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Duma Key by Stephen King

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willthaboltthrower's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

robbiesbookshelf's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I think the human/humanity side of this story is beautifully written, while the horror story side kind of fell flat for me. The last 200 pages or so didn’t do much for me at all, but I really liked the character work as usual with King.

vicki_dealcuaz's review against another edition

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5.0

One of the best Stephen King books ever!

caitlins_bookshelf's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

chaosetc's review against another edition

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3.0

The supernatural angle in this book focuses on the idea of artist as mystic. The supernatural goes beyond that, but the artists dominate a significant portion of the story. This was a fun idea, but something about the execution didn't quite grab me. It didn't get inside my head like many of King's others works. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was me, I don't know. It could have been the island setting, I'm not much of a water person. Anyway, I gave it an extra star for planting some ideas in my head.

travsbookshelf's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

My first impression of this book was that it bore a striking similarity to “Bag of Bones”: main character suffers great loss and travels to another location to recuperate only to find out there’s a ghost story he’s wandered into. And this is true, which made me a little hesitant at first. But I quickly learned that this story was so much more. This was a tale that had humor, very likable characters without the usual Stephen-King-ton-of-baggage types, a terrifying but BEAUTIFUL (yes, I said beautiful!) ghost story connected to a rather engagingly tragic family history, and it was set in a completely different setting unique to King’s usual backgrounds.

But what I found most clever was the writing structure. The story is set up in large sections that give the literary illusion of teaching one long art lesson on drawing pictures. It was a very unique and insanely clever way to tell this story by blending narratives together and illustrating the plot and action and emotion throughout. I literally felt like I was reading a portrait coming to life with each turn of the page. Especially the ghost story parts, and that’s why I called it beautiful. Some of the eeriest scenes I’ve ever read, and made more effective by its artistically descriptive writing. Which is gold to me because I love good ghost stories anyway and I struck the motherlode with this one. I won’t be getting much of the imagery from this book out of my mind anytime soon. Cool!

The emotional levels ran a pretty full gamut throughout as well. There was (of course) tragedy, horror, a quite large amount of humor, happiness, and even hopefulness felt by a lot of the characters. It was different for a King novel but a very nice and welcome change of pace. Wireman and Jack were definitely two standout characters for me and I loved their friendship with Edgar. They made for a quite diverse yet interesting compatible trio that worked well together. The history story was a little challenging to get through but paid off in spades once everything was revealed. And the ending is by far one of Stephen King’s best ever! I thought it was perfect.

A definite 5 star read and highly recommended book. This would be an excellent Stephen King starter novel.