Fairy Tale by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
So my wife was listening to the audio book for this and wanted to talk to me about it so I wound up with a homework assignment.
The book started slow, with Charlie Reade looking after his injured elderly neighbor, Mr. Bowditch. For the first 200 pages, that's pretty much all the book is, though I enjoyed it. The rest of the book is Charlie going down the hole and getting involved in the affairs of another world.
Overall, I liked the book. King has lost none of his Shine over the years in the technical writing department. Charlie was a well crafted character, although I had a strong "Hello fellow kids" vibe from him at times. I think a degree of that is to be expected when a septuagenarian writes a teenager.
Radar getting old was a perfectly understandable motivation for Charlie to go down the hole for me. There was good dramatic tension at times and for once, I didn't feel like people sat around talking for hours and hours knowing that the world was about to end.
The meat of the book was a good fairy tale influenced fantasy story. I think the good guys got off a little light, though, as I have in many a book since Stephen King got hit by that van years ago. A lot of cool stuff went down but I get waiting for that final kick in the balls that never came.
Fairy Tale was a good read but I don't imagine I'll feel compelled to read it again any time soon. 3 out of 5 stars.
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