In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand.

A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time is different. This time a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky.

Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives as they struggle with a terrible creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past - and in the Dreamcatcher.

Though there is an Author’s Note at the back of the book where King thanks his time writing this book (in longhand!) for getting him through his near fatal accident, I’ve read that, since, he no longer cares for it, because of the difficult circumstances and his being under the influence of painkillers. He may feel it interfered with his ability to turn out quality work, but I think it’s one of his best attempts.

As with It the lives of the protagonists are woven together, as young boys and as men. The magic of their younger days is what allows them to come together as adults to fight off the evil that threatens them.

The years have not been kind to them; none have found true happiness. While Henry and Gary Jones (Jonesy) have found career success as a psychiatrist and a college professor, respectfully, Pete and Joe Clarendon (Beav,) have seen their dreams shattered. Pete never made it to NASA, while Joe’s marriage failed, and his drinking began.

Yet there still is that connection, through “Duddits,” the boy with Down’s Syndrome they saved from bullies; they’re “brave thing.” But, as with each other, time has weakened that connection.

It’s a huge book (coming in at over 600 pages,) and there’s a lot going on, but at its core it’s a story of friendship and how far believing can get you. I found it exceptional, and well worth the time it took to read. And, maybe at some point, read again.




( Mount TBR 2024 Book Links 1-25 )

26. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
27. The Lighthouse Keeper Kindle Edition by Alan K. Baker
28. I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson
29. The Road Not Travelled : Alternative Tales of the Wars of the Roses by Joanne R. Larner
30. King's Fool by Margaret Campbell Barnes
31. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
32. Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism by Diana B. Henriques
33. Seven Perfect Things by Catherine Ryan Hyde
34. Legends by Robert Silverberg (Editor/Contributor)
35. The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1) by Jasper Fforde
36. Echoes of an Alien Sky by James P. Hogan
37. Dreamcatcher by Stephen King







Winter theme, or winter on cover
1. Dreamcatcher by Stephen King





AUG - "Seasons, Elements, Weather" - Read a book where the season, weather, climate, or elements play a roll in the plot.⁠

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

I didn’t mind the politics. It’s life, after all. And King is certainly not the first author to give his characters his beliefs; he’s certainly done the reverse. I hadn’t even known there was a problem until I started reading some of the other reviews (I wonder what they would have made of Star Trek!). I figure, if I don’t like a book that much, I quit reading it.

My major complaint is with Holly, who I’ve loved in all the books in which she’s appeared. I’m not sure what happened, but her spark seems to be gone. And considering that the character has to pretty much carry the book, that’s going to be a major problem. I felt as if she really wasn’t there. That she was a disinterested bystander. Not until near the end of the book, when things are hitting her in the face, does she come alive.

This isn’t a terrible book; far from it. The case is interesting and the villains are truly villainous. But it’s not one of King’s best. I know people can be truly evil, so maybe I just miss the supernatural slant. Is the book horror? Yes, just not in my favorite flavor.




Mount TBR 2024 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. Bone Walker (Anasazi Mysteries #3) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear
2. Holly by Stephen King

Stephen King's most gripping and unforgettable novel, Bag of Bones, is a story of grief and a lost love's enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire.

Set in the Maine territory King has made mythic, Bag of Bones recounts the plight of 40-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan, who is unable to stop grieving even four years after the sudden death of his wife, Jo, and who can no longer bear to face the blank screen of his word processor.

Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, Mike finally returns to Sara Laughs, the Noonans' isolated summer home.

He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, but much changed underneath -- held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, who twists the very fabric of the community to his purpose: to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother. As Mike is drawn into their struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here -- and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

As vivid and enthralling as King's most enduring works, Bag of Bones resonates with what Amy Tan calls 'the witty and obsessive voice of King's powerful imagination.' It's no secret that King is our most mesmerizing storyteller. In Bag of Bones -- described by Gloria Naylor as 'a love story about the dark places within us all' -- he proves to be one of our most moving.

The book only slowly draws the reader into the mysteries that surround Mike: the slowly dying town near his summer home and its history, the people there who he thought he knew, and the sudden death of his wife four years before. They’re all intertwined, along with the young woman and her daughter who Mike is inexorably drawn to. Because there is so much ground to cover, there are times when the story unfolds perhaps a bit too slowly.

While it takes awhile to make its full appearance, there is also the horror that Mike’s wife had uncovered, which Mike will put his life in danger in order to learn the secrets that hide almost under his feet.

Though categorized as a horror novel, it comes closer to being a love story. The love Mike has for his wife, and the love that pulls him out of the cloud he’s lived under for all those years. That makes it a book well worth reading.




Mount TBR 2023 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.


1. Alexander's Tomb: The Two-Thousand Year Obsession to Find the Lost Conquerer by Nicholas J. Saunders
2. Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
3. Under the Empyrean Sky (Heartland Trilogy #1) by Chuck Wendig
4. Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
5. After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War by Gregory P. Downs
6. The Wolf's Hour (Michael Gallatin #1) by Robert R. McCammon
7. Bag of Bones by Stephen King







Title with Dead, Blood, or Bone

1. Bag of Bones by Stephen King

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.




Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
2. The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
3. The Autumn Throne (Eleanor of Aquitaine #3) by Elizabeth Chadwick
4. Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year by Charles Bracelen Flood
5. Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2) by Stephen King







D. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King




Vampires
1. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
(they don't drink blood, but they're still vampires)

Can Stephen King scare even himself?

Has the author of Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, and Christine ever conceived a story so horrifying that he was for a time unwilling to finish writing it? Yes. This is it.

Set in a small town in Maine to which a young doctor, Louis Creed, and his family have moved from Chicago, Pet Sematary begins with a visit to a graveyard where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. But behind the "pet sematary," there is another burial ground, one that lures people to it with seductive promises . . . and ungodly temptations.

As the story unfolds, so does a nightmare of the supernatural, one so relentless you won't want . . . at moments . . . to continue reading . . . but will be unable to stop.

You do it because it gets hold of you, says the nice old man with the secret. You make up reasons . . . they seem like good reasons . . . but mostly you do it because once you've been up there, it's your place, and you belong to it . . .up in the Pet Sematary--and beyond.

Yes, the story is scary, but apparently I wasn’t as scared as the author. I think because the idea of something being irresistible has always been on my “can’t go with that” list. Like stories that involve the devil. You know that the protagonist is going to lose.

As the story goes along, the reader is given plenty of clues that that’s going to be the case here. The power behind the Pet Sematary is strong, and getting stronger. Too strong for Louis Creed. But King can’t seem to write a bad story, or even a mediocre one. So, yes, I did enjoy the story, just not as much as I’ve enjoyed some of his other books.

Lastly, I hate open ended stories. Either finish the story, all ends tied up, or write a sequel.





( TBR Book Links 1-50 )

51. The City Where We Once Lived by Eric Barnes
52. The Cleanup by John Skipp & Craig Spector
53. Pet Sematary by Stephen King









Black Cat on the Cover - Pet Sematary by Stephen King





I Read Horror Year-Round List

*Winter Theme, or winter appearance on the cover (snow, ice, etc.):
1. Ararat by Christopher Golden

*Ghosts or spirits:
1. The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

*Psychological:
1. The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor
2. The Hiding Place by C. J. Tudor

*Monster or Monsters:
1. Snowblind by Christopher Golden

*A body of water (featured in story, on cover, or in title):
1. Duma Key by Stephen King

*Really scary book cover:
1. The Breach by M.T. Hill
2. Pet Sematary by Stephen King

*Woman on cover - Later by Stephen King

*Written by a woman:
1. The Mummy (Ramses the Damned #1) by Anne Rice
2. The Burning Girls by C. J. Tudor

*Written by a best-selling horror author:
1. If It Bleeds by Stephen King
2. The Shining by Stephen King
3. The Cleanup by John Skipp and Craig Spector

*Written by an indie author:
1. Echoes of Home by M.L. Rayner

*Historical horror (must be an historical novel written by a contemporary author):
1. Last Train From Perdition by Robert McCammon

*Folk horror:
1. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Later is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel IT, Later is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears.

A quick, easy read, yet the characters are fully formed and the plot deep. King is one of the few writers that I’ve read that does children well, and though Jamie is relating the story from adulthood, the Jamie that he writes about still has the innocence of of childhood.

There’s suspense, and then horror as Jamie is drawn into the crimes of a mad man. Yet the deepest horror is yet to come, the horror of what one person will do to another in order to get ahead.

Though there could be more to the story, what happens “later,” the story is complete and doesn’t leave the reader hanging.




( TBR Book Links 1-25 )

26. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
27. In the Region of the Summer Stars (Eirlandia #1) by Stephen R. Lawhead
28. Later by Stephen King









I Read Horror Year-Round List

*Winter Theme, or winter appearance on the cover (snow, ice, etc.) - Ararat by Christopher Golden

*Ghosts or spirits - The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

*Psychological

*Monster or Monsters - Snowblind by Christopher Golden

*A body of water (featured in story, on cover, or in title) - Duma Key by Stephen King

*Really scary book cover - The Breach by M.T. Hill

*Woman on cover - Later by Stephen King

*Written by a woman

*Written by a best-selling horror author - If It Bleeds by Stephen King

*Written by an indie author

*Historical horror (must be an historical novel written by a contemporary author)

*Folk horror

Readers adore Stephen King’s novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” (Stand By Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (Shawshank Redemption).

Four brilliant new tales in If It Bleeds are sure to prove as iconic as their predecessors. Once again, King’s remarkable range is on full display. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider—this time on her own. In “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. “The Life of Chuck” explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in “Rat,” a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition.

If these novellas show King’s range, they also prove that certain themes endure. One of King’s great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there’s plenty of it. There is also evil’s opposite, which in King’s fiction often manifests as friendship. Holly is reminded that friendship is not only life-affirming but can be life-saving. Young Craig befriends Mr. Harrigan, and the sweetness of this late-in-life connection is its own reward.

King hasn’t lost it. The book holds four great stories that held my interest from the start.

First, there was Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, where an elderly man, just recently introduced to smart phones, comes up with an interesting use for it. And I loved how the two characters came to know and appreciate each other.

Then there’s The Life of Chuck, where a man’s life affects many times and places. It took me awhile to figure our where King was going with the story, but it all came together in the end.

My favorite, though, was If It Bleeds, because of the return of Holly Gibney. After the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, and then The Outsider, it was great to see her again, and I hope King writes more stories involving her.

The last story was a lesson in being careful what you ask for. Oh, and don’t talk to rats.



A QUARTER OF THE WAY UP THE MOUNTAIN!

Mount TBR 2021 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
2. Polaris
3. How Democracies Die
4. Mikhail Baryshnikov's Stories From My Childhood: Beloved Fairy Tales from the Queen to Cinderella
5. The Fateful Lightning (Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater #4)
6. Circling the Sun
7. The Petticoat Men
8. Lily Pond: Four Years with a Family of Beavers
9. Running with the Demon (The Word & The Void #1)
10. The Gentle Giants of Ganymede (Giants #2)
11. Ararat
12. If It Bleeds










2021 LJ BOOK BINGO

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.

At first I wondered who this “Tim” guy was, but I trust King and knew it would all tie together eventually, and, eventually, it did.

It did when Luke Ellis enters the story Kidnapped from his family home and taken to a place known as The Institute, he finds that he’s not the only kid there. King has always had a knack for writing children well. They act like kids. Not like the moronic kids we see on most tv programs, or, swinging the other way, like little adults. They act like kids the way I remember acting, which makes the story easy to read, no easy task considering the length. The story has plenty of suspense, as Luke and the other kids learn why they are there and what will become of them. They all have unique personalities that we come to lknow and ove as each meets their fate. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a little addendum. I would love to know what happens to the survivors.

But let’s not forget Tim and the other people of his town who come in contact with Luke. They, too, are complex and fully drawn. Some are good, some not so good, but always engaging.

The film rights to the book have already been acquired, on the day the book was released! (big surprise.) I can hardly wait to see it.





Mount TBR 2020 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. A Wicked War
2. The Grapes of Wrath
3. The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses
4. Thera: Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean
5. Unbury Carol
6. The Institute


BOOK BINGO 2020 - 3. Read a Horror Novel

An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

As with most of King’s doorstops of a book, this one has lots of characters and several plot lines to keep straight. And what kind of book is it, anyway? A crime drama? Science Fiction? Horror? Perhaps a little of all three, because it takes you from a horrifying crime, to the puzzle of someone being in two places at once, to an answer grounded in myth. I have to admit, I never thought I’d run into the cucuy, the boogieman of my childhood.

And while it’s a fascinating story on its own, the plus was that it brought back Holly Gibney, one of the main characters from the Bill Hodges trilogy, because it was her addition that really brought the other characters to life. Holly is the only one who has come into contact with the unexplainable, and so is able to guide the others, and bringing out the best in them at the same time.





Mount TBR 2019 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Outsider


BOOK BINGO

1. Fantasy, Scifi, Paranormal - The Outsider by Stephen King

Wake up, genius.

The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

Enjoyable, but not so much as the first book. Maybe because I kept waiting for Hodges and company to show up, and they don’t until well into the book. And it wasn’t until they did they I was able to completely get into the Saubers/Morris story. I do wonder if the book would have worked better with completely all new characters, thus avoiding preconceived expectations.

I suppose something that the book didn’t have going for it is that it’s very much a crime/mystery sort of book, and I’m not normally drawn to them. That I enjoyed it as much as I did says a lot about King’s writing. Some may not enjoy his dense world building, or his cavalcade of characters, but those two things are what probably draw me to his writing more than anything else. Well, and the horror, too. This book gives you one, if not a great deal of the other. I can deal with that.

There are hints that lead to the third book in the trilogy, and I’m glad to read that it’s very much a Hodges book. Looking forward to reading it.




( Mount TBR 2018 Book Links )