You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
wille44 's review for:
Four Past Midnight
by Stephen King
Four Past midnight is a collection of 4 novellas by King, most of which manage to be unsatisfying in various ways.
The Langoliers is probably the best story of the group, a decidedly sci-fi time warp adventure, unusual for King, but it moves at a quick pace with a fun cast of characters. It's definitely a cheesy read as far as the dialogue and monsters go, but enjoyable enough if you accept it as a B-movie esque production. This one felt like he certainly could have fleshed it out and novelized it, but it's a solid popcorn style read all the same.
Secret Window Secret Garden is frustrating, it starts as a fun psychological horror tale in which we spend the entire time trying to assess the sanity of our main character, who is being pursued by a man accusing him of plagarism and threatening violence in retribution. As we watch his descent into terror and panic it becomes less and less clear what is and is not happening, and unfortunately King's big twist is delivered in a flat and unsuspenseful way, as if he got bored of keeping up appearances and just tells us rather than build to a reveal. Not only that, but he employs a "second twist" in an epilogue that completely undermines the entire story while also making no sense whatsoever.
The Library Policeman is by far his most realized and well written story in the collection, but it's contents are the worst in the group by far. Here he spends the most time carefully fleshing out and building interesting characters, but the initial premise, a scary library and getting in trouble for not returning books, is one too absurd to be taken seriously, and King writes it deadly serious. After playing along for 150 pages we see why, as he decides to make the entire story a poor man's retelling of It, with a monster who feeds off children's fear and the now adult victim must face his fear to win. Instead of It's fears being a collection of all the different fears children have growing up, here we leap to fear being about the time the main character wasraped next to a library . It's deeply unpleasant, not handled particularly well, and you'd be better served reading It, the same story done infinitely better.
Four Past Midnight finally fizzles out with The Sun Dog, a decently written story once again which is totally undone by it's boring premise. A boy gets a camera but every photo taken shows a dog, and as the photos continue the dog slowly turns around and goes to attack the photographer. The boy is afraid the dog will break out of the camera and kill him, and after a mercifully short tale of running in circles we are treated to an ending that simply makes no sense and has zero precedent or justification in the story. We then get another cute "double twist" which once again makes no sense whatsoever.
The collection starts decently enough and goes steadily downhill, I would recommend The Langoliers as fun, light reading and nothing more.
The Langoliers is probably the best story of the group, a decidedly sci-fi time warp adventure, unusual for King, but it moves at a quick pace with a fun cast of characters. It's definitely a cheesy read as far as the dialogue and monsters go, but enjoyable enough if you accept it as a B-movie esque production. This one felt like he certainly could have fleshed it out and novelized it, but it's a solid popcorn style read all the same.
Secret Window Secret Garden is frustrating, it starts as a fun psychological horror tale in which we spend the entire time trying to assess the sanity of our main character, who is being pursued by a man accusing him of plagarism and threatening violence in retribution. As we watch his descent into terror and panic it becomes less and less clear what is and is not happening, and unfortunately King's big twist is delivered in a flat and unsuspenseful way, as if he got bored of keeping up appearances and just tells us rather than build to a reveal. Not only that, but he employs a "second twist" in an epilogue that completely undermines the entire story while also making no sense whatsoever.
The Library Policeman is by far his most realized and well written story in the collection, but it's contents are the worst in the group by far. Here he spends the most time carefully fleshing out and building interesting characters, but the initial premise, a scary library and getting in trouble for not returning books, is one too absurd to be taken seriously, and King writes it deadly serious. After playing along for 150 pages we see why, as he decides to make the entire story a poor man's retelling of It, with a monster who feeds off children's fear and the now adult victim must face his fear to win. Instead of It's fears being a collection of all the different fears children have growing up, here we leap to fear being about the time the main character was
Four Past Midnight finally fizzles out with The Sun Dog, a decently written story once again which is totally undone by it's boring premise. A boy gets a camera but every photo taken shows a dog, and as the photos continue the dog slowly turns around and goes to attack the photographer. The boy is afraid the dog will break out of the camera and kill him, and after a mercifully short tale of running in circles we are treated to an ending that simply makes no sense and has zero precedent or justification in the story. We then get another cute "double twist" which once again makes no sense whatsoever.
The collection starts decently enough and goes steadily downhill, I would recommend The Langoliers as fun, light reading and nothing more.