Stephen King's Revival out today (1 Viewer)

[Jalapanose]

The man just keeps getting better with age. Already 100 pages through and it's just amazing how great of a writer this man is.

 

[Swing 51]

Has he figured out how to write a good ending? Sadly I believe his best years are behind him.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

The man just keeps getting better with age. Already 100 pages through and it's just amazing how great of a writer this man is.

Here we go again.

 

[Peak]

I'm waiting to get it. Usually get a hardcover book each Xmas. This one is at the top of my list.

 

[Swing 51]

This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It’s a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.

http://www.amazon.com/Revival-A-Novel-Stephen-King/dp/1476770387

 

[eoMMan]

Any pictures in this one?

 

[cstu]

Has he figured out how to write a good ending? Sadly I believe his best years are behind him.

Always been a huge fan, but gave up on him after Under the Dome. Anything good since then?

 

[cstu]

From a ranking of all of his books, this is all of them since Under the Dome. It lost me when I saw it at #12.

44. Joyland: King’s second book for the pulp retro publisher Hard Case Crime (the first was #52, The Colorado Kid), Joyland is a small tale about a boy who goes to work in a rundown theme park in North Carolina and becomes a man. It’s a sweet coming-of-age story with a slight mystery lightly wrapped around it, as well as some minor supernatural doings, but at this point, those feel like reflexive tics on King’s part more than anything else. The thing that comes through most in slim books like this, Colorado Kid, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is how quickly and efficiently King can write a character that feels like someone we’ve long known.

36. The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole: Or, Dark Tower 4.5, as King is calling his latest release. Set in between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, Keyhole contains a story within a story, a fairy tale of great adventure and beauty. Because of its interstitial position, though, the book cannot wholly live on its own.

33. Full Dark, No Stars: The four novellas in this collection are all tales of revenge. They're bleak as hell and that's what makes them so good (though not even close to the four novellas in Different Seasons, which we'll talk about later). The quartet's unyielding darkness appeared to be King pushing back a little against his late-career critical bump. "I have no quarrel with literary fiction, which usually concerns itself with extraordinary people in ordinary situations," he wrote. "But as both a reader and a writer, I'm much more interested by ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I want to provoke an emotional, even visceral, reaction in my readers. Making them think as they read is not my deal."

27. Doctor Sleep: King had been in this situation before — he released a sequel for one of his many young characters with 2001’s Black House. The difference here is that this time around, he was dealing with one of his most famous books and characters. (Partly made so by the Stanley Kubrick movie version that King has spent over three decades insulting.) The expectations were high, and it’s amazing that King didn’t completely whiff. How much Doctor Sleep succeeds depends on your desire to re-create the frights of The Shining, which are largely absent here. King knows as much — on the press tour, he’s said that his current work is more like a curve or change-up than a fastball. (The man loves baseball!) Danny Torrance is all grown up now, and like his old man Jack he likes to drink. He ends up in AA, of which the book and its AA-attending author have much to say, and crosses paths with an evil group called the True Knot, who get their power from killing kids with the shining. The book flies, but misses that Shining punch, leading to a conclusion in which the villains, as is often the case in King books, turn out to be less dangerous than they seem.

24. 11/22/63: It is a liberal boomer's historical fantasy, a re-litigating of King's younger years — go back in time and prevent John F. Kennedy from getting assassinated and prevent Vietnam, man. The JFK assassination (and to a lesser extent, the 1966 Charles Whitman sniper shooting) has popped up again and again in King's work. As he writes in his memoir/writing manual On Writing, "Ever since John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, the great American bogeyman has been the guy with the rifle in a high place." So it's not surprising that he would focus an entire book on the event. It's a very good historical novel, full of convincing era details and fond affection for sixties America. As often happens with King, the book turns into a small-town portrait for a time before delivering an honest-to-God suspenseful third act.

