VISITED DOCTOR SLEEP, BY STEPHEN KING, BEFORE CONTINUING OVERCOMING TREACHERY BOOK 4
I’m probably the only Stephen-King-fan who hadn’t read the sequel to “The Shining” until a few days ago. I have an excuse, so don’t judge me. As I've grown older, I’ve grown less fond of reading only fiction. Now I tend to gravitate to political science, news and esoteric topics. And I mostly download e-books or read material online. But I found out about this video streaming site that allowed you to access recently released movies, but you needed one thing for enrollment: an active library card number. That's when I discovered that my old card was MIA. So, off on a first-time trek to my local library I went. After securing my new card, I decided to roam the library to see how well or poorly it was stocked. To my surprise, I ran across Stephen King's book, “Doctor Sleep.” After scanning its book-blurb, I almost gasped after discovering it was a sequel to The Shining. It felt like I had ran into a long lost best friend at an airport, or found a forgotten one-hundred-dollar bill in a pocket.
When I got the book home, for the next three evenings, I devoured each word of the over five-hundred page book, staying up later and later each following evening I had completed my King's food. I loved every minute of this novel.
In The Shining, Little Danny Torrance, with help from his ethereal-friend Tony and shining-friend Dick Hallorann, survived the looming evil of The Overlook, its Guests and his homicidal-alcoholic father, Jack Torrance. However, nothing ever dies. This Danny, now calling himself Dan, found out the hard way. In Doctor Sleep, Danny was now fully grown, and once again in need of help from his angel on earth, Dick (who any bibliophile knows did NOT die in the book). At wits end from endlessly running from his nightmarish time in Colorado, Dan ran smack dab into the waiting arms of the very thing that turned his loving father into a monster: alcoholism. Not even his shining abilities proved more powerful than his proclivity for alcoholism which Danny inherited from his father. But there was something else even more menacing down the road, that was thirsty enough to suck the very steam from his soul, if he did not find sobriety.
The read-flow of Doctor Sleep was conducive for smooth reading. Admittedly, it’s been years since I read The Shining, but the syntax and style of this book took some getting used to, for it had the same King flair, but something seemed slightly off about the sentence cadence.
As for the story line, I could barely put the book down. Each evening I stayed up later and later than my norm. Stephen is still a King Storyteller. His magic is silent, constant and grows from page to page, chapter to chapter and section to section. I found myself taking a mini-stress break right before a big scene, so I wouldn’t miss anything hidden between words. This story contained quite a few “surprises” and the characters took on steam, like a locomotive, and began emanating a greater presence as they strove to have their voices heard over the noise of their divergent challenges.
I love how King leaves mysterious breadcrumbs in seemingly random places across this book, only to have the Constant Reader finally discover the King’s Bread of Understanding by the book's end. This Bread is more than satisfying and has no foul aftertaste.
Lastly, I must say that this book did to Winnebagos what “IT” did to Clowns! Yikes!