Alright! I finally finished "The Shining" so I can do my review of "Doctor Sleep". Doctor Sleep just made me think so much of The Shining, that I had to read it first! Plus I wanted to do this review by being able to talk about both books and reference both books, so I had to remind myself of the realy story, and not the movie version! But with all the wedding stuff going on and work being stressful, I am exhausted lately so it took me a while to finish.. but now! Here is my review of Doctor Sleep!
First off, I should say that I am slightly biased when it comes to Stephen King books.. I own every single one of his books (including the non fiction ones) and he is one of my favorite authors of all time... with that said, however, there are one or two books of his that I did not like so I will try and be as objective as possible! =)
Secondly, the cover to this book is just amazing.. If you have not seen it yet, go look right now! I'll wait... Welcome back!
Stephen King is pretty well known for getting good artists for his books anytime he wants pictures (which isn't very often and mostly just in the Dark Tower series) so whoever he got for this cover outdid themselves. It is just so intriguing and eye catching! I love it!
Anyways! This book is a sequel to "The Shining". Stephen King has never done a sequel before, which was another reason I was so excited about this book (besides the fact that it was done by Stephen King). It follows Danny Torrance as he is all grown up. It shows a pretty realistic view of Danny, after living through what he did when he was just 5 years old. In "The Shining", Danny's dad, Jack is an alcoholic trying to "get on the wagon", as he likes to say in the book. He had broken Danny's arm when Danny was just three years old and lost his job because of drinking so he takes a job at the Overlook Hotel to try and sober up. Once there, they meet Dick Hollarran, who tells Danny about the shining and what exactly it is. He also points out that Danny is the most powerful shining he has ever seen, so to watch out for the ghosts at the Overlook. There are dark and evil things in the hotel and they tend to crave the shining. Dick was not wrong and soon the hotel starts making their lives a living hell. Danny suffers from nightmares, sees the hedge animals moving and senses something dark lurking for him around every corner. It is Jack, however, that gets the worst of it. The hotel gets to him so that they can get to Danny. At first, Jack tries to fight it off but eventually he gives in. At the end, the spirit of the hotel takes over Jack, almost killing his wife, Wendy and Dick, who had come to help. Danny, however, gets the better of him and the hotel blows up because of a faulty boiler, taking Jack and (they hope) the evil spirit with it.
Cut to 25 years later, Danny has now become the alcoholic. Again, this is understandable. His father was one, his mother was crippled and was hardly able to work for most of her life because of what Jack did to her (he beat her with a rogue mallet) and Danny himself had never really found a place in life. He was mostly just drifting, getting into bar fights, going from town to town. He could never stay in one place for very long because of the drinking. He still has his shining, just not as powerful as it once was. He tries to keep it mostly hidden because he is still haunted by the ghosts from the Overlook. He mostly worked in retirement homes because with his shine, he could help those that were dying over to the other side. He could see the shine in other people as well, just like Dick was able to. He had also kept in contact with Dick throughout the years, as best he could. The alcohol, however, got in the way of that as well. His low point was when he woke up one morning with a girl he barely remembered. He had spent all this money the night before on a bag of coke and getting completely wasted with this girl. When he woke up in her apartment, he met her son, who thought the bag of coke was candy. After deflecting the son from the coke, Danny takes the last of the girls money and bolts. This memory haunts him for the rest of his life and he starts to realize that he may need help. Danny finally stumbles into the town of Frazier and he feels like he is home. He immediately knows that he wants to stay there and is able to get a winter job working at Frazier's "Teenytown", a replica of the town itself, working for Billy Freeman. Danny instantly notices that Billy is able to shine a little himself, though he does not know it. It is this that keeps Danny in this town and Danny now knows that he needs to get help for his alcoholism so that he can stay in Frazier. Danny goes to his boss, Casey Kingsley, to get help. Casey had been an alcoholic himself and was currently going to AA meetings, which he gets Danny to go to. With the help of his work and his new friends, Danny does get sober. It is, of course, a hard task but he does it and he maintains it. He also gets a job at the local hospice, where he becomes known as "Doctor Sleep" (see what Stephen King did there?) because, as he has done before, he helps people cross over. Anytime he knows someone is going to die, he tells them to "Go to sleep", and he helps them die peacefully. It is because of his sobriety and because of the town of Frazier that Danny is able to help our heroine, Abra.
