The Institute

by Stephen King
557 pgs

Luke Ellis is an extremely gifted 12-year-old, who lives in Minneapolis with his parents. Luke plans to attend MIT soon, but that will never happen. Because Luke also happens to possess minor telekinetic abilities. Abilities which have placed him on the radar of a secret organization, an organization that is monitoring kids like Luke all over the world.

One night, Luke's parents are killed in their sleep and Luke is taken to The Institute, a non-descript campus somewhere in the woods of Maine. Very few people know that The Institute exists, and none, except for the children who have been taken there and the small group of men and women who work there, know what has been going on there for decades.

At The Institute, Luke and the other children are given injections and subjected to extreme conditions, which all have the affect of heightening and enhancing their telekinetic or telepathic abilities. And once they've reached a certain level, the children are exploited, drained, and discarded.

The Institute is classic Stephen King. It bears similarities with some of his earlier works, like Firestarter and It, with children having to face extraordinary circumstances, but does so in a wholly original way. And the fear and horror King taps into is the very real fear and horror that can take place when otherwise normal adults do horrible things because they believe what they're doing is ultimately for the best.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Elevation

by Stephen King
146 pgs

Elevation is a short novella by Stephen King that will take less time to read than it would to watch a movie adaptation of it, if one is eventually made. When I learned what it was about, I thought "Hasn't he already written this book before?" In a sentence, it's about a man who begins losing weight every day and can't stop it. But it doesn't take more than a couple of pages to realize that this story bears only a passing resemblance to Thinner.

Scott Carey is a normal guy who lives in Castle Rock, Maine. who inexplicably starts losing weight every day. Regardless of how much he eats, the weight continues to gradually drop off. But what's even more perplexing is the fact that his clothes seem to weigh nothing as soon as he puts them on. In fact, he can stand on his bathroom scale fully dressed and wearing a coat with pockets filled with quarters and the scale reads the same as it does when he takes everything off. But while he's getting lighter every day, his physical appearance doesn't change. His stomach still hangs over his belt just as it has for the last decade or so of his life.

One of the trademarks of a Stephen King story is that he takes ordinary people and places them in extraordinary situations. And from that perspective, Elevation is classic King. But it's also a departure from what I've come to expect form him. It' snot just a great story that incorporates elements of the fantastical. It's also a thinly-veiled allegory and social commentary on the weight our prejudices add to our lives, and the freedom that can come if that weight is dropped.

Elevation is a book I'd recommend to everyone. Even those who don't think they'd like a Stephen King book will like this one. Take an hour of your life and read it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Outsider

by Stephen King
561 pgs

In his latest book The Outsider, Stephen King creates a seemingly impossible murder mystery. A teenage boy is savagely killed and the police quickly have no question about who killed him. Multiple reliable witnesses saw Terry Maitland, a local English teacher an popular Little League coach, with the boy right before the time of death. They saw him get into a van with the boy, the same van that soon turns up filled with the boy's blood and covered with Terry's fingerprints. DNA evidence matching Terry is found at the crime scene as well. There's so much evidence against Terry, and so much outrage over the nature of the murder, that Detective Ralph Anderson makes a public spectacle out of arresting Terry during the middle of one of his Little League games, in front of the whole town.

But Terry is adamant in proclaiming his innocence. He's a well-loved family man and an admired member of the community, and he claims he wasn't even in town the day of the murder. he was at a teachers' convention hundreds of miles away with a group of his colleagues at the school. All of them can attest to him being with them the night of the murder. There's even video proof of him being at the convention. In fact, there's just as much evidence of him being at the convention as there is of him being at the crime scene.

Who else but Stephen King could begin a story with a premise like that and then ride it to such a satisfying conclusion? No one.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Colorado Kid

by Stephen King
124 pgs

With The Colorado Kid, Stephen King tips his hat to the style and genre of storytelling that he grew up enjoying so much. It’s a short mystery that begins with the body of an unidentified man discovered on a small island off the coast of Maine in 1980. The story is being told years later by two reporters from The Weekly Islander, the small local newspaper that covers the news on the island, to Stephanie McCann, a young intern working for the paper.

The body, which was found by two teenagers before school, is that of a man unknown to anyone on the island. There was no wallet or identification found on him and he apparently died from choking on a piece of meat, which was found half eaten and stuck down his throat. The only clue the police have is a pack of cigarettes, which bears a stamp from the state of Colorado on the bottom, found in his pocket. The investigation that takes place reveals more questions than answers. Questions such as why the man, whom doctors a sure was not a smoker himself, was carrying the pack of cigarettes.

