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simplyg 's review for:
Fairy Tale
by Stephen King
This is my second time hanging out with Stephen King and I felt the same way I did about this one as I did about the Gunslinger. It's wonderfully written, but I came away from it feeling that it was good, but not great. I liked this one more than the Gunslinger, anyway.
The book is told from the perspective of a boy who went through a very harrowing and very magical affair and the narrator sounds very authentic, not just in the way that things are described, but in the way the story is structured as well. This really brings down the book. The first section of the book is so long and has so little to do with the rest of the novel, that I found myself not even wanting the magical bits to happen. Then, that section happens and it's very enjoyable, then it leads into a darker section that has you holed up in the same dark cellar for so long that I just wanted it to be over, before going to a very satisfying final section.
The book would have been much better if it mixed these sections and broke them up, relying on flashbacks and other perspectives to make everything feel not so segregated and to give the reader a chance to breath in the rougher sections. The other perspectives would have been particularly nice because, to be honest, the most exciting bits of the story happened to other people off screen rather than the protagonist.
I know this is a lot to complain about, but all-in-all, it is still very well deserving of its four stars. Pacing, plot, characters, environment, are all at a masterclass level and well worth your time. It's just how it's arranged that dampens it.
The book is told from the perspective of a boy who went through a very harrowing and very magical affair and the narrator sounds very authentic, not just in the way that things are described, but in the way the story is structured as well. This really brings down the book. The first section of the book is so long and has so little to do with the rest of the novel, that I found myself not even wanting the magical bits to happen. Then, that section happens and it's very enjoyable, then it leads into a darker section that has you holed up in the same dark cellar for so long that I just wanted it to be over, before going to a very satisfying final section.
The book would have been much better if it mixed these sections and broke them up, relying on flashbacks and other perspectives to make everything feel not so segregated and to give the reader a chance to breath in the rougher sections. The other perspectives would have been particularly nice because, to be honest, the most exciting bits of the story happened to other people off screen rather than the protagonist.
I know this is a lot to complain about, but all-in-all, it is still very well deserving of its four stars. Pacing, plot, characters, environment, are all at a masterclass level and well worth your time. It's just how it's arranged that dampens it.