I have to start this review by admitting that I'm a huge fan of Stephen King, an unwaveringly staunch supporter of all his writing who can often be heard opining, "But it doesn't have to be 'literary' to be incredible, look at Stephen King…". But then, a lot of people who are going to want to read Doctor Sleep will already be fans too, since this is the sequel to one of his most famous early horror books, The Shining. That book, along with IT and Misery, are often held up as the most truly terrifying of King's novels, which take a dip into Westerns, crime, fantasy, science fiction and the supernatural on their way to the telling of a good ghost story. It's perhaps not surprising then that King makes a point, in his always entertaining author's note, to say that he didn't set out to give readers the same bone-chilling experience we had last time, as he points out, "Nothing can live up to the memory of a good scare, especially if administered to one who is young and impressionable".
King opts instead for what he terms a "kick-ass story" and for the most part, he succeeds. Sitting down with a good Stephen King as a fan is very much like returning to a well-loved place, that small town in Maine you used to visit as a child where formative, if not always pleasant, experiences were had. (This is as true for someone like me, who's been to America just three times and never to Maine, as it probably is for people who live up the road from places like Bangor!) Doctor Sleep is very unapologetically like this. Many of the pantheon of King characters are present, a gifted child, a man who struggles with his demons, both real and imagined, older folks with more than their fair share of wisdom and that one a**hole that you sort of feel sorry for but hate because he's a small-town bully.
There's also a large dollop of King himself in the pages. Where The Shining was a tale of a man struggling with alcoholism, as King was at the time he wrote it, Doctor Sleep is a tale of the bit after the initial struggle, the ongoing everyday battle a recovering alcoholic has to fight. If I struggle to look at them objectively, I can admit that King's books could occasionally benefit from an editor with a sharper pen and Doctor Sleep falls into that category. Some of the sections on Alcoholics Anonymous go on a bit longer than necessary and the same could be said of the descriptions of the True Knot, the vampiric villains of the story who feed off the "steam" emitted by gifted kids when they die, the essence of their talent or "shine".
The Knot are well-crafted and creepy creatures, none more so than their leader Rose the Hat, who animates the book's scariest passages. Like all good King villains, they hide in plain sight, terrify the hell out of kids and are practically impossible for adults to spot or stop. But their sequences are somewhat marred by a strange fascination with the kind of RVs they're driving and lengthy descriptions of their rituals.
A bit of a heavy hand on some of the less-action-packed stuff doesn't impinge too heavily on the plot however and if you're a fan, you'll forgive King's tendency to go on a little bit with barely a thought and scamper on to the action, which does deliver. Dan Torrance, The Shining's young protagonist, is all grown up and has, like his father before him, a pretty big problem with drinking. In Dan's case (and maybe his father's too?) he's drinking to blot out his shining, that gift that tells him about people and tends to attract nasty spirits. After Dan hits his bottom, he also hits on a small town, where people take him in and are good enough to him that he manages to ask for help.
As Dan gets himself on his feet, a little girl called Abra is born with the same shine, who becomes a beacon for both him and the True Knot, calling them across the country to a typically nerve-wracking King showdown. King's touch may be heavy on the descriptors, but it's as deft as ever in weaving his strands together and hurtling everyone towards a cleverly inevitable conclusion that never feels forced.
Although the True Knot are the big bad, the real kick-ass story is Dan and Abra and how they deal with their gift/curse both alone and together as teacher and pupil. King has always had the ability to make friendships between adults and children seem real but this book shows how much things have changed since Danny became friends with Dick Halloran back in The Shining. In the modern, paranoid world, appearances are what matter. The True Knot, with their camouflage of age and caravans, appear benign to outsiders, but Dan, meeting Abra in person for the first time when she's 13 years old, seems like the potential predator.
A few of the threads are tied a little too neatly into the bunch but readers have once more had an emotional and thrilling adventure in small town USA, with a few chills and spills thrown in for good measure.
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