Stephen King

One of the wonderful things about having several contributors to Book Help Web is that it really helps the diversity of book reviews found here. For example, what general book site in its right mind doesn't talk about Stephen King? But while I've researched the man enough to write a profile on him, I've never read so much as a short story by him. If I were the only contributor here, Book Help Web would be woefully lacking in its coverage.

Thankfully, I'm not and I've had several contributors give the site Stephen King reviews. Yesterday, we posted a few more from C. Allison, the Cooking Help Web publisher.

The first is of Hearts in Atlantis, a book she was very disappointed in:

I'm starting to think that Stephen King must be on drugs. I just finished reading Hearts in Atlantis and feel like I took a trip without ever leaving my recliner chair. The book is kind of a cross between King's traditional horror writing and his very odd Gunslinger days published initially in pieces as mini books. The very best I can figure is that he took a heap of his short stories, put them in time order, and tossed Carol in several stories to get some sense of continuity.

Her other review is of Songs from a Buick 8, which she isn't much more pleased with. In fact, it's pretty safe to say she thought it was worse:

I haven't decided whether I'm a pickier reader now than back when Stephen King first blew me away with his first novel, Carrie, or whether King has become so famous that he knows he can dump off a lousy book on the reading public without damaging his reputation much. You'd think that a good writer would get better over time and would produce stronger rather than weaker books. In fact, King did pen some gems after his runaway first book — books like The Shining, Pet Sematary, and Cujo. He also got caught up in his Gunslinger which I find terribly annoying (in part due to the work being put out in series form) and turned his hand at non-fiction with the academic themed Dance Macabre (dull as an economic textbook).

From a Buick 8 rides on King's coattails and highlights his shortcomings as a writer (which can easily be overlooked if his story is strong). Had this book been written under another name, it would likely have never been printed and surely would have gone belly up in the bookstores. It really is THAT BAD.

posted by Book Help Web Editorial Team at 7:30 AM |