A review by skolastic
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

4.0

Stephen King's "post-crash" career continues to be really intriguing. I tend more towards being a fan of the entire Dark Tower saga than not, and I loved Duma Key. (My memory has failed me as to whether or not I liked Just After Sunset - I might not have ever finished it. Cell was okay.)

This is a four novella collection, in the same vein as fertile-film-adaptation collection Different Seasons, and I'll address each separately:

"1922" is a sort of dark inversion of the same ground King trod in Dolores Claiborne, this time following the story of a murderer rather than the story of a wrongfully accused person. It's quite good - nothing to elevate this to an incredibly high level, but good.

"Big Driver" was the big, scary highlight of the collection for me - a pulse-pounding blend of horror and revenge fantasy that really had me turning pages and staying up late.

"Fair Extension" is the big weak point of the collection - it feels weirdly incomplete, like King forgot to add a climax (or even, I guess, what my English teacher used to call "rising action") to it.

"A Good Marriage", the final story, makes up for this - it treads ground that I feel like King has been over before (although I can't think of any examples at the moment, and I don't want to ruin the story by saying too much), but it feels like a very different story from what King usually writes.

Overall, it's a reasonably solid collection, and I continue to look forward to what King puts out there.