Rach's Reading Club

This book is an extremely different take on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty." It was co-written by Stephen King and his son, Owen King. I hadn't read a Stephen King fiction book in ages, but decided to after reading his "On Writing" book earlier this year (which I still need to review for here...). I finished this one right when I was in the middle of intensely reviewing someone else's book here and couldn't manage this plus that at the same time. So I don't remember it in as great detail as if I had written the review right after reading it. The thing that sticks out in my mind the most was that it was much longer than it needed to be (720 pages), more complicated than it needed to be, and these guys see women as a lot more crass than I do.

That said, this wasn't a story I would have ever imagined. It had some super creativity and some very quirky characters. In their aim for what I presume to be realness... there wasn't a main character that I really loved. I guess the closest one to lovable was the "hero's" son. After a weird beginning, he tried so darn hard to do the right thing in so many areas. There were MANY characters. There were some that I liked a lot. And some that I hated. And a pair that didn't even get introduced until like chapter 10, which seemed awfully late to me to be introducing two new characters.

But I did read the whole thing. So I guess they kept my interest enough to not just return it after realizing it was going to be less fun than I expected to read.

What was good about it? It was totally new to me, story wise. I hadn't read anything just like it before. I liked the fantasy element of Eve's character, the tree, the tiger and other special animals. I liked the fox. I liked who got to make the final decision about whether women would stay in the "new" world or come back to ours (though really, how it went down wasn't believable to me)... but I'm supposed to be talking about what I liked... some of the action scenes were really riveting. The one female guard with the tattoo came through in a spectacular way. There was an odd kind of justice.

I had reserved "Fairy Tale" by Stephen King and waited quite a long time for it ... my turn came up last week and I declined. I just took myself off the list. It'll be a while before I'm ready for another Stephen King book. Though maybe I'll like it more when it's just him? I haven't read anything just by Owen before.

I think I'm just more of a "happily ever after" kind of person. So, probably others will love this book. For me, it was okay. Not great. Not horrible. But closer to horrible than great.