The Shining (1977)

Author: Stephen King |  Page Count: 512

'A shaft of light coming from another room, the bathroom, harsh white light and a word flickering on and off in the medicine cabinet mirror like a red eye, REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM— '

The Overlook Hotel, aptly named in more ways than one, has an attic filled with memories and a basement filled with recorded history, printed and imprinted, waiting to be rediscovered. Sandwiched between the two catalysts are the guest rooms, impersonal spaces haunted by deeds more permanent than the people that temporarily occupied them. They say every hotel has its ghosts, but the ones in the Overlook are more active than most other places.

As struggling writer Jack Torrance receives the details of his winter assignment at the Overlook, the reader gets a detailed rundown of the building, albeit from a biased perspective. It's an efficient device that also gives us our first insight into Jack's thought process. He's a quick-tempered, ex-alcoholic who's seriously lacking in paternal skills. Even when he's trying to be pleasant and caring it's hard to like him because his inner-bastard is always present, waiting for an opportunity to gain the upper hand. More often than not, if he does a good deed it's in the hope that it'll be noticed and go toward balancing out his meanness, not for any inherent sense of rightness for its own sake.

Time-bomb Jack's five-year-old son, Danny, is the most fascinating character. He wants to ease the tension that exists between his parents. He takes the weight of responsibility for their happiness onto his young shoulders and won't do anything to upset it, even if it traumatises him. He's a polar opposite to Jack's selfishness.

Danny has a level of intelligence not often found in someone his age, but what sets him apart even more from the norm is his special insight into what people are thinking. Unfortunately for the boy, the feelings he receives must share space with childhood fears and a very fertile imagination.

The conflict of the already broken family unit trying to hold together while their environment tries to tear them apart is the main focus, but there's horror elements, too, internal and externalised, that are more chilling than terrifying.

It's a long book with a lengthy build-up period. I admit I got bored more than once with some of the superfluous aspects of the many backstories, but each time was short-lived because King's fluidic prose pulled me back into the action when he returned the story to the present. Also, I'd hoped for an ending more memorable than the one given. It wasn't a letdown, but it didn't outclass what preceded it. It's one of those 'the journey is better than the destination' novels.

3½ unquiet guests out of 5

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born (2007)

Author: Peter David / Robin Furth | Artist: Jae Lee | Page Count: 240

‘See the gunslinger now, in his youth, with the shades of young men who have little concept of their mortality.’

The first collection (issues 1-7) that brought the life of Roland Deschain to the comic book medium. It was researched and plotted by Robin Furth, and then turned into a comic script by Peter David. It uses Stephen King's language as much as possible but it's been streamlined to fit the format. It's no lazy cash-cow milking session of an existing IP with an inbuilt audience. It's a genuine work of art in its own right deserving separate appraisal.

Much of The Gunslinger Born is taken from events revealed in Book IV: Wizard and Glass (1997). It's possible to read the comic without having read the novels, but I view them more as a companion piece to be read afterwards. If, however, you are entering Mid-World for the first time, and may someday want to delve into the source novels, I recommended you skip Ralph Macchio's written introduction in the book because he drops a very real spoiler of something that didn't (or won't) happen until book VI: Song of Susannah (2004).

For the first time ever, Roland's story is presented in chronological order. He’s fourteen-years-old at the beginning, not yet a gunslinger, still under the tutelage of the brutish but experienced Cort. His personality is already well-defined but his long, arduous journey toward the Tower has yet to begin.

The events that push him into his coming-of-age trial are detailed beautifully. It depicts and explains his anger and feelings of abandonment. We're introduced to the people that played an instrumental role in shaping him: his parents; his tormentor; and the original ka-tet of Roland, Alain and Cuthbert. It was a joy to see the latter two get the attention they deserved.

Jae Lee's art is masterful. There's a collection of sketches at the back of the book that show just how amazing it was before being coloured. His lines have a real beauty of their own, even in their non-inked form. Richard Isanove's colouring is flawless. It's almost too perfect, like an airbrushed celebrity magazine cover, but it's steeped in deep blacks that throw everything into a terrifying contrast.

5 bullets that hit true out of 5

The Dark Tower: Book I: The Gunslinger (1982)

Author: Stephen King | Page Count: 212

'No one ever really pays for it in silver, he thought. The price of any evil – necessary or otherwise – comes due in flesh.'

Book One is your introduction to Roland Deschain, also known as Roland of Gilead, the titular gunslinger. Roland is a man obsessed. His obsession carries him across Mid-World, the land of his birth. Mid-World is a familiar amalgamation of our own recorded history and a romanticised version of the same. It's the type of fictional reality that fans of King's other works will feel right at home in.

Now would be a good time to say that this isn't a Horror novel. It's Fantasy merged with the old-fashioned Western, but it's still populated with the kind of well-defined characters that the author is so very good at. Love him or loathe him, you can't deny his strengths.

Later books in the series take too damn long to get to where they're going (some could do with at least 100 pages trimmed off the beginning), but this one is more focused. There's no unnecessary waffle. There are flashbacks to earlier times at opportune moments but they aren't whimsical, they offer a deeper insight into the present situation and help explain why Roland acts like he does. You may find him hard to connect with initially, but as his story deepens so too does his depth of character and his principles become less obtuse.

The book was written over a period of twelve years (when time allowed between other projects) and originally published as five short stories before being collected together. The progression in the writing is clear to see. If you compare the earliest part with the later parts, you'll see a huge difference in quality.

