About Lisey's Story by Stephen King

I used to be a huge (or is that huh-yooge?) Stephen King fan. Even through his feminist stage. I was the Constant Reader, plodding along through stories that never quite captured my interest or were just simply... well, dull. Rose Madder comes to mind as one of the latter. Thought I'd never plow through to the end of that one. But I was a dedicated fan, so I did persevere hoping that eventually the Stephen King I'd bought without even checking out what he was writing about this time would come back.

This is not to say that I wanted King to keep writing the same story over and over again. That's not it at all. I just wanted the King back who within the first 50 page of a novel sucked me so far into his story that I couldn't/wouldn't put the book down even if my life depended upon it. I wanted the King who could make me be wary of shower drains and sewer gratings, and who was the absolute best at writing about kids -- how they think, what they do, how they communicate. He had it down to a science.

Okay, so I didn't particularly care for the gore or the squooshy stuff that someone would invariably poke at or stick a hand into. But, see, I thought King's writing was so good that I would just read past those parts, shudder a bit, and then get back to the main story which really had nothing at all to do with gore. I'd be able to get back to the book I read faster and faster because I couldn't put the darn thing down and yet wanted to slow down to a word-by-precious-word crawl because I knew once I'd finished, it would be nearly a year until another King book would be published. I started reading King when 'Salem's Lot was first published, so there were no stacks of completed books I could read to catch up. I was caught up and tapping my foot in Walden's anxiously awaiting the next book.

I also firmly believed that anyone who thought King's books were only about horror was seriously missing the point. I got into debates where I took the position that to pigeon hole King into the horror genre without taking into consideration the talent he had for story telling and painting such graphic mental images for the reader was to deny him what I considered to be a well-deserved genius status.

None of this so far even takes into account his humor. Or the passages I had to reread because they were written so well they blew my socks off. Until a book came along that had King's name on it, sure, but I'd have sworn he never had a thing to do with that manuscript. It doesn't matter which book that was exactly, although the decline began for me with Gerald's Game. What matters was that I got the impression King was angry because his fans wanted what we'd come to expect of him, while he wanted to go off in different directions and blaze new territory. The thing is, I was perfectly fine with whatever subject King wanted to tackle, and he could certainly have his feminist stage; what I wasn't prepared to lose was the writing talent I'd come to expect of him. And I'm not going to apologize for that either. King led me by both eyeballs and a brain to expect nothing but the best from him with maybe a bit of clunkerish whatsis here and there, but overall a very high standard that HE set. I'm just the reader here, and at no time was I in charge of making the rules.

Now I'm reading Lisey's Story; I'm at the halfway mark and I'm still waiting for it to get better. Enough with the word games already. That was cute and funny and very well done for a while, but it got real old real fast as it became more and more repetitive. Maybe there's something I'm not getting, or maybe this is just drivel. I was led to believe this story had real substance about a marriage and what a wife experiences after her spouse dies. I attached no expectations to that. Just plopped down in my favorite reading spot, opened up the book, and waited for King to take me away. Well, I'm still in my favorite spot, but King has left me precariously balanced like I'm ready to fall off the bench into a discarded heap on the floor. I hate that position. If you want to know the truth, it's damned uncomfortable.

I have a few other recent King books on my TBR pile. I'm not as quick to get to him as I used to be... been burned a few too many times. But that urge to keep on reading King lingers. It's hard to break a habit of nearly 35 years of reading. Almost feels as though I'd be giving up a good friend. But sometimes even friendships run their course. I hope King still has a few good books left in him. That would be so cool. But that's no longer the sure thing it once was.

Judgment Of The Witch

Judgment Of The Witch by Robert McCammon is the first half of a two part novel called Speaks The Nightbird The second part, Evil Unveiled finishes what Judgment Of The Witch started.

I like the way Robert McCammon writes, and for the most part I think he has been an unappreciated author of the horror genre, taking a back seat to Stephen King and Dean Koontz. While McCammon hasn't been as prolific as the other two authors, he certainly can spin a yarn as good as, and sometimes (in my view) better than they do.

Judgment of the Witch begins with a Magistrate Isaac Woodward, and his clerk, Matthew Corbett, making the journey from Charles Town in the Carolinas, to Fount Royal to oversee a trial. Rachel Howarth has been accused of killing the town's clergyman and her husband after which she was reportedly seen cavorting with the Devil himself. This story takes place in the aftermath of the Salem Witch trials, and event which has left some people baffled about the existence of witches while also strengthening the beliefs of those firmly entrenched in witch lore. It will be up to Magistrate Woodward to decide the fate of Rachel Howarth -- should she hang, be burned at the stake, or be cleared of all charges. The last solution seems the least likely since the town of Fount Royal has been overrun with rumors and speculation all of which define Howarth as a witch.