If you’re the type who gets frustrated if every question doesn’t get answered by the end of the book, this book may not be for you. The story is more about the mystery surrounding The Colorado Kid, and the retelling of the case by two old mentors to their young intern.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Sleeping Beauties

by Stephen King & Owen King
702 pgs

The end result of Stephen King’s collaboration with his son, and fellow writer Owen King, is an entertaining and eerily timely story centered around the question, “What would happen if all the women in the world were gone?”

Nobody knows what caused it. They don’t know if it was a virus, or some sort of spell. But it affected half the planet’s population seemingly all at once. It’s dubbed the Aurora virus, and it affects only females. Any female who falls asleep quickly becomes sealed up in a fibrous cocoon-type shell and doesn’t wake up again. They don’t die, but if anyone disturbs their cocoon, the woman wakes up as a zombie-like creature and kills the person who touched them.

Women begin taking caffeine and more powerful drugs, as they try to stay awake as long as they can, but eventually the inevitable happens and they succumb to sleep. Only one woman, Evie Black seems immune to the effects of the Aurora virus.

Evie arrives in Drooling, a small town somewhere in Appalachia that the Kings set their story in, shortly after the Aurora pandemic begins. She’s incarcerated in the local prison for committing a murder, but she, unlike every other woman on the planet, continues to wake up anytime she falls asleep. As attention begins to focus on her, it quickly becomes apparent that she’s the key to unlocking what’s happening to all the other women on earth.

I read an interview with Stephen and Owen King, in which they discussed the process they utilized in writing the book together, and I have no doubt King Jr. was just as instrumental in writing the book as King Sr. was. But it reads heavily like a Stephen King book, which is certainly not a criticism from me. It’s reminiscent of the types of books he was writing many years ago, books like Insomnia, Under the Dome, and The Stand.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Gwendy's Button Box

by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar
170 pgs  (Gwendy series #1)

In Gwendy’s Button Box Stephen King accompanies friend and coauthor Richard Chizmar to Castle Rock. The small town in Maine which served as the locale for many of his earlier books. But don’t let the fact that there’s a second author’s name on the cover dissuade you from reading it. It has Uncle Stevie’s prints all over it.

As the story begins, Gwendy Peterson is a 12-year-old girl who is starting to feel self-conscious about her weight. She has decided that this summer she’s going to lose some of that extra weight and return to school in September looking better and ready to shed the “Goodyear” nickname some of her peers use when referring to her. So, each day Gwendy races to the top of the stairs at the park known as the Suicide Stairs.

One day, when she reaches the top, she’s met by a man wearing on old-fashioned hat. The man speaks to her as if he’s known her all his life and proceeds to give her a strange wooden box with different colored buttons and levers on it. The man tells her the box will give her gifts, but that the gifts are compensation for the responsibility she will bear in keeping it.

Each time Gwendy pushes one lever, the box dispenses a small chocolate animal. It’s delicious and satisfies her appetite to the point that Gwendy no longer overeats. When she pushes the other lever, the box dispenses an 1891 Morgan silver dollar, in mint condition. They’re worth hundreds of dollars apiece and will allow her to attend the Ivy League college she dreams about. But the buttons each have destructive powers, and Gwendy soon learns just how important it is to guard the box and make sure it never gets into the hands of someone who would use those buttons with evil intent.

The story is short, but is a prime example of what has made King so well liked. It’s a great story and I think it’s King providing an analogy to how he feels about what he has spent his lifetime doing. Pushing buttons and pulling levers on a small box his entire career has given him everything he has ever wanted, or needed in life, but it hasn’t come without a sense of importance and responsibility.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

End of Watch

by Stephen King
432 pgs  (Bill Hodges trilogy #3)

End of Watch concludes Stephen King's highly-entertaining trilogy featuring Bill Hodges, a retired police detective, and Brady Hartsfield, a sociopathic killer, responsible for one mass killing, and an attempt at a second.

At the end of the last book, Brady, in a vegetative state, is residing in the brain injury ward of the local hospital. But strange things keep on happening around him. The water turns on and off on its own, the blinds go up and down, and other things move inexplicably on their own.

Bill and Holly, now running their own investigation agency, are called to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding the suicide of one of the survivors of Brady's successful mass killing. As others who were there also attempt to take their own life, Bill and Holly begin to suspect that someone else is pulling the puppet strings. Bill's gut is telling him it's Brady and he's determined to end Brady's powers once and for all.