So! Enough about Danny. That is his life in a nutshell. I really like how Stephen King got the reader up to speed on Danny. We really didn't need to know much more about him, just that he was an alcoholic because of his father and everything that went down, that he found a town he could thrive in, that he was able to get sober (so we know that he can fight the good fight), and that he still has the shining, albeit not as powerful as before. He also shows Danny meet people that will come into play later in the story: Billy Freeman and Dr. John Dalton (who happens to be Abra's physician). All important in knowing the type of man that Danny is going to be for the rest of the story. It does show Danny struggling with alcohol the whole story, but that is the life of any alcoholic. So all in all, King did a really good job with Danny!
I have always loved how King interweaves his stories together. As we are getting to known the grown up Danny, we are also getting to know the other two important figures in the book. One is Rose, the leader of the True Knot. The True Knot is a group of people, banded together by their powers. They each have a unique power that helps the group in their quest of living forever (for example, one girl, Andi, can make people fall asleep. One can sense children with the shining, etc.) For lack of a better term, they are vampires. Instead of stealing blood, however, they steal essence. They seek out children who have the shining and steal it from them. They call it "steam". In order for them to get as much of this steam as possible from one child, they have to torture the child. The more they torture them and hear them scream, the more steam they can get from that one child. The more steam they have, the younger they look and feel. Because of their ability to get steam, they also don't get diseases and they do not get sick in any way. However, since irony is a bitch, one of their last victims, (and it is this victim that sets Abra on their path) had the measles. It festers in their blood stream for a couple years but as they run out of steam and run out of children to feed off of, the disease starts to infect them. I really love how King makes sure that the bad guys get what's coming to them. Sometimes in his stories the bad guy wins, but more often than not, the good guy wins and the bad guys get the worst punishment ever. That is so nice to see! I have always loved how good King is at writing his characters. He really makes you hate the antagonist so that when they get their comeuppance, you feel justified.
These True Knot people are just the worst kind of people. They are, of course, not really human, but they act that way. They disguise themselves as one big, happy, traveling family, traveling in winnebagos across the country as they look for kids that shine. Abra is on their radar early on. They can sense her from many miles away and Rose knows that she has to have that power. They have a few bottles of steam saved up, so they are OK for a while. But they finally start to run out of steam (pun intended.. ha), which is how they start getting sick and the measles start affecting them. As the disease progresses and starts killing off members of the True Knot, Rose tries desperately to find out where Abra is. Rose knows how powerful Abra is and knows that if she were able to get to her and torture her, the True Knot would survive forever. Abra, however, being as powerful as she is, is mostly able to keep Rose out of her mind and away from where she is. Abra is still a 13 year old girl and slips up, especially with her special ability to (what Danny calls) "turn the wheel" so that she is looking through Rose's eyes and Rose is looking through her eyes. It is because of this that Rose is able to find out where Abra is and they are soon on their way to find her and kill her. Because Abra is a 13 year old girl, I was terrified for her the whole time. I thought for sure they were going to find her. They were a powerful group, after all. And there was a lot of them, compared to just her. Of course, Abra had Danny's help and Danny had enlisted the help of Billy and John, but I was just waiting for Danny to start drinking again or to think it was too much. He had dealt with so much as a 5 year old that I didn't think he would do it again.
