Doctor Sleep; Does it shine...?

DOCTOR SLEEP

By Stephen King

[2013]

Does it shine...?

Although Stephen King will always be known as a horror author, and although The Shining is indeed a contemporary horror classic, this sequel doesn’t feel much like a horror novel. It has horror themes such as telekinetic powers, ghosts, child-murder, and psychic vampires, but there’s barely a hint of proper toe-curling horror here; in fact it’s very much by the numbers for King, and, I suspect, will disappoint his hard-core horror readership.

The ideas and plot are good, and about a third into the book, they’re looking great; Danny Torrance has grown up, and has managed to mostly escape the ghosts of his past. The spooky ghosts, that is. But it is the ghost of his father, of his genes, that haunts Dan in adulthood; like his father, he has turned to alcohol in a big way, has a temper, and is constantly on the move, never seeming to be able to settle, and avoiding the mountain areas which still hold terror for him. 

Eventually he rocks up in New Hampshire, where, again eventually, he finds himself working as an orderly in a hospice, using his psychic talents to comfort the residents in their passing. While here, he connects up psychically with a young girl, Abra Stone, a kid who, like Dan, has grown up with the shining talent, although hers is especially powerful. Over time, Abra becomes aware of a thread of missing children, each with some shining of their own, and is led to the reason why; The True Knot is a long-lived band of wrinklies who move around America in motorhomes and caravans, tracking and killing psychic kids, to inhale their ‘steam’. And now, Abra realises, as they slowly weaken due to disease, they have their sights set on her, the biggest steamhead they have ever known. Naturally, it’s up to her, Abra, and her new friend Dan Torrance, to deal with this band of psychic vampires...

Pretty good plot, and the characters of Dan and Abra are well drawn and interesting to read. However, most of the other characters didn’t seem as real to me, but just supporting characters. Especially disappointing here was the treatment of Rose the Hat, the leader of the True Knot and the main ‘Big Bad’ here; she came across as a bit comedic, a bit ridiculous, rather than scary. The other bad guys, the rest of the Knot, were mostly interchangeable, with little of King’s usually-excellent character work, instead just giving easy names like Crow Daddy, Barry the Chink, Grampa Flick etc... but it wasn’t just the bad guys; I had trouble with most of the supporting characters here.

The narrative itself was strange. Sometimes in a book, people talk about ‘the boring middle bit’, but with DOCTOR SLEEP, I found the middle bit to be about the best, with the plot strands growing together and Abra Stone’s character being revealed. The beginning [after a few good pages of wrap-up from The Shining] seemed to flounder and took a while to get going, and then the ending felt like a damb squib; I found the last 50 pages or so a bit of a [sometimes confusing] slog to a very weak climax, and found myself closing the book thinking ‘Meh!’

This is a bit of a negative review, but it’s negative, only because I was quite disappointed in the book. There are some good things in it, some good observations, and it’s interesting to know a bit more about others who shine. But whereas The Shining indeed shone, Doctor Sleep merely slumbers on, Stephen King on autopilot, in the long shadow of it’s parent classic.   6/10