End of Watch is more like a Stephen King book than the first two books in the series were. As much as I enjoyed those first two, I enjoyed this one that much more because of the supernatural element King brought into it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

by Stephen King
495 pgs

It's been about seven years since Stephen King last published a collection of his short stories--and it's about time. I'm not the type of person who reads his short stories as they come out individually in their various forms (i.e., magazines, e-stories, etc.) so it's always nice when he's written enough of them to warrant putting them together in one book for publishing. Once again, King doesn't disappoint.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams consists of 18 stories and two poems. They include Mile 81, a classic King-type story of an abandoned car at a highway rest stop that captures and devours anyone who comes in contact with it. Morality, a Faustian story of a young couple and a wealthy man who makes them an unusual offer that has unexpected and dire consequences. Ur, a Dark Tower story (nothing more needs to be said). Obits, a story of an online obituary writer who discovers his obituaries possess a power too tempting not to use. And a post-apocalyptic story of two men and a dog, living out their last days while the world itself is on its last breath.

There are several other stories in the book, and they're all strong stories, but these were the ones that really stuck out and were hard to forget. Fans of King will enjoy the collection.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Finders Keepers

by Stephen King
434 pgs  (Bill Hodges trilogy #2)

In 1978 three masked men invaded the home of John Rothstein, a reclusive novelist; killing him and stealing thousands of dollars in cash and over one hundred notebooks containing the author's unpublished writings. Years earlier Rothstein wrote a critically acclaimed trilogy of books that became required reading for most teenagers before he dropped off the map and refused to publish again.

Two of the men who broke into his house and killed him were in it for the money rumored to be stashed away in his house. But the third, an obsessed fan named Morris Bellamy, was there for the notebooks. He was certain that Rothstein had written more books in the series, and he was willing to do anything to find out what happened next. Bellamy buried the cash and the notebooks with plans to retrieve them once the dust settled, but soon after doing so he was sent to prison for life for an unrelated crime.

Thirty-five years later, Morris is finally released from prison and goes to retrieve the money and notebooks, only to find that they're gone. As he hunts down the person who took them, King reintroduces Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson, and Holly Gibney from Mr. Mercedes into the story as they try to protect the person who has them.

Finders Keepers is a fantastic follow-up to Mr. Mercedes. It shows how versatile an author King is. It's not horror or supernatural like most of his other books are, but there are small parts that flirt with the supernatural and hint at the direction things will turn in the next and final book in the trilogy--and I for one can't wait.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Revival

by Stephen King
403 pgs

Revival is the second book to be released by Stephen King this year. And while the first one, Mr. Mercedes was a departure from the type of book he's known for best, this one is a return to form. On the inside flap it says that the book has the most terrifying conclusion that King has ever written--a statement I don't agree with. But still, it's good to see that King can still write a scary story.

The book begins with young Jamie Morton, a six-year-old boy playing with his toy soldiers along the dirt path in front of his house in rural Maine. When a shadow falls over him, Jamie looks up and sees Charles Jacobs, the new minister in Jamie's town. It's the first time Jamie has ever met the new reverend, and while he has no way of knowing it at the time, it's the beginning of a fifty-year relationship that will drastically affect Jamie's life, and will end with an experience that will shake him to his core.

The reverend, who has always had a fascination with electricity, has discovered that while it can be deadly at times, it can also be used to cure people of certain ailments. The first time he uses it is on Jamie's brother, whom he's able to cure of an injury to his larynx that has left him speechless for weeks. Years later he uses it to help Jamie overcome a serious drug addiction. But Jamie soon realizes that the cure Jacobs provided him was accompanied by some unexpected and disturbing consequences. As Jamie begins looking into the lives of others who were cured by the reverend, he learns that others have been similarly affected.

Revival is nowhere near the best book King has ever written. But it's still a worthwhile read. I'm biased towards King's books, but I really think that an average book by him is better than the best books by most other authors.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Mr. Mercedes

by Stephen King
436 pgs  (Bill Hodges trilogy #2)

Bill Hodges is a retired police detective who's having a difficult time adjusting to his retirement. He's overweight, lives alone, and several of the cases that he was unable to solve while on the force haunt his mind--so much so that he regularly takes out his weapon and considers putting an end to his misery. One of those cases involves a man who stole a Mercedes Benz and drove it into a group of people lined up for a job fair less than a year before Hodges retired. Eight people died that morning, and the man behind the random act of violence was never caught.

