Book #27 of 2019: Flight or Fright edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent In principle, horror about air travel is a fine concept for a short story collection. There’s so much that can go wrong on a plane, at least in the domain of fiction: from supernatural cloud-dwellers (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” by Richard …
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Book #245 of 2018: Elevation by Stephen King A lackluster novella from a writer who should know (and can obviously do) much better. Part of the problem is the warmed-over premise of a man gradually losing his body weight, which can’t help but recall the author’s earlier novel Thinner — which if not quite a …
Book #198 of 2018: The Outsider by Stephen King Stephen King’s latest novel is also his best work in years (since 11/22/63 in 2011, in my opinion). It’s a compulsively readable mystery-thriller with an irresistible premise: a man is arrested for the horrific rape and murder of a young boy, with irrefutable eyewitness, fingerprint, and …
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Book #157 of 2018: The Dark Tower by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #7) In 1999, Stephen King was struck by a van and nearly killed, directly inspiring the author to resume and finish the Dark Tower series he had been working on intermittently since 1970. King would ultimately write these last three novels in …
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Book #146 of 2018: Song of Susannah by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #6) The Dark Tower series really requires readers to get on its wavelength of mystical intuition and fated coincidence, which is usually not a problem for me when there’s enough weird science magic and post-apocalyptic western worldbuilding on display. This sixth book, …
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Book #102 of 2018: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #5) The flashback-centric Wizard and Glass is my favorite novel in Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower sequence, but I’m willing to entertain arguments that this next book is its best. The setting has been firmly established at this point, and King …
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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, …
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Book #67 of 2018: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #4.5) This book was written after the conclusion of the author’s main Dark Tower series, but it takes place squarely in the middle, just after the fourth novel Wizard and Glass. (As with the prequel novella The Little Sisters of …
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Book #26 of 2018: Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar I find that I often react to novellas by wishing they were longer, and this recent Stephen King collaboration is no exception. (If nothing else, expanding the book would help to distinguish it from the classic Richard Matheson short story / movie …
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Book #23 of 2018: The Little Sisters of Eluria by Stephen King I like this Dark Tower prequel novella, but it’s admittedly pretty extraneous to the regular series. The Mid-World setting makes it seem more primary, but it’s really closer in nature to a tangential Stephen King book like Black House than anything particularly essential …
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