Fairy Tale
Written by Stephen King
About 600 pages
Originally published in 2022
Rate 4/5
This is the first fantasy book I read by Stephen King, unless you want to count Insomnia. Stephen King is excellent at world-building, as I have mentioned before, so this book was very easy to comprehend. This was a good book.
What is Fairy Tale about?
Charlie Reade is a 17-year-old boy who happens to be riding on his bike when his spooky neighbor Howard Bowditch falls off his ladder. Because of Mr. Bowditch's dog, Radar, Charlie was able to help Mr. Bowditch because he heard her barking. After a bit of time in the hospital, Charlie helps Mr. Bowditch's recover at home. However, after Mr. Bowditch asks Charlie to help pay off his medical bills with little gold pallets Charlie starts to wonder who this guy really is.
My thoughts on Fairy Tale
I have never completely read a fantasy book before; I tend to avoid them because of how difficult it is to visualize the creatures and the places. However, since this is required reading, I had to read this book. I found that everything was very easy to visualize because of how descriptive Stephen King's writing is. Because of the fact King is so good at world building I was able to connect with the character in the "real" world before he went into the "other" world which made things easier to understand.
This is the most recently published contemporary book I have read. I'm not used to reading a book and being in on the jokes, I say that because there were a lot of pop culture references in Fairy Tale. Other books don't seem to relate humor to pop culture in the way Stephen King did. The main character, Charlie, was young and so it makes sense for him to rely on pop culture references to understand the "other" world, but it was kind of funny how he made certain connections. Having someone like Charlie as the main character was a good move on King's part because his fan base is aging with him, but people Charlie's age are just starting to adore him. Writing a story for his "newer" audience is good.
The way the story was written was interesting because we know Charlie is recalling it. We read on as Charlie experiences all these surreal things with awe and nervousness because we know he's going to make it out alive. However, the thing is, the antagonist seem to die so quickly in Stephen King's stories and that is kind of annoying because it seems like it's suppose to be trickier to kill them. I liked the ending, but it still doesn't seem very plausible. Especially considering the build up to the fight, it seems so anti-climatic.
The amount of characters in this story was a little annoying. It makes sense for there to be a lot of characters, but I swear there was over 40 and most of them were pretty important; had I not been writing them down I probably would have gotten confused.
In short, this was a good book, but it was anti-climatic and had way too many characters.
Quotes
"You have to keep in mind that high school kids--- no matter how big the boys, no matter how beautiful the girls--- are still mostly children inside." (17)
"I think sometimes we know where we are going even when we think we don't." (111)
"My old resentments were mostly gone, but not entirely. Fright and loss leave a residue." (118)
"We all are just ghosts on the face of the earth trying to believe we have weight and a place in the world." (171)
"It was beautiful, as broken things sometimes are." (583)