It's a letter that Hodges receives one morning, claiming to be from the man behind the wheel of the Mercedes, that draws him out of his depression and gives him a reason to live. It's very clear from the letter that it's from the perpetrator of the crime--he knows details of what took place that were never released to the media. But it's also clear that he's been watching Hodges and knows that he's been contemplating suicide. He even ends the letter by goading Hodges into going though with it. This letter reignites Hodges and sets him on a course to find the man responsible.

King quickly gets you to care about Hodges and his supporting cast of characters, and just as quickly creeps you out with the deranged antagonist he creates for Mr. Mercedes. And while I prefer King's horror books or the ones that at least have an element of the supernatural to them, Mr. Mercedes is a enjoyable book and well worth the time to read.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Doctor Sleep

by Stephen King
527 pgs

I'll admit to being a little nervous about reading Doctor Sleep. Not because it might be scary, but because it's the sequel to The Shining, and as such, inevitably leads to the comparison between the two. I was worried that it wouldn't live up to my expectations and that it would somehow remove its predecessor from the pedestal it's been placed on by myself and most King readers. Now, having finished it, comparing the two books is surprisingly difficult. They're so separate and distinct from each other, both in style and in the overall story's timeline, that comparing the two almost seems like a moot point.

King quickly gets you up to speed on what's happened in Dan (Danny) Torrence's life since the end of The Shining. He grew up and inherited his father's alcoholism, his mother Wendy passed away, and he's been drifting about nearing rock bottom for years. While he's been trying to overcome the demons his shining and his experiences at The Overlook have given him, a girl, whose ability to shine makes Dan's seem weak by comparison, is born in New England. Abra's "gifts" are alarming to her parents, but more significantly, they make her a target to the True Knot, a group of seemingly innocent RVers who continually roam from one part of the country to another country. They appear to outsiders to be middle-aged vacationers, but if they stayed in one place for long, others would notice that they age rapidly but then have the ability to rejuvenate. Their rejuvenating ability comes from torturing and killing those who shine and it's what has kept them alive for over a century.

As Abra grows up, her ability to shine links her to Dan and the two form a relationship that brings them together, once again giving Dan a purpose and possibly a way to rid himself of his demons once and for all.

It's very obvious, even early on in the book, that King has changed a lot as a writer in between writing these two books. His views of what's scary have evolved as well. The Shining is the type of book that strikes a chord with the fears that we all experienced growing up: ghosts, haunted houses, and the possibility that some adults might want to hurt us. While Doctor Sleep targets the types of fears we don't experience until adulthood. Both books are excellent, but in their own rights and not by their association with each other.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Shining

by Stephen King
500 pgs

It's been about 25 years since I first read The Shining. It was one of the first books by King that I read and it's one of the main reasons why I believe he's one of the greatest authors ever. I don't usually reread books, even his, but before reading the sequel that came out last month, I wanted to have the true story fresh in my mind, and not have my memory of it muddied by the story that Stanley Kubrick told with his movie.

Reading the book again was like returning to the home I grew up in after having been away for a couple of years. As soon as I got there, my mind was immediately flooded with many fond memories. This time though, the memories were of five-year-old Danny Torrance, and his parents Jack and Wendy. They were of Dick Hallorann, the Outlook's chef who share's Danny's gift for shining and senses the dangers that the Torrances could face during their months of seclusion high in the Colorado Rockies. But the fondest memories to come flooding back were of the animal-shaped topiaries down by the Outlook's playground, and of the roque mallet, Lloyd the Outlook's bartender, Tony, and of course . . . REDRUM.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Wind Through the Keyhole

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

My favorite books of all time are Stephen King's Dark Tower series. They're fantastic. The fact that my wife wasn't crazy about them only shows that her good taste in men doesn't carry over to books. That being said, when I heard that King was going to be revisiting the series years after it was concluded with another story, I was moderately conflicted. On the one hand, the fact that I like the books so much should mean that I'd enjoy a new book just as much. On the other hand, the series was over, the story had been told and I didn't want King to turn into George Lucas who can't seem to leave a good thing alone. My concerns proved to be unwarranted. The book was just as good as the rest of the series and it fit in perfectly.

Chronologically the book takes place between books 4 & 5. Roland and his tet are taking shelter along the path of the beam from a deadly storm called a Starkblast. While they're there Roland relates two stories, or rather, a story that includes within it, the telling of another story. The story he tells took place when Roland first became a Gunslinger. He and Jamie DeCurry were sent to Debaria to look into reports of a skin-man (a shape-shifter), who had killed dozens of its residents. A young boy named Bill Streeter survived one of the attacks and Roland needs him in order to identify who the skin-man is while in human form.