You should know before you even begin that the series, originally planned to reach approx 3000 pages in length, swelled to eight books that if collected together would be a whopping 4250 pages long.* Also, that's assuming King has finished with the series. I suspect he's got some more Dark Tower in him, so that figure could increase in the future. That's not to say it's unfinished. It did get an ending, but there are stories that could be told within the existing framework, as evidenced by the interquel, The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012).

3½ gateways out of 5

*That figure is obtained from my own copies, which are a mix of paperback and hardback. King revised the first book in 2003. The listing on amazon gives a 304 page count for it. That would add another 92 pages to the tally.

The Dark Tower: The Little Sisters of Eluria (1998)

Author: Stephen King | Page Count: 66

'She might be a good nurse, and fair, but Roland thought her a poor liar. He was glad. Good liars were common. Honesty, on the other hand, came dear.'

Before beginning the Dark Tower books King was primarily known as a horror writer. The Dark Tower was a departure from that. It's essentially a Western wedded to a traditional Tolkien-esque fantasy, wherein the journey is of more importance than the destination. The reason I mention all of that is because the horror that he used to do so well can be strongly felt in this short piece. It creeps in tentatively at first but takes hold quickly. It's a fantasy-western-horror novella, and it works. It feels like an experiment that really paid off. It's perhaps the freshest instalment he's delivered since the very first book.

I'm not going to bother with a synopsis because if you've read previous Dark Tower books then you'll already know if you want to read more. Nothing will change that. But if you're new to Mid-World, it'd be best not to start your journey here. It's primarily for readers with an existing knowledge of the series.

It starts out like a choose-your-own-adventure book that has had all the choices already made by someone else, but that's simply to get gunslinger Roland Deschain to where King needs him to be; the shorter format necessitates it. It also forces him to trim the waffle he usually spews, making this work a fast-paced adventure that left me wanting more.

NOTE: The short was released one year after Vol IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) but takes place before Vol I: The Gunslinger (1982). Does that make it the earliest of Roland's adventures chronologically? No, because it also confusingly takes place sometime after the events in Mejis, mentioned in Wizard and Glass. That places it prior the formation of the ka-tet, but after the Susan Delgado time period.

3½ thoughtful houses out of 5

The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

Author: Stephen King | Page Count: 335

"I won't kill him, but you shall be there when he swings, and with my own hand I'll give you the bread to scatter beneath his dead feet."

Stephen King calls it book 4.5 of The Dark Tower series because it's set chronologically between Book IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) and Book V: Wolves of the Calla (2003). He also suggests that you can read it without having read any of the previous works, but I would strongly advise against doing that. It would nullify one of the most dramatic and defining moments in the early books. I feel it's best if you start at the series beginning or not at all.

The Wind Through the Keyhole uses the story within a story (within another story) literary device. The bulk of the book is taken up by gunslinger Roland Deschain telling his ka-tet self-contained stories from his past. The interpolated frame narrative used is so very brief that it draws attention to itself; it serves little purpose other than to enable King to slip the book into the existing continuity without upsetting it further. In doing so, it offered him the perfect opportunity to remedy the dramatic shift the reader experienced between Books IV and V (he had a near death accident in the interim—it clearly influenced the direction the narrative took in Book V), but there's no real attempt to smooth that transition. I'd hoped that distance and hindsight would've offered a renewed perspective.

Ultimately, I think a collection of shorts, removing the unnecessary frame and the three-tiered structure, would've been a better approach. Telling of Roland's youth and expanding upon his relationship with his family and his peers would've been preferable. It could've better explored the reasons for his actions in later books and offered a deeper insight into why he allows himself to be so utterly consumed by his obsessions. It could even have been the beginning of a series of prequels, offering King the opportunity to do the same for the other members of the ka-tet prior to their meeting Roland, enabling him to tell a different kind of story, one removed from the fantasy setting but still a part of it.

To his credit, though, he's crafted a story about storytelling and about the power of the imagination to create horrors or to stave them off. It's the written word but it captures a style of verbal storytelling that's almost dead now, and for a short time it comes alive once more. That kept me reading.

Ironically, the best part of the book is the story most removed from the Dark Tower mythos and its 4000+ pages of fictional but rigidly dogmatic continuity.

The author's addiction to Mid-World makes me suspect this won't be the last time he journeys there. I sincerely hope he makes the next one less awkward, because I'm a sucker for Roland’s way and I'll surely buy into it.

2½ throckets of bumblers out of 5

Heart-Shaped Box (2007)

Author: Joe Hill | Page Count: 400

"A girl, walking beside a taller boy who sported a yellow bow tie, shrank back against her companion as they went past. Bow Tie put a comforting arm around her shoulders. Jude did not flip them off and then drove for a few blocks feeling good about himself, proud of his restraint. His self-control, it was like iron."

I'm a huge fan of Joe Hill's contributions to the comic world- I think Locke & Key is probably the best comic being published right now- so I was anxious to check out one of his novels as well. I started with Heart-Shaped Box, a novel about an aging musician who finds himself being haunted after purchasing a dead man's suit on the internet. The book started out as a pure horror tale, and had some wonderfully creepy moments, but soon, it became more of a redemption tale than anything else. But as the book became less scary, its characters grew stronger, and it was a gripping read throughout.

At times, I wanted to scream at the characters for failing to put certain pieces of the story together, but the book was involving even when I could tell exactly where it was going. The surprises that do happen are mostly small, but those moments feel special, and give the book's cast more depth. I found the ending to be a little bit unsatisfying. This is partly because figuring things out ahead of time meant that there was no grand reveal scene, but also because it just wasn't my sort of ending, and I suspect many readers will be pleased that things pan out the way they do. All in all, this is a solid debut novel, and I may dive into Hill's second book tonight.

3.5 girls named after states out of 5.