Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022)
Autumn is here and in addition to the brisk temperatures and colorful falling leaves, you know what that means.....
A juicy jumbo book to delight, scare and thrill all of us 'constant readers' of Uncle Stevie......
And once again, he never disappoints.
If you remember "The Talisman", the author's epic 1984 collaboration with the late Peter Straub, prepare yourself for another plunge into an all-new, freshly imagined fantasy kingdom......and all of the harrowing, heartbreaking and at times horrific adventures found there.
Leave it to King to serve all this up as a twenty course meal, starting with a long, long preparatory set-up that takes up almost the first third of the book and practically functions as its own novella.
For Constant Readers, this introduction to the main events draws upon one of the author's most familiar tropes......a youngster beginning an unlikely friendship with a decidedly eccentric senior....and thereby leading to some extraordinary happenings.....
Hence we start out with teenager Charlie Reade, already burdened with family tragedies and troubles. He takes on a new responsibility after coming to the aid of the injured, elderly Howard Bowditch, the crusty neighborhood crank. who resides, naturally in a foreboding ramshackle house. While Bowditch recuperates from a broken leg, Charlie becomes a caregiver to both Howard and the old man's equally aging German Shepherd, Radar.
Slowly but surely, man, boy and dog all warm up to each other, but where and how did Howard accumulate his Midas-sized stash of pure gold? And what's behind his locked shed and what's sometimes making creepy, scrabbling noises on the other side of its door?
Since we're talkin' Stephen King here, it's not a shock that the shed houses a deep, circular stone staircase leading to the mythical kingdom of 'Empis'.....an amalgamation of the worlds of 'Lord Of The Rings, 'Game Of Thrones', 'The Wizard Of Oz', H.P. Lovecraft, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.
As you might already guess, Charlie and Radar take the plunge into Empis, discovering it's a cursed kingdom, with its benevolent people brutalized and tortured by unspeakable, monstrous forces.
(By now, we of King's Constant Readers know that nobody, but nobody creates more vile, hateful, disgusting villains and monsters than our favorite author. Trust me, you'll want to leap into the pages of 'Fairy Tale' and strangle them yourselves with your bare hands.....)
I couldn't even begin to describe the all the characters, creatures. breathless travels, terrifying perils and heroics that unfold here. That's stuff's for you to dive into and stay up all night reading about. Shouldn't even bother mentioning that by the closing chapters, King will make your heart both break and soar, as you knew he would......
Nothing much else I can add here, except the Sandy Quill rating....(also no surprise)....5 stars (*****).
(I can only hope and pray that when some streaming service gets around to turning 'Fairy Tale' into a mini-series, it's one I already subscribe to......otherwise I'll just have to join up with whoever's putting it on.....)
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