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Doctor Sleep reviews
PW review: http://pwne.ws/14EJyef
Comments
Maybe we've become more numb and less easier to scare than when The Shining came out in 1977....
King, not one given to sequels, throws fans a big, bloody bone with this long-drooled-for follow-up to The Shining (1977). The events of the Overlook Hotel had resounding effects upon Danny Torrance, and decades later he's a drunk like his father, wondering what his battle with the "ghosties" was even for. Dan still feels the pull of the shining, though, and it lands him in a small New England town where he finds friends, an AA group, and a job at a hospice, where his ability to ease patients into death earns him the moniker Doctor Sleep. Ten years sober, he telepathically meets the "great white whale" of shining—12-year-old Abra—who has drawn the attention of the True Knot, an evil RV caravan of shining-eating quasi-vampires, one part Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show and one part Manson's dune-buggy attack battalion. Though the book is very poignantly bookended, the battle between Dan/Abra and the True's "Queen Bitch of Castle Hell" is relegated to a psychic slugfest—not really the stuff of high tension. Regardless, seeing phrases like "REDRUM" and "officious prick" in print again is pretty much worth the asking price. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Even for a King book, this is high profile. The Shining is often considered King's best novel, so even lapsed fans should come out of the woodwork for this one. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
Stephen King resisted the urge to write a sequel to his 1977 novel, "The Shining," for more than three decades. He worried that nothing could be as terrifying as the original. "I like to think I'm still pretty good at what I do, but nothing can live up to the memory of a good scare," Mr. King writes in an author's note to "Doctor Sleep," his long-awaited sequel to "The Shining."
"Doctor Sleep" doesn't disappoint. It picks up the story of Danny Torrance, the 5-year-old psychic boy in "The Shining," who is tormented by horrific visions and by the demons that possess his alcoholic father. In the sequel, Danny is a middle-aged recovering alcoholic who works at a New England nursing home and uses his telepathic powers to help people die peacefully. His attempt to escape his past encounters with evil falters when he learns about the True Knot, a group of immortal drifters who roam the highways in an RV caravan (Mr. King, who has a long list of phobias, is scared of Winnebagos.).
Mr. King's publisher, Scribner, is printing 1.1 million copies and running TV ads during the season finale of the CBS adaptation of Mr. King's novel "Under the Dome." Meanwhile, a new edition of "The Shining" with an excerpt from "Doctor Sleep" was just released, with a 300,000-copy print run.
Kirkus Reviews
[ch9733] 2013-09-01
He-e-e-e-r-e's Danny! Before an alcoholic can begin recovery, by some lights, he or she has to hit bottom. Dan Torrance, the alcoholic son of the very dangerously alcoholic father who came to no good in King's famed 1977 novel The Shining, finds his rock bottom very near, if not exactly at, the scarifying image of an infant reaching for a baggie of blow. The drugs, the booze, the one-night stands, the excruciating chain of failures: all trace back to the bad doings at the Overlook Hotel (don't go into Room 217) and all those voices in poor Dan's head, which speak to (and because of) a very special talent he has. That "shining" is a matter of more than passing interest for a gang of RV-driving, torture-loving, soul-sucking folks who aren't quite folks at all--the True Knot, about whom one particularly deadly recruiter comments, "They're not my friends, they're my family...And what's tied can never be untied." When the knotty crew sets its sights on a young girl whose own powers include the ability to sense impending bad vibes, Dan, long adrift, begins to find new meaning in the world. Granted, he has good reason to have wanted to hide from it--he still has visions of that old Redrum scrawl, good reason to need the mental eraser of liquor--but there's nothing like an apocalyptic struggle to bring out the best (or worst) in people. King clearly revels in his tale, and though it's quite a bit more understated than his earlier, booze-soaked work, it shows all his old gifts, including the ability to produce sentences that read as if they're tossed off but that could come only from someone who's worked hard on them ("Danny, have you ever seen dead people? Regular dead people, I mean"). His cast of characters is as memorable as any King has produced, too, from a fully rounded Danny to the tiny but efficiently lethal Abra Stone and the vengeful Andi, who's right to be angry but takes things just a touch too far. And that's not to mention Rose the Hatless and Crow Daddy. Satisfying at every level. King even leaves room for a follow-up, should he choose to write one--and with luck, sooner than three decades hence.
Library Journal
[ch9733] 09/15/2013
Since The Shining was published in 1977, it has become an American classic, thanks not only to the book itself but also to the Stanley Kubrick film that it spawned, and King has become one of the most successful horror writers of all time. His latest novel, a highly anticipated sequel to The Shining, marks a return to form for the old master, who reunites loyal readers with Danny (now Dan) Torrance. Decades after the events at the Overlook Hotel, Dan is wrestling with his own demons and putting his psychic abilities to work at a series of nursing homes where he provides comfort to dying patients. When he finally finds a home—and sobriety—in a cozy New Hampshire town, Dan meets a young girl with a shining even stronger than his own. Together, he and young Abra Stone must take on a tribe of people called the True Knot, whose innocent, RV-driving appearance belies their true nature. VERDICT This is vintage King, a classic good-vs.-evil tale that will keep readers turning the pages late into the night. His many fans won't be disappointed. [Previewed in "A World of New Titles," LJ 7/13; see Prepub Alert, 3/4/13.]—Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
It takes a little while for “Doctor Sleep,” the new novel by eternally best-selling author Stephen King, to stop worrying about being a sequel to “The Shining” and start telling its own story. When it does, it begins to summon up its own set of characters, events and terrifying images that will remain in the mind long after reading — those moments that King has specialized in during a long career as the world’s most popular horror novelist.
By GREGORY COWLES
‘Shining’ Star: “Doctor Sleep,” Stephen King’s much-anticipated sequel to “The Shining,” isn’t on the hardcover list yet — its official release date is Sept. 24 — but back in 1977, “The Shining” did spend time there on its way to becoming a cultural touchstone. (It also sold well in paperback, especially after Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation.)
“The Shining” was King’s third novel, and both the Book Review and the daily New York Times paid attention, though King might have wished they hadn’t: “To say that Stephen King is not an elegant writer,” Jack Sullivan groused in the Book Review, “is putting it mildly.” The daily’s reviewer, Richard R. Lingeman, wasn’t much kinder: “The evil is slapdash, unfocused and eventually preposterous,” he wrote. “King is a natural, but he lacks control; he simply rears back and lets fly with the fireball, and a lot of wild pitches result.” The criticism apparently stung. “Sales aren’t all-important,” King later told Lingeman. “We all want to be nominated for a National Book Award.” I grew up reading King, and the literary establishment has gradually come around; in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him a medal for distinguished contribution to American letters.
Tampa Bay Times: Stephen King's 'Doctor Sleep' shines
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/24/books-bestsellers-idUSL3N0IE4IN20131024