#Fairy Tale by Stephen King

[chaotic-darkacademic]

Wishes are like beauty — vain things.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

[pluppleseverywhere]

