The Shining & Doctor Sleep by Stephen King: Review

The Shining

The 1980 movie The Shining scared the crap out of me as a kid, so I started reading The Shining with some trepidation. I expected it to be scary, and it turns out it was even scarier than I thought it would be.

The story gave me three sleepless nights. The first time, I told myself I wouldn't read it before bed anymore, but I couldn't put it down. 

The slow-building tension is almost unbearable, the imagery is vivid, and the writing is unorthodox and surprisingly poetic.

In one scene, Danny is running from a fire hose that may or may not have come to life. The beauty of language is astounding:

Behind him, the sound grew louder, the dry sliding sound of the snake slipping swiftly over the carpet’s dry hackles. At his heels now, perhaps rising up with clear poison dribbling from its brass snout.

The alliteration and word choice creates the sound of the snake/hose, and paints a bright picture in your mind of both the scene and Danny's terror. The book is full of such literary feats.

It's extremely well written, so even if you're not a fan of horror novels or popular fiction, The Shining is definitely worth a read.

Doctor Sleep

I'm glad I waited so long to read The Shining because it allowed me to read the sequel, Doctor Sleep, directly after. 

(Note: I strive to keep my reviews spoiler-free, but in this case, discussing the sequel does give you a sense of how the first book ends.)

The sequel picks up almost immediately after The Shining, and then quickly skips ahead in time to follow Danny as an adult. In the first few chapters, Stephen King also introduces The True Knot, a group of vampiric beings who feed on people with the shining.

Doctor Sleep is a very different book from The Shining. It's not nearly as terrifying, but it was still a great read -- more of a speculative fiction adventure than a horror novel, though of course there's still a lot of horror.

Like The Shining, once I picked it up, I could hardly put it down; I read this 500+ word tome in two days. 

More often than not, Danny sees the shining as a curse, but what would happen if the shining were used for good? What if it were used to fight evil? The book answers those questions.

What did you think?

Did you read The Shining and Doctor Sleep? What did you think of the series?