12. Under the Dome: A pulp concept (one day an invisible dome appears around a small Maine town, trapping everyone inside and keeping all others out) complicated by a boatload of modern-day concerns — Iraq, waterboarding, Katrina, Obama, Bush, meth, the environment, the far-right. An ambitious work and one of the author's most political books.

 

[Gawain]

From a ranking of all of his books, this is all of them since Under the Dome. It lost me when I saw it at #12.

44. Joyland: King’s second book for the pulp retro publisher Hard Case Crime (the first was #52, The Colorado Kid), Joyland is a small tale about a boy who goes to work in a rundown theme park in North Carolina and becomes a man. It’s a sweet coming-of-age story with a slight mystery lightly wrapped around it, as well as some minor supernatural doings, but at this point, those feel like reflexive tics on King’s part more than anything else. The thing that comes through most in slim books like this, Colorado Kid, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is how quickly and efficiently King can write a character that feels like someone we’ve long known.

36. The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole: Or, Dark Tower 4.5, as King is calling his latest release. Set in between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, Keyhole contains a story within a story, a fairy tale of great adventure and beauty. Because of its interstitial position, though, the book cannot wholly live on its own.

33. Full Dark, No Stars: The four novellas in this collection are all tales of revenge. They're bleak as hell and that's what makes them so good (though not even close to the four novellas in Different Seasons, which we'll talk about later). The quartet's unyielding darkness appeared to be King pushing back a little against his late-career critical bump. "I have no quarrel with literary fiction, which usually concerns itself with extraordinary people in ordinary situations," he wrote. "But as both a reader and a writer, I'm much more interested by ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I want to provoke an emotional, even visceral, reaction in my readers. Making them think as they read is not my deal."

27. Doctor Sleep: King had been in this situation before — he released a sequel for one of his many young characters with 2001’s Black House. The difference here is that this time around, he was dealing with one of his most famous books and characters. (Partly made so by the Stanley Kubrick movie version that King has spent over three decades insulting.) The expectations were high, and it’s amazing that King didn’t completely whiff. How much Doctor Sleep succeeds depends on your desire to re-create the frights of The Shining, which are largely absent here. King knows as much — on the press tour, he’s said that his current work is more like a curve or change-up than a fastball. (The man loves baseball!) Danny Torrance is all grown up now, and like his old man Jack he likes to drink. He ends up in AA, of which the book and its AA-attending author have much to say, and crosses paths with an evil group called the True Knot, who get their power from killing kids with the shining. The book flies, but misses that Shining punch, leading to a conclusion in which the villains, as is often the case in King books, turn out to be less dangerous than they seem.

24. 11/22/63: It is a liberal boomer's historical fantasy, a re-litigating of King's younger years — go back in time and prevent John F. Kennedy from getting assassinated and prevent Vietnam, man. The JFK assassination (and to a lesser extent, the 1966 Charles Whitman sniper shooting) has popped up again and again in King's work. As he writes in his memoir/writing manual On Writing, "Ever since John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, the great American bogeyman has been the guy with the rifle in a high place." So it's not surprising that he would focus an entire book on the event. It's a very good historical novel, full of convincing era details and fond affection for sixties America. As often happens with King, the book turns into a small-town portrait for a time before delivering an honest-to-God suspenseful third act.

12. Under the Dome: A pulp concept (one day an invisible dome appears around a small Maine town, trapping everyone inside and keeping all others out) complicated by a boatload of modern-day concerns — Iraq, waterboarding, Katrina, Obama, Bush, meth, the environment, the far-right. An ambitious work and one of the author's most political books.

I really like Under the Dome until there's about 100 pages left. Guys a great story teller, but not a great story ender.

 

[Jalapanose]

Has he figured out how to write a good ending? Sadly I believe his best years are behind him.

Always been a huge fan, but gave up on him after Under the Dome. Anything good since then?

11/22/63 is one of my favorite books, so yeah.

Dr Sleep and Mr Mercedes also not to be missed.

 

[John Bender]

Mr. Mercedes was excellent, start to finish.

 

[seahawk 17]

I really enjoyed Cell.