While he's keeping watch over Bill one night, he tells him a story that comes from the Magic Book of Eld. That story is about a young boy who went on a dangerous journey in order to seek out the magician Maerlyn who he believes can cure his mother's blindness.

Each of the stories contained within this book is great. The book illustrates once again why King is head and shoulders above all his peers. If you've never read the DT series, I HIGHLY recommend it. But not until you've read other books by King that tie into the series first: The Stand, Salem's Lot, Insomnia, It, The Eyes of the Dragon, & The Shining. There are several other books and short stories that have a connection to the series, but the connections are pretty superficial and it really doesn't matter which you read first.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Ten years ago this month, Stephen King made the announcement that he was retiring from writing. I remember hearing the announcement and feeling a sense of desertion. I've mentioned it in another post, but it was King's book Misery that I read as a senior in high school that started my love for reading. Since then, I have read all of his books and while some have been better than others, I've enjoyed every single one of them. Fortunately, King has not been a man of his word. Since he announced his retirement, King has published a dozen or so more books and there's both another Dark Tower book and a sequel to The Shining coming soon. 

One of my favorite early books by King is The Dead Zone. In it, the main character Johnny Smith wakes from a coma to discover that when he touches people, he has a brief vision of their future. When that ability reveals to him that a local politician will eventually become the President of the United States and start a nuclear war, he struggles with what steps, if any, he should take to prevent that from happening. He asks himself the question: If I had the ability to go back in time and kill Hitler before he became the leader of Germany and caused World War II, should I do it? In 11/22/63, King comes back to that idea of going back and changing the past to create a better future, but instead of Hitler, this time it's Lee Harvey Oswald's life that he explores whether the world would be better off without.

There's a hole in the state of Maine, a hole that a person can enter and arrive at 11:58 A.M. on September 9, 1958. The hole is in the backroom of a local diner, a diner owned by Al who has been going through the hole for quite some time. Initially it was just to buy his food supplies at 1950's prices, but eventually his purpose in going back became more substantial - to prevent the assassination of JFK in 1963. But Al's time is running short. Even though every time he returns through the hole, only 2 minutes has passed in 2011, he has been spending years at a time in 1958 and his life-long smoking habit has put him on death's door. So he introduces Jake Epping, a loyal customer of his, to his secret and wants Jake to try to do what Al has been unable to accomplish.

I should say here that I love stories about time travel. I love the paradoxes it creates and the usually unforeseen ripple effect that comes with it. There have been a lot of great stories that involve it and 11/22/63 is one of the best. As he usually does, King has taken an otherwise ordinary character and placed him in extraordinary circumstances and then just seems to take a step back and watch along with all his readers to see what happens.

It's not rare that I enjoy a book that I'm reading. But what is rare is when a book is so good that I'm tempted to skip to the end of the book to see how things turn out. I've never done that, and I never will, but I was constantly fighting the urge to do it with 11/22/63. The story is fantastic. Needless to say, I'm enjoying King's retirement immensely.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Full Dark, No Stars

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Those who know me know that I'm a huge fan of Stephen King. I don't call myself his number one fan for obvious reasons, but I think I'm up there among the obsessed. My parents bought Misery for me for Christmas one year when I was in high school hoping that I'd discover the joys of reading and got more than they bargained for. That book began my obsession with reading, and Stephen King books will always occupy the premier space on my bookshelves.

It wasn't until the last fifteen years or so that King began being recognized for his literary talents. For the majority of his career he's been looked down at as simply a pop horror writer. Fortunately and deservedly so, critics have recognized and acknowledged many of his most recent books for what they truly are, excellent stories being told my a master of the craft.

Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of four commonly themed novellas. 1922 is a story about a husband who, along with his son, kills his wife. The story shows how that act causes a psychological break in both of their lives that eventually leads to their self destruction. Big Driver is the story of a moderately successful author of a women's crime series that is assaulted by a man one night on her way home from conducting a book signing. The woman decides that the only way to fill the void left in her life from the traumatizing experience is to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner. Fair Extension is a Faustian story about a man diagnosed with cancer who is given the opportunity to bargain with the devil. Finally, A Good Marriage tells the story of a dutiful wife, who after sixteen years of marriage discovers that her dull and unassuming husband happens to be a notorious serial killer.

Each one of those stories is excellent. King is a master of taking the most relatable and ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary circumstances.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