This book review was part of a podcast discussion.
Listen to the episode here.
Stephen King has a type. A main character that appears over and over in his work. In this instance, Danny Torrance is a character that King had taken a shot at before. In the Shining he was the holder of the titular ability and it is that power and the fracturing sanity of his father that give him what all King main characters need. Trauma.
It is often that King uses instances of his own trauma in his characters. Addiction and traumatic physical injury seem to be favorites. Here it is a bit of both. Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Its Dan’s story that dominates the first two-thirds of the novel. But it is after Dan gets comfortable in his new life that King begins work on my favorite qualities of his writing. Total insanity.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless – mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
It is the combining of the mundane concerns of substance abuse and vampires addicted to psychic lifeforce that I enjoy reading about. All the totally insane ideas of the monsters that live in King’s head that make his novel’s good reading. And of course, King has decades crafting easy to read fiction in this case though I think that you probably need to be a fan of King to start, to get the maximum enjoyment from this novel. I give Doctor Sleep 3 stars out of 5.
Chicago, IL
A preacher's kid from the South who went North a long time ago. I'm an Engineer by day trying desperately to enjoy my day job. I love fantasy and sci-fi and I'm always looking for new worlds to explore.
DanielEavenson.com is my author site.