As I mentioned before, Abra was very strong with the shining. She had been since she was born. Since she was so young, she was never able to really control her powers and they came out in strange ones, like plastering all the spoons to the ceiling or playing the piano when she was in a different room than the piano. Her parents were never really sure what to do with her, but they loved her and were told it would pass. Abra's grandma, however, knew differently and knew that one day this ability of Abra's would get her into trouble. Abra had a special, meaningful relationship with her Grandma and it was her grandma's essence that helped to save her in the end. Because of Abra's ability, she is able to find Danny because of his shine. They become tentative friends through chalkboard messages and images flashed through their minds. Neither one is sure of what the other is and it seems to be more of a passing friendship than anything. Then the True Knot kill the "baseball boy" and Abra senses it, senses his death and is able to somewhat feel the torture he goes through. She tells Danny about this and tells him that the True Knot must be stopped. Danny and Abra meet where Abra tells him about her shine and Danny sort of becomes her teacher about it, just like Dick was to him all those years ago. I also thought it was really funny how King addressed the fact that Danny was a 40 something year old male and she was just 13, so they had to be careful who saw them. It just made me laugh that he had to address that, and when I thought about it I thought it was smart of King. I am sure if King hadn't had Danny say something about it, I would've thought to myself "well what happens if someone sees them talking? Aren't the police going to be called?" Oh what a world we live in! Of course, later in the story, King has Abra plant a thought in a friends head that she hadn't seen them, but at least King addressed the fact that it could seem odd to anyone to see an older man talking to a young girl. In any case, at the end of the story it turns out that Danny is Abra's biological Uncle so it all works out!
Anyways, Danny and Abra hatch a plan to make sure the True Knot is stopped. They of course have to get Abra's parents involved. I think that most parents would have given up with much more of a fight, but Danny and Abra (and even John) convinced them that there was no choice. These people were coming to kill Abra and they had to be stopped. It also helped that Abra was actually going to be at home, watched over by Billy while Danny, John and Abra's father did all the leg work. Abra would just "turn the wheel" and look through Danny's eyes (essentially be in his body and not really in her own) so if the True Knot sensed her, they would sense her where ever Danny was, not where she really was.
The plan works, at first, and Rose sends a team of people out to where she thinks Abra is. This team, however, is ambushed by Danny, John, and Abra's father. They kill the whole True Knot team and Rose feels each one of their deaths, getting more angry per death. Rose then thinks of a little trap of her own. She makes the seeker watch a porno so that when Abra tries to sneak a peek into where the True Knot is, she will only see that porno. This disorients Abra, not knowing what she is looking at, so much so that she is momentarily in her own body. This moment, however, allows the True Knot to see exactly where she is and Rose sends her right hand man, Crow, to go get her. Crow finds where she is, gives a powerful sedative to Billy and is able to find her at her. He kidnaps her using the same sedative, which also stops Abra from using any of her shine on him. He brings Billy with him as well because any steam will do and starts heading to where the True Knot is so they can finally have their steam. After a while the drugs wear off and Abra asks to use the restroom so she can try and contact Danny. Her head is really fuzzy and it takes a great effort, but she contacts him and tells him what is happening. She can barely function because of the drugs but is able to "turn the wheel", right as Crow drags her from the restroom back into the car. Danny is now inside Abra's mind and, as the book states, he flicks on all her thought processes. She is now as wide awake as she can be and with the help of Danny, they put an end to Crow. I really loved this scene. They make Crow shoot himself with the gun he stole from Billy and the way King wrote it, you can just feel the struggle. You can really sense what each character was going through and how hard each one pushed to try and win. In the end, of course Abra won and it was so gruesome and awesome! Good job Abra!
