Reviews are popping up everywhere. Along with them, Dread Central posted news that a third trailer has been released on youtube. All very nice! I can hardly wait.
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So here are the necessary links to get yourself ready for a serious reading frenzy this coming week.
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Third trailer: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/40785/third-official-trailer-stephen-kings-full-dark-no-stars
Here's a rather cranky review. You know, you should read cranky reviews of King sometimes, just to remember how messed up critics are. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8111101/Full-Dark-No-stars-by-Stephen-King-review.html
The peninsulaqatar is much kinder to King's latest offering. After musing about the possibility of another set of four novels in another 20 years or so, the review dives in with almost gleeful joy. "These are stories of retribution and complicity: of crimes that seem inevitable, of ways that we justify the world to ourselves and ourselves to the world. Powerful, and each in its own way profoundly nasty." Ah, we all hope so! http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/saturday-editions/131592-stories-of-retribution-and-complicity.html
Comparing It To Different Seasons:
All the reviewers cannot help but hearken back to Different Season's and Four Past Midnight. Often they come away feeling Full Dark No Stars is a lesser work. But I would suggest that at least in the case of Different Seasons, the stories have gotten better with time. First, many of us have been endeared to them because of great audio performances by the likes of Frank Muller. Then they were brought to life before the camera. As I recently read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, I came away thinking the movie made the story better. The stories get better with age.
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Comparisons To Four Past Midnight
Four Past Midnight is getting a lot of lumps these days. I do not think it has necessarily aged as well as Different Season's has. The reason? Same as above. But instead of getting better with age, Hollywood has caused some of these stories to spoil in our minds. In particular, The langoliers is a great novel that is painful to watch on screen. But, as King has pointed out, no matter what they do in the movie, the book is still there to read. The story is not hurt one bit.
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I once heard someone complain that The Sun Dog showed King's obsessive editing. I read that story as a teen, and loved it. I gulped it down. It was literally a page turner for me. And being young, I wasn't paying attention to how the story was crafted, how the meal was cooked, I was just enjoying the meal. I liked it a lot. I came away saying, "This thing is just like a Twilight Zone!" In fact, it might be worthy of one of those hour long Twilight Zone's!
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I do think that the story Secret Window was made better on screen. It was sweetened. Some seeming loose ends were tied up.
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My point in all that is simply to suggest that anyone reviewing a book before it's even been released to the public might judge it too quickly. Give a book time to settle into our culture.
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