Book #257 of 2017: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach #1) This was an unsettling sci-fi tale of delirium and paranoia, but there was a bit too much unresolved ambiguity for me to truly love it. The narrator is exploring an environment that’s known to warp perception and impede clear thinking, and that’s even before …
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Book #256 of 2017: End of Watch by Stephen King (Bill Hodges Trilogy #3) This last book in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy is unfortunately a bit of a mess. Partly that’s due to the tonal whiplash of following up two fairly straightforward crime thrillers with a story about hypnotic mind control, telekinesis, and bodyswaps, …
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Book #201 of 2017: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson This is a creepy atmospheric story of people staying in a haunted house, although it’s never completely clear whether we’re witnessing actual spirits or just troubled human minds. It’s a solid story and probably the definitive take on this sort of plot, and …
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Book #143 of 2017: The Passage by Justin Cronin (The Passage #1) This post-apocalyptic vampire novel has a real early Stephen King feel to it. The most direct King parallel is probably The Stand, which similarly details the outbreak and aftermath of a deadly plague virus, but there are also classic King tropes like a …
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Book #99 of 2017: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (The Shining #2) I’m still not convinced that Stephen King needed to write a sequel to his classic book The Shining, especially after the original had stood on its own for over 30 years. But for an author who struggled with addiction for much of his …
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Book #62 of 2017: The Regulators by Richard Bachman This pseudonymous Stephen King novel has too many characters with not enough characterization, which makes it hard to keep track of them or even care when they kept getting gunned down. It doesn’t help that most of the characters share names – but not much else …
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Book #141 of 2016: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill NOS4A2 is a great story, but it’s also something of a love letter from author Joe Hill to his father. The plot and the characters all feel like they could be pulled straight from a Stephen King novel, and even if Hill were not King’s son, it …
Book #46 of 2016: Needful Things by Stephen King Needful Things is better than The Tommyknockers, but not as good as ‘Salem’s Lot – two other Stephen King novels that share its same basic story structure of a supernatural presence slowly corrupting and effectively destroying a small town. The fact that Needful Things is set …
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Book #24 of 2016: Pet Sematary by Stephen King Pet Sematary is probably the quintessential example of a Stephen King novel with a great, moody build-up throughout the book and then a letdown of an ending. This makes sense, in a way: Pet Sematary is a loose retelling of the short story The Monkey’s Paw, …
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Book #16 of 2016: The Dark Half by Stephen King Like much of Stephen King’s mid-career output, this horror thriller was just okay. I could see the novel having special significance for the writer himself, since it’s about an author forced to go public about his pseudonym (which then comes to life and starts murdering …
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