It finally comes down to the last battle scene. Abra and Billy make it to a hotel to sleep the drugs off and they come up with a plan. It is time to end Rose and the rest of True Knot. Rose knows that they are coming for her and Abra goads her into a final battle. Of course, of all the places it has to be, it is going to be at the remains of the Overlook Hotel, the place that has haunted Danny his whole life. It is a place called "Roof O' the World", a stair case leading to a platform about three stories up to take in the view that used to be the view from the third floor of the Overlook. He knew since that was where it started, that was where it had to end. This was, of course, fitting to any King book. If something haunts a character through the whole book, then that is definitely where it has to end. It has to be there so that the character can grow and finally move on with his life. So it is here where Rose and Abra agree to meet. Of course, it is not really Abra, but Abra through Danny's eyes. They have to do this trick again so that whenever they sense Abra, they sense that she is actually there and not back home. Rose thinks she has the advantage because as part of the final meeting, Abra had asked her to bring the rest of the True Knot group with her, all into one room. This would be the death of all of them. Before the final show-down, King shows Danny going to Abra's grandma and helping her die. The grandma had been sick with cancer for a while and it was finally her day. Danny puts on his Doctor Sleep role and helps her pass over. Something different seems to happen in this pass over, but the reader is not really sure what. Then, when the final fight begins, the reader sees what happened.
While Danny is visiting the grandma and helping her pass over, he engulfs her essence, making it a part of himself. He traps it in a box in his mind, to be used later. That later is when he gets into the room where the rest of the True Knot is waiting. He releases grandma's essence onto the True Knot and it immediately starts to kill them. It is sort of a last hoorah for Abra's grandma, plus it is the last thing she can do to help her granddaughter. It slaughters the True Knot, infecting them with her cancer and making them all cease to exist. Rose feels every one of these and becomes a monster. She pries into Danny's mind, making him relive all his worst moments. She then takes over Danny's mind, turning him on Abra, who is also still in his mind. She makes Danny strangle Abra, doing all she can to destroy Abra. Abra, however, is much too powerful and puts a stop to Rose and shoves her out of Danny's head. Rose is then facing Danny, out in the open, on the Roof O' the World, not in their minds. She tries to make him choke himself but Danny fights it. When he was 5, he had the most powerful shining anyone had ever seen and some of that power stayed with him. He uses his shining to fight her with all his might. Rose, however, is the more powerful opponent and starts to win. She has almost won when Abra comes full force into Danny's mind. Just like when they had to fight Crow, they put their minds together and push at Rose with all their might. They push at Rose until finally, she falls off right onto her head, killing her almost instantly.
What a good story! I loved it so much! A lot of the time, Stephen King bores me at the beginning and I just have to grin and bear it because I know the ending will be good, but this book started off at a full run. It was exciting from the very beginning (starting off with Danny still young, still being haunted by the Overlook) to the very end. The characterizations were great, as they always are. That is the main thing, I think, that I love about King. He is just so good at characters. He knows how to write them well so they grow up before your eyes. So that they change, become mature and better people. There is also the opposite: he shows them weakening, becoming worse people, terrible people. King is just really great at showing any sort of progression in characters. I also like how he showed (in The Shining and Doctor Sleep) that they were still children. Even though they had to deal with all the adult stuff, he showed them crying, freaking out, not sure what to do. But he showed them being brave. I like to think that there are kids out there that would be like that in the face of danger. I loved Abra as a character. Even in the end, when it showed her bratty teenage years, I still liked her. I don't think King will ever do a trilogy, but I would love to know more about Abra and see her become and adult and see what she does with her shine. I would recommend this to anyone, not even just King fans. You don't really have to read The Shining to understand it, either. It goes into Danny's past a lot in this book, so you are aware of what happened and what kind of father Jack was. It was also a moving story, Danny shows his love to Abra before and after he finds out he is her Uncle. It shows that he really is a good man, despite the bad things he has done. He is trying to make up for them as much as he can. He just wants to be there for Abra and to help protect her and he does the best he can.
Definitely 5 stars (shines?) in my book! (another pun totally intended!)
Up next: "The Meaning of Night: A Confession". by Michael Cox
(I've decided that I can't read The Coldest Girl in Cold Town... the title really bugs me and it has bored me so much with just the first few chapters that I am over it. I have read too many good books lately to want to read that.. so if you were really curious.. go read it yourself! )
Happy reading!
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