Fairy Tale - Stephen King

Fantasy

Rating: 10/10

Stephen King poured his heart onto the page in his latest release, and be warned, you may find yours torn and tattered in the reading of it.

This novel is a love letter to the fairytales and storybooks of our childhood, the ones that left the deepest impression and endure the most retelling. The ones that assured us our happily ever after. That is what King has given us in his latest, Fairy Tale. With a twist of course.

King takes the curses we imagined from those youthful treasures and gives them teeth.  Inflicting new horrors on beloved characters and then giving them a savior, Charlie.

Charlie made a promise that if his alcohol father, driven to the bottle by the devasting loss of his wife and Charlie’s mom, stopped drinking he would do something for whatever deity made it happen.  He swore it, no matter what.

After saving a curmudgeonly old man living in a mansion crumbling down around him, Charlie discovers a portal to another world, one with magic that can save his dying old dog. 

On his quest Charlie will discover that the magic of the fairy tale realm has been lost. The characters that Charlie meets on his journey have become blurred, as if someone, or something, is trying to erase them. And yet they are oddly familiar…

Stephen King is a masterful storyteller for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is his ability to create evocative characters and then thrust them headfirst into unimaginable circumstances. Whether those circumstances are horrific or fantastical, monstrous, or magical, the reader invariably feels as if they are themselves are being absorbed onto the pages.

In his own words, “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then I turn the monsters lose”.

Not to worry, monsters or not, you will get a happily ever after here.  It just might be a little fuzzy around the edges. Vintage King in other words.

I can always count on a novel by this author to pull me wholly into whatever world he has fabricated, and in this case I would have happily stayed there.

Book Pairing(s): Ten Thousand Doors Of January by Alix E. Harrow, These Violent Delights by Chole Gong, The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer