Stephen King is a machine of a writer. Ever since tapping into his talent forty years ago, Mr. King has written well over fifty novels and short story collections in his career. One of his most read books is now finally getting a sequel. “The Shining,” already successful among horror lovers, catapulted to notoriety after Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation came to theaters in 1980. The movie wanders away from some of the important aspects found in the novel, but is generally considered one of Kubrick’s best films despite the critics’ dislike for it at the time. An attempt to do an update and more true adaptation of the novel in the form of a television mini-series failed to capture the atmosphere found in both the novel and Kubrick’s adaptation. The new version managed to show Kubrick’s choice to leave out some elements of the book were a good lesson for those filmmakers trying to translate everything precisely as it is found written in a book. Of course, King publicly admits to being very disappointed by Kubrick’s vision going so far as to say “Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre.” I would have to disagree with Mr. King. I think these are two different artists with two different canvases, and both have achieved the same feeling from their art although they decidedly went about it two different ways.
The sequel, “Doctor Sleep,” takes place decades after the terrifying events at the Outlook Hotel, and acquaints us with an older Danny Torrance, now just called Dan, who is still trying to escape the legacy of his father. Dan still has the “shining” which becomes an integral part of how this new story transpires. The novel is set to be released on September 24th, thirty-six years after the original.
Stephen King, admired or disdained, is one of the most prolific writers of our time. His style helped usher in a new type of horror novel and his inspiration has fueled many more ideas from other writers in all fields of literature. I have never been disappointed in a King novel, although the involvement of such an iconic character from such a popular story, does give me apprehensions, but I look forward to it nonetheless. The plot seems likened in ways to some of King’s other novels as well as a showdown similar to those in his novels such as in “The Stand”. Mr. King is known to not be shy of odd marketing techniques, so there is a plug for the new novel in the form of a movie teaser, which is included below along with the full press release. Now, you will have to excuse me while I go read “The Shining” again.
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 twelve-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 tween 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 readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
