“When had men not been mystified by women? They were the magic that men dreamed of, and sometimes their dreams were nightmares.”- Stephen & Owen King, Sleeping Beauties
Once upon a time, I read IT by Stephen King and hated it. At that time, that was the first and only book of his that I had ever read. It was a bad first impression and unfair to an author I have since grown to love. In fairness to Pennywise and friends, the story was made for the big screen! I have categorized that work as "should have been a screenplay," which I do with books occasionally.
After my IT experience, I took a break from Mr. King and gave his son, Joe Hill, a try. Guess what? He's a fantastic author! I've read several of his works (I'll link some below). So far, I have yet to find a Joe Hill book that I haven't liked. His imaginative stories also translate well to film and television, so, like his dad, he's talented. Realizing my love for Joe excited my interest in Stephen King again. I have jumped wholeheartedly into his catalog of works (mostly avoiding books authored during his self-proclaimed "cocaine years" because things got weird).
I was interested as soon as I saw publicity for Sleeping Beauties, a book Stephen King co-authored with another son of his. Check out the synopsis from goodreads:
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze.
If they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep, they go to another place.
The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.
Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain?
As a feral woman myself, I was interested to learn more! Even more interestingly, the reviews for this book are all over the place. It's hard to get an accurate gauge of the quality of this story purely based on reviews, so I gave up. I decided to go into the experience without too much undue influence.
Now that I've finished the book, I must report that I truly enjoyed it. The Kings are two men who really "get" the female experience and convey it well. This work from King (the father) is less horror and more magical. For me, it is reminiscent of Jack and the Bean Stalk in many ways. Outside of the magic, it makes you ponder societal and cultural issues. There's a moment in the book when women must make a choice. And boy, did I have to think about what I would decide if the option was mine to make!
The book reads very “Stephen King," so I'm interested in how much influence Owen's voice had. Disappointingly, he has a small collection of work to jump into for reference. However, he published The Curator in spring of 2023, and I've added it to my TBR list.
Final thought: If you are looking for smart fiction, give this one a shot!
Sleeping Beauties by
Strange Weather by
The Fireman by
#1 New York Times Bestseller From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman. The fireman is coming. Stay cool. No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies--before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe. Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she's discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob's dismay, Harper wants to live--at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child. Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads--armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn't as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter's jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged. In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life--and that of her unborn child--goes up in smoke.
It by