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Revival (2014)

by Stephen King(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1476770387 (ISBN13: 9781476770383)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Scribner

review 1: Giving this book five stars for the first 360 (of 400) pages, which are King at his very best: filled with one-liners, cynicism, sage assertions, memorable characters and a fascinating plot template. I repeat: King's at the top of his form here. I loved, loved reading about this guy, his family and their human stories. King's description of how Jamie, his lead, got into the music business is priceless. Nobody writes teenage male like King. (And not many people get addiction of playing rock n roll like King, either--the songs, the people.) It's hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, and completely real.There is growing tension and Unexplained Events, and unsettling things happen. Foreshadowing out the wazoo. But all well-written and coherent.Then, there about 25 page... mores of serious, muddled weirdness. Then a pretty satisfactory coda that ties up most loose ends (everything is explained, even if the reader resists the explanation). You can't re-write an author's plot to suit your taste. I've read lots of King books where he sort of goes off the rails as the plot climaxes--I suppose it's the never-ending search for something creepier and more explosive, after writing ...what? hundreds? of novels. But it was a particular bummer here, because things were rolling along so well. Still--I'm going with five.
review 2: Stephen King almost had me fooled with this one. Not his usual horror genre, it seemed. A little boy playing with toy soldiers in the dirt meets the new pastor of his church, whose hobby is experimenting with all things electrical.Of course, little boys grow up, and this one did not fare well as he grew. The novel, like many good ones, felt a little autobiographical in some aspects. There were dark times indeed.Mr. King is a terrific storyteller. Nostalgia mixed with great foreshadowing and enough detail to put us there. (As a nit, one of those details he wrote is that Nederland, Colorado, is a western slope town. Not true. It is east of the Continental Divide, not far from Boulder, and is considered front range, eastern slope. Another nit: “Cancer is the pitbull of diseases....” Leave the poor pits alone – they have enough trouble with reputation without adding to it in a novel.)This novel fooled me into thinking it might be just about people who made mistakes and were shaped by those choices. The horror crept in. Not the unrelenting horror of some stories, but a gradual, “hey, that ain't right” feeling. And before long, things are really, really not right.How can you not love a story that has chapter headings like Chapter III's “The Accident. My Mother's Story. The Terrible Sermon. Goodbye.”? Ot thoughts like “home is where they want you to stay longer”?And, towards the end of the book, “ This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know -- by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there's still time.”Although some of King's books work better for me than others, I am a fan and will continuing reading them. In my opinion, this one is one of the better ones. less

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