Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

Aside from Gwendy's Button Box earlier this year, it's been quite a few years since I've read anything from Stephen King. Although I count him as among my all-time favorite authors, and consider myself a fan, I regret that I've become something of a lapsed Constant Reader. Nevertheless, I had been looking forward to Sleeping Beauties for quite some time and when it finally released I had worked myself up into a good old solid hankering for an epic horror tome.Unfortunately, Stephen and his son, Owen King, just didn't live up to my expectations and hopes. While the premise is incredible, I found the execution to be sorely lacking. This book is a slog. It's slow, and the majority of its 700 pages present an awful lot of leaves to be bored by. This sucker is jam-packed with characters, most of them one-note and forgettable, while others are simply uninteresting. Dr. Norcross, for instance - one of the lead male figures and prison psychologist (an Appalachian women's correctional facility is the main locale for the majority of Sleeping Beauties), Norcross has a heck of a backstory with his youth spent in the foster care system. The events that have shaped and built his life are wildly intriguing, but the adult we're presented with is pretty damn dull, and his marriage is on the rocks thanks to some half-baked and cliched marital melodrama the Kings tossed in. I might have found to reason to care about the slippery slope the Norcross's marriage was sliding down, but frankly I didn't much care for his wife, Lila, the town sheriff, either.King (Stephen, at least; I haven't read any of Owen's work previously) is a master at building memorable characters, and yet I struggled to find any reason to sympathize or care about any of the what felt like hundreds of names dropped into this sucker. Even the central antagonist, Evie Black, with her cell phone video game obsession, penchant for sleeping above the covers, and Biblical fantasy roots, is a pale threat. If you're looking for personalities like Stuttering Bill, Roland, Pennywise, or Leeland Gaunt, you'll be sorely disappointed. I doubt Sleeping Beauties will be making its way to the top of legendary King titles anytime soon. Instead, it's more redolent of lesser King works, particularly Under the Dome, which I hated. But while Dome felt an awful lot like a remix of better, more memorable King hits, Sleeping Beauties merely feels redundant, hitting on a lot of the same derivative elements. It's a better book than Under the Dome to be sure, but once the women of the world start falling asleep and chaos ensues, Appalachia feels almost identical to Chester's Mill.It's not all bad, thankfully. There are a few moments, here and there, that impressed me and convinced to stick with this book (and honestly, if it were anybody other than King, I would have quit this book pretty damn early on). Without spoiling too much, the polar opposites between Appalachia and Our Place were really well done; as one world burns, another is built, and those moments were intriguing as all get out. The nature of the cocoons enshrouding the sleeping women, and what happens when their sleep is disturbed, presented some fantastic moments of horror. And the last hundred pages or so showed the Kings hadn't forgotten to put some gas in the tank after all, giving us some pretty solid action to wrap everything up.I've seen other reviewers comment on this novels' political nature and how the Kings were standing up on a soapbox. It's not an impression I walked away with, but this is a book about the sexes and what happens when the balance between men and women is significantly altered. The disparity between sexes is inherently political, but I never found this book to be extreme in its presentation of political ideas one way or another. Frankly, if Stephen and Owen had been more polemic Sleeping Beauties might have been way more interesting for it. As it stands, it's merely tepid at best.

This is a painful review to write. I have read just about all Stephen King that has been published. I've also reviewed most of what I've read, giving an occasional 3 stars to an anthology or a short story, but the vast majority of my scores for novels have been 4's and 5's, mosly the latter. I can recognize King's writing style anywhere. I knew (very strongly suspected) that THINNER was written by SK long before it became public knowledge that Richard Bachman was just a pseudonym that King used to prevent the market from being saturated by too many Stephen King novels in too short a time.SLEEPING BEAUTIES does not *feel* like a Stephen King novel. Not even close. The vocabulary is different, and characters, although similar in feel, are not quite right and there is far less development of the inner voices of each than is typical. The pacing is sluggish. And although I have never, ever thought this about any other SK novel, SLEEPING BEAUTIES was just too damn long. Instead of reading the whole thing in 2 or 3 days as per usual for a long SK novel, this one took forever. Something like 8 or 9 days. I never got into the "just one more page, just one more page" mode that has happened with everything else I've read. It was a struggle to get through it and I finally made up my mind to get it over and read the last 250 pages in one go until early in the morning today.So what's the deal? Pretty obviously (and again, just like with THINNER, only a guess on my part) most of the prose was written by Owen King, not Stephen King, regardless of the order of the authors. There are little hints and flashes of SK here (the character of Don Peters being one, the overall dual world scenario and a few others) but by and large this just didn't feel much or sound like SK. The characters were mostly flat. The interpersonal relationships, usually a great strength of SK, were blurry. In fact, Joe Hill's writing is much more like SK’s than this writing was.I never understood what Evie was or where she came from or why. She just didn't make any sense. Yes, we're talking fantasy here but even with fantasy stuff has to make sense and/or be explicable in some manner. There have to bee some rules. Nor was the nature or rationale of the deal she worked out with Clint, (who by the way was one of the least likable protagonists in a novel that I have read in quite a while) clear. It was more akin to something reminiscent of Abraham and God in the Old Testament viz the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah than modern fantasy.And for those of you constantly complain about King's penchant for letting his political views color his fiction (As it happens, I am often bemused by this comment, usually failing to notice explicit political messages in novels where people complain about it the most), most of the entire novel is a giant screed against our "modern male dominated society". Some of the female inmates were sort of interesting and/or had a legitimate beef, but the whole women versus man conflict that was the backbone of the story was way, way overcooked, and has been handled better by others in many other novels. Many or most of the men here were gun-toting, violent, hard-drinking drinking sexually predatory charicatures of real people, and I was turned off by the suggestion that men are basically bad and women are basically good. Bah Humbug. So now I see where many of the really bad reviews came from. In this case, the Stephen King bashing that is au courant seems justified. Of course I'll be around for the the next SK novel. I just hope it's the pure unadulterated stuff. Owen needs some seasoning before he’s ready for prime time.Not recommended.J.M Tepper

