Doctor Sleep, Stephen King

"What happened to Danny Torrance, the boy at the heart of The Shining, after his terrible experience in the Overlook Hotel? The instantly riveting Doctor Sleep picks up the story of the now middle-aged Dan, working at a hospice in rural New Hampshire, and the very special twelve-year old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

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 tween 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.

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.' Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival ..."



Stephen King was the author I spent my teenage years reading everything I could find of. From the first time I picked up my Dad's old copies of Carrie and Firestarter, to bargain hunting for the back catalogue and obsessively purchasing new releases, I was utterly hooked. I still have all of my copies, and recently started to replace them with hardbacks (a process which moving to America may interrupt somewhat).

King gave me some of my most enduring memories of literature. I won't ever forget the bittersweet hope of the end of The Mist, or the realisation of the inevitability of the fate of those left on The Raft. Before I waited for the "great bearded glacier", George R. R. Martin, to finish writing A Song of Ice and Fire, I was desperate to know what became of The Gunslinger as he followed the man in black through the many worlds along the beam.

And for all that I think his strength is actually his short stories King has given me enough 1000 page burglar-stunners for me to know he can handle the epic.

True, post-accident there was a drop in form, and a propensity for naval gazing and introspection that marred the end of the quest for the Dark Tower and showed itself most clearly in a series of semi autobiographical leads and a merging of King's life and his stories. This slump certainly seems to have been arrested however, and his last few books (Under The Dome especially) have been, if not instant classic, certainly a response to critics who wrote the master off.

If Doctor Sleep features a little too much of the Stephen King staple template (messed up recovering alcoholic, powerful but troubled children, supernatural villains travelling through small town America) it at least reads as more of a greatest hits than an attempt to repeat former greatness.

As a story it's serviceable, but where it shines (pun unintended) is in the relationship between Danny and Abra, a tale of redemption certainly, but also a more tender story of a man who finally finds his place as a mentor and who learns to face more than just literal demons.

Characterisation is one of Kings strongpoints, alongside world building and dialogue and he creates a convincing and consistent cast with their own motivations and expectations without ever coming across as clichéd.

As good as a stand alone book as it is as a sequel to The Shining, a book I didn't feel the need to reread beforehand, this is return to near-vintage King, and therefore well worth reading.

Also Try;

Stephen King, The Dark Tower books

Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

Dean Koontz, From the Corner of His Eye