbor, good old Jud Crandall, a kindly soul with a gift for piquing our interest.  This story is intriguing from the onset, and as the stakes rise and the tension mounts, it becomes savagely addictive.  I turned pages and begged the main character to change course with considerable tenacity, though I knew to expect the very worse at every turn.  And toward that end, King delivered.  Oh man.  He delivered in spades.

*Surprise!  The scariest movie of all time sprang forth from a novel that is equally intense and frightening.  Indeed, the book has additional depth and takes the startling premise even further.

**Fuck William Golding.  Fuck Lord of the Flies.  Simon's death may be the most traumatic aspect of my high school education, and that little episode in my life had trauma to spare.  Also: fantastic book, hell of a writer.  Highly recommended!

Final Grade: A+

Powerful Pages: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (1987)

Powerful Pages: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (1987)

I often hear The Tommyknockers labeled a lesser outing from Stephen King, and I've never heard anyone recommend it.  Even the author himself has derided the novel as bloated, essentially surmising that it ran twice as long as it should have because he was too coked up to take his foot off the gas.  And yet, writing a book is a lot like casting a spell, and a reader can tolerate a lot of excess if they are sufficiently captivated.  While I will not argue that the book takes a while to get going and sags (a lot) in the middle, I must confess that I'm going to rate it far higher than most of my peers.  In fact, I really enjoyed The Tommyknockers, warts and all.  I attribute this to two pivotal elements of this massive tome.  First, I had a lot of fun with the main character.  Deeply flawed and viciously self-destructive, Jim Gardner may have been the unlikeliest of unlikely heroes.  However, he also had some charm at his disposal, and his reckless passions were described well enough to be understood if not endorsed.  Dude was funny too, with his unraveling at a disastrous dinner party in the somewhat tedious first act practically jumping off the page.  This sequence instantly netted a place as one of my favorite passages from King.  And when the chips were down, it was both easy to root for the guy and easy to believe that he might just come through in spite of all his shortcomings.  The second aspect of The Tommyknockers that I greatly appreciated was the ending, which delivered in a big way.  I am a big fan of King, but as many will agree, he is not necessarily known for sticking the landing.  The last act of The Tommyknockers was smoking hot, deftly combining action on a grand scale, unspeakable horror, and a pronounced emotional wallop.  Is The Tommyknockers worthy of a spot in King's top ten?  Surely not, but it is far from one of his lesser efforts.  I rate it as a quality read courtesy of this generation's most beloved writer, and I strongly encourage anyone who has a tough time with the beginning to hang on for that wicked climax.

Final Grade: A

Powerful Pages: The Outsider by Stephen King (2018)

Powerful Pages: The Outsider by Stephen King (2018)

Stephen King's latest is at once vivid and refreshing while also paying tribute to the maestro's biggest strengths.  Rich characters and a well-drawn setting are the key ingredients, but a thoroughly engrossing first act and an approach that blurs the lines between a legal thriller and a supernatural opus also present themselves as major assets.  The big bad is new and unique, and equally creepy, and the book moves at a quick pace--which isn't always a staple of King's fiction.  I felt like this book deftly combined the hard-boiled aspects of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers (both of which were totally devoid of supernatural shenanigans) with the passion for things that go bump in the night that has always elevated King's fiction.  While End of Watch, the bookend to the Bill Hodges trilogy, also intertwined the thriller and horror genres to potent effect, it leaned closer to the thriller side of the coin in tone and attitude.  The last two acts of The Outsider, on the other hand, surely represent balls-to-the-wall horror--and may even summon memories of King's leaner and meaner terrors born of the 70s and 80s, long before a bit more whimsy softened those harder edges a bit.  In the end, I found this one to be a real page-turner that made the most of all of King's tools, and I think that The Outsider stands as a nice bridge between his most bloodcurdling work and his most exciting offerings.

Final Grade: A