Book #96 of 2018:

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

I’m normally a big Stephen King fan, but I’m feeling pretty underwhelmed by this recent collaboration between the bestselling author and his son Owen. The premise is fine — all the world’s women start falling into deep comas when they go to sleep, leaving a shaky society of nervous men and a few increasingly delirious women trying to stay awake — but there are major issues in how the Kings develop it.

Hardest to swallow is probably the gender essentialism: nowhere in this 700-page novel is there any indication that people can exist outside of a rigid male/female binary, and the authors’ repeated mention of chromosomes suggests a transphobic worldview in which the difference between men and women is strictly biological. This would be problematic in any story, but it’s downright absurd in a book about a supernatural affliction aiming to divide the world by gender for some vague morality test / allegorical demonstration. The Kings display fairly narrow gender roles for their characters as well, at one point mentioning “a makeshift daycare run by men” as though such people are completely foreign to this field under normal circumstances.

(And this is a truly minor point, but the effectively-omniscient fairy creature who brought on the sleeping sickness mentions that any further episodes of Doctor Who will require recasting the companion as a man — although the story is set when actress Jodie Whittaker would have already taken over as the Thirteenth Doctor, surely a bigger issue for producing the show in a womanless world.)

If the story were stronger these flaws might not stand out as much, but the parameters of the conflict remain hazy throughout and the narrative beats of a small town breaking apart are practically rote at this point in Stephen King’s career. If you’ve read The Stand, or Under the Dome, or The Tommyknockers, or Needful Things, or ‘Salem’s Lot, there won’t be many surprises here. Having never before read anything by Owen King, I can’t say for certain that the weaknesses stem from him and not his father, and this is far from the first dud that the older King has released. But unless you’re an absolute Constant Reader, it’s best to let this one lie.

★★☆☆☆

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