Woodward and Corbett experience some very tense moments before ever reaching Fount Royal, a town started by Robert Bidwell who had huge plans for his town. Plans that included a shipping port as well as a town full of merchants and farmers. Because of all the talk about Rachel Howarth as well as illnesses and fires that have been attributed to her, people are leaving Fount Royal to escape whatever spell she might weave next. Robert Howarth sent for the Magistrate to save his town from ruination more than he did because he is concerned with devil worship. Woodward and Corbett are to be his salvation.

Judgment of the Witch ends just before the verdict on Rachel Howarth is announced, but it doesn't look good for Rachel. Woodward seems to be sufficiently impressed with the evidence against her to condemn her to death. Matthew, on the other hand, believes there's evil at work in Fount Royal all right, but it isn't coming from either Rachel or the King Of Darkness. For Matthew there's too many loose ends, too many questions left unanswered, and besides that, he seems to be Rachel's only hope of getting out of this mess alive.

Part 2 will, hopefully, answer these questions and reveal who is really behind the strange events of Fount Royal. I, for one, am definitely going to find out!

I've Been Koontz'd

I joined the Dean Koontz Group at Shelfari. Shortly after that I began reading two Koontz books: Odd Thomas and From The Corner Of His Eye. The group collectively is reading Odd Thomas. Right before that title was chosen, I began reading From The Corner Of His Eye on my own.

I have several Koontz books because my older daughter, who swears to anyone who will listen to her that everything Koontz has ever written is wonderful, and who, if this were even remotely possible, would buy and read Koontz's telephone message doodles were someone to publish them. And considering that his publisher did release some of his earliest works years after they were written and only because Koontz became so popular, I'm surprised the phone doodles didn't make it to mass market paperback anyway.

One of the comments I've noticed that comes up about Koontz with some regularity is that as he gets older, he gets better. I don't know if I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I will admit that his later novels seemed much better written than his earliest books. However, that doesn't mean I'd go so far as to say that what he writes is "good".

I'm roughly 80 pages into Odd Thomas. To say that Thomas is Odd is like commenting that Rosie O'Donnell says incredibly stupid things. It takes a really firm grasp of the obvious to notice something that does everything but get right up in your face and scream at you. But then we're told that "Odd" is the real name of Mr Thomas. Puhleeeeeze. Okay, so there was a snafu with the birth certificate... what parent does not straighten out something like that instead of saddling a child with a first name like "Odd" for his entire life?

That's just one of the problems I have with Koontz. So much of what I've read of his work seems contrived to me. It's almost as though I can see the outline of the novel resting beside the book I'm reading, and after we covered what was listed under

I. Introduction,

we now move on to

II. Other characters.

I will finish reading Odd Thomas because of the group commitment, but also because I do have some curiosity about where Koontz is taking this character. But I'm not expecting great things.

And that would be because I finished From The Corner Of His Eye. What a mess that book was!

I understood that the theme of FTCOHE was that we're all in this world together and have the ability to affect each other in good ways and bad ways without even being aware that other individual people within our sphere of influence exist. It seems to me the message was also that we have little or no control over what we do or what we become from the time we're born until the time we die. Interesting premise, and it could have made for a very good story even though I'm not all that into Quantum Physics, which apparently is where Koontz derived the information he used as background for this book.

But instead of choosing a story line and following it through to its logical end, Koontz decided to arrange an anticlimactic scene for one of his main characters so he could abandon that storyline and go off in pursuit of something completely different. I was expecting this novel to be of the horror genre. Instead it was more like a novel that wanted to be suspenseful sometimes and then came up with an ending more worthy of a romance novel.

When it came, the final ending of this book suggested a sequel, but to my knowledge Koontz has not written one for the people who populate From The Corner Of His Eye. Which doesn't mean that he won't write one. I just don't know that I'd care enough to read it. I was disgusted by the shoddy way in which Koontz disposed of the one full-fledged, really, really bad character in this book, and the final scene around the dinner table with the remaining members of the "family" created by the book's series of events, made me want to gag.

I guess this means I'm not a Koontz fan. But I'll keep trying if only because I've got a stash of his books my daughter gave me. I did like Mr Murder. That's a start.