Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

By -
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Stephen King is one of those writers whose books I buy the day they come out. They mark the highest on the "to be read" shelf and I can never get enough. But I've never read anything by Stephen King's son, Owen King. I found out about this books production a little over a year ago, when Stephen spoke about it at the National Book Festival. A world where the women have all gone to sleep and can't wake up. I was intrigued.
This novel centered around the town of Dooling. The people living in this town had heard of the Aurora sickness but it seemed so far away. Hawaii and Australia are quite a distance away from the east coast of the United States and the information was so little that no one paid it much attention. That is until the women of Dooling started falling asleep and their bodies began encasing themselves in the cocoon. Video footage was everywhere. The news was full of images of hospitals full of women whose faces were wrapped in a cocoon. It became widely known that if you tried to remove the cocoon these women would attack violently, killing the people that disturb them. Some women tried their hardest to stay awake hoping to wait for a cure. Other women chose sleep, hoping that whatever came next would be better than what they had now. In a world now full of men and young boys were the women trying to stay awake and the one woman, Evie, who could sleep and wake as she chose.
This book was so good and a very telling narrative. What would the world be like without women? The Kings try and take an impressive shot at capturing the madness that would ensue at such a departure. They also take an attempt at dismantling the problems in a male dominated society. I'm not going to say that every observation was perfect but they hit the target on a lot of the issues they planned on addressing. In the midst of all that was an incredible story with great characters, world building and a story I didn’t want to stop reading. I guess I should pick up some of Owen King's books so I can get a hold on his individual writing style. The pairing of these two authors worked really well. I give this 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson

By -
Image
Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson Bringing to life the story of a notorious pirate to a modern audience isn’t an easy task. We’re too used to the comfort of easy travel, the mythos of pirates and the commercialized imagery produced by movies and television. Images of Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver have been part of entertainment for so long that the idea of true piracy and all it’s ruthlessness has almost been washed away. It isn’t until you’re able to wash away the false images and submerge yourself into the actual history that you can see piracy for it’s truly brutal nature. It also brings up many questions about governments, laws, corporations, scandal, colonization and other factors that allowed piracy to flourish and exist in the manner that it did for so long. Piracy didn’t exist in a bubble. Enemy of All Mankind takes the story of one pirate, who helped usher in the Golden Age of Piracy, and exa
Read more

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack

By -
Image
Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack          In my case it is always the image of Odetta that comes to mind when I hear her name. The tall, undeniably Black woman, hair in an afro, guitar in hand. It must be that I simply did not know enough about her life, her struggle, and even her music to convey more than that image. But her image is memorable and her presence something not easily described. This book fills in the gaps in the story of Odetta that I didn’t know. Looking back at my childhood, her most memorable songs are the ones I’ve known most of my life, singing in my school’s chapel along with hundreds of other Black students, the words having meaning that I can only truly comprehend decades later as a Black woman.          Zack takes his time with this biography, letting the readers learn as much about Odetta as we do the time from whence she came. Her migration from Alabama to California, her feelings of coming from a loveless, forced marriage,
Read more

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

By -
Image
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood I’m going to cut right to the chase. This book is well written but we didn’t need it. I expected more. I wanted more and this fell flat. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale , more than once, and I genuinely enjoyed it. The single narrative of Offred lent itself to the story well and it was genuinely a terrifying society. I watched the first two series of the show and though I have my reservations about it, I still thought it was a good show. It does a great job answering questions that the book could not because of its singular narrative. It filled out the world. This book revolves around three narratives: Aunt Lydia, who we know had a helping hand in stripping women of their sense of self and molded them to be controlled by the men of Gilead; Agnes, raised in Gilead with a Commander as father, privileged and set to marry well; and Daisy, a teenager raised in Canada hating Gilead and the abuses women endured that she’s learned about since she
Read more