This may sound dumb, but I’ve never read for this man. I’ve always just heard about him on social media but never ventured to read his work. Opinions, please. Should I invest? Feeling like fiction lately. I’ve read so much non-fiction through throughout my life that I think I deserve a couple of fiction books to get busy with for a little while.
Thanks in advance
EDIT: Thank you so much to all who answered. I have read and appreciated every single comment. I have decided to start with fairy tale since I ran into the book at Walmart. So giving that a shot to see. Thank you so much
The thing about King is, and he’ll admit this now, he used to do a bunch of drugs and hammer out several novels back to back. He’s an incredibly talented writer, but sometimes his stories are just some cool shit he thought of that doesn’t really go anywhere. Sometimes there’s deep introspection, sometimes it’s just a big scary dog that terrorizes a family.
And Cujo is great. Read it. Read all his books. Just not all at once. The Dark Tower series is another good example, because it does a lot of world building, but also sometimes the story just happens and everyone moves on to the next thing. The Stand has a similar issue. It is well written, meandering, thoughtful, and mindeless all at the same time.
There’s also a loosely connected universe between the Shining, It, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and probably a few others I’m forgetting. These are all good books/series, but my recommendation is not to read them back to back. You’ll start to see the patterns and fall backs he uses as an author when he just needs to wrap things up and publish the book.
He also readily admits that he is bad at ending a story.
Lots of his stories feel like he got bored, and just wrapped it all up without much actual closure. Feels very rushed. Under the Dome was a clear example of this for me.
Nothing made me angrier than the ending of the Dark Tower so it has that going for it…
Doctor Sleep also expands on the powers in The Shining and Needful Things references many of the evil entities in the stand and It.
I have always loved the way King weaves his baddies into many of his stories and basically implies that they are all the same kind of evil dressed up in the “clothing” to suit its purpose at any given time.
Now that I think of it…I think in Cujo when he is narrating the dogs infected mind, he alludes to the generalized evil as well. It’s been a while since I read that one tho.