Fairy Tale

This is my second book by Stephen King ever and despite not being bowled over by the Shawshank novella last month (and being told by other readers to read King's book 11/22/63), I decided to listen to this audiobook.

I expected to love this book and I did ... for the first third of the book. The final 16 hours of this audiobook were a long, hard, boring slog for me. The first third was a coming-of-age, intergenerational friendship between a teen and an older neighbour. Delightful! I liked how supernatural elements were hinted at, but soon after, the story dramatically changes into a fantasy read and that's where the book lost me.

The last two-thirds were set in a magical realm, but King's world building was weak, and it was all 'telling not showing'. The pacing is painfully slow in this fairy tale adventure, and it didn't help that readers are stuck in the mind of teenage Charlie who was kinda dull and made references like a 50-year-old man. There is a dog named Radar so that was something.

I listened to this book two weeks ago and so many details are fuzzy already. If it wasn't for needing a book to listen to while I was on the treadmill, I probably would have DNF'd it. I had high hopes King would turn it around, but for me this book was disappointing and not the fantastical read I had hoped. 

My Rating: 2 stars

Author: Stephen King

Genre: Coming-of-age, Fantasy

Type and Source: eAudiobook from public library

Run Time: 24.25 hours

Narrator: Seth Numrich

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio

First Published: September 6, 2022

Book Description from GoodReads: Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.” And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.