Before I am labled a King hater, let me make this clear, I am a King MEGA MEGA MEGA fan. I just finished rereading The Stand, It and Bag of Bones, enjoying them more now than when read originally. Adored them. For the post part have read 80% of SK's books.So? I thought the premise of this sounded interesting.Wow, was I in for a disappointment.I can't see how Sleeping Beauties could be compared to any of King's past novels. To me, knowing King's writing style,He didn't write it. His son did.To me there was none of King's character development, no continuity in plot!Why in God's name did it take place in a prison community , and what were The Orange is the New Black, Breaking Bad references all about ? I mean it rambled here there so much I could not follow it.If anyone says this resembles any of Kings past writing,No way.Eve interested me. And she seemed like a character from American Horror Story Roanoke. Was she a witch, druid. Mother Earth ?I can't say it's the first bad King novel I've read because it's not his writing. I've read enough Stephen King to know that.2 seperate writers ye shall stay, please!!!Father and Son.(A fox too?)

It wasn't ok. I can normally read a book off several hundred pages in a few days but this monster too me months. Like 5 months I got so annoyed with reading it that I just wanted to give up but I'd already told myself I couldn't read another book until I finished this one, which has ended up with me having about 10 new books waiting for me to read them on my book shelves. Though I liked the story well enough I found myself lost with the sheer mass of characters in use. If it wasnt for the character index at the beginning of the book I wouldn't have been completly lost and would've put it down.I'm glad I finished it but I don't think I'll pick it up again.

Not the best of Stephen king by a long way. Poor story with no depth to the characters.Finished it but wished I hadn't bothered.

I don't like to be critical of Stephen King, mainly, as he has written so many best-sellers and even his worst books are still very readable, but I did struggle with this one. I had three main issues with it - one, was there was simply too many characters. It made the book hard to follow when putting it down and resuming a day or two later, and it made it hard to become attached to any of them, thus, hard to actually care if they live or die. There are so many characters to follow, there is actually an index at the start of the book with their names, families and professions. Fine for a big epic series like Game of Thrones, or the Dark Tower anthology, but a bit strange for a book like this. The second issue was, without wanting to spoil anything, although it was an interesting concept, there was no real "point" to the book, nothing really gets explained. And the third issue was, it seemed to be relentlessly bashing men, talking of the faults of men, how men have ruined the world, how all women in prison are there because it's men's fault etc. Some valid points no doubt, but it does become a bit tiresome and ends up becoming the theme of the whole book.All of that aside, it was a good book for a fiver, it is a decent read, but nowhere near his finest work. He has collaborated with his son Owen on this book, but it still feels like Stephen King, and it's not noticeable who has written what chapter.Purchase it for a holiday read, or if you can get through a book in a week or two. Kills some time, but it is not a King classic. If you just read a chapter here and there and stretch the book out over time, you will be completely lost when you pick it back up again, with 20 or 30 "main" characters and stories constantly jumping between different people, families, times and even different worlds/dimensions.

the characterisation, although it was challenging to keep track of the number of people involved. I bought this book both in hardback and audio and while the hardback does come with a guide to each character, I found myself using the audio mainly as the book was so huge and long!I'd listen to it in the car, walking the dogs, and at home. It was entertaining and I did enjoy it but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved when I came to the end. Speaking of the end... it all felt like a bit of an anti-climax. I can't quite put my finger on it. I did enjoy it overall though, hence the five stars. I just didn't get as emotionally involved as I do in his older work. A great premise that will leave you questioning your beliefs, but not my favourite I'm afraid.

I read some of the negative reviews and just can't believe they were about the same book. still, each to their own. I do agree with one (positive) review that the man-bashing got a bit over-emphasised, bu apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I'll put it up there with IT, and The Stand, no problem. Maybe the gender/racism politics was partly to do with the collaboration, but I don't care. For me it was Stephen doing the kind of thing that has kept me reading his stuff for so many years.Brilliant.