Book Review: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It pains me to give a Stephen King book only three stars. Bear with me.

Billed as a sequel to The Shining, I felt this book fell short. I’ve read the Shining more than once (yes, despite it’s awkward at times prose and POV mishaps, it is worth it). Even having read it multiple times and now being in my *ahem* rather late thirties, when I read the Shining last fall in anticipation of this book, I still had times where I got goosebumps and jumped at random noises and shadows in the house. Despite the fact that it’s starting to get long in the tooth (HAH, DS readers will chuckle), the Shining still serves as a great book for getting a bit of creepy fright.

Doctor Sleep, a continuation of that story, held no fright. There was suspense, and even action, but no spine tingling, bone chilling, jump at the shadows because two keys on the piano just started playing and no one’s there scare. While a lot of that is due to who King has become as a writer in the last few decades, focussing more on the weaving of a good story over giving his readers the heebie jeebies, in a book that is supposed to be a successor, its absence was noteable. There was a type of urban science fiction (for lack of a better term) that was really popular in the late seventies and early eighties dealing with psychics and ESP. A fine enough topic, and this was a great book in that sub-genre, but without anything to counter balance it I was left wanting. This was a psychic hero explores his life and powers book, not a REDRUM thriller.

As a sequel, then, I give this three stars. It did not stand up to the bar that was set by its predecessor. The book would have been better suited if the lead character had not been named Danny Torrence – then it would have been just another King affectation of setting one novel in the world of another (Sidewinder). Then the fact that we have a book that obsesses over steam, a purported sequel to a book that obsessed over a steam boiler, but that only once almost made a cross reference wouldn’t bother me so much.

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