gilda_elise

Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-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 spunky 12-year-old 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. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

This sequel to The Shining does not disappoint. Dan Torrance is center stage, first as he struggles with alcoholism, then as he comes to the aid of Abra Stone, another possessor of the shining. Even more powerful than Dan, she still needs his help, along with her doctor, John Dalton, and Billy Freeman, a friend of Dan’s, to fight off the True Knot, who have focused on Abra as a source of the “steam” that keeps them alive.

As usual with King’s books, all the characters come alive, and you can’t help but come to care for many of them. In that, I was so glad to find that the book and the movie have very different projections. And while I don’t usually care for books that focus too much on children, King has a gift for writing them as you remember childhood to be, and how you remember seeing the world.

The book works on two levels, as a horror story, and as a story of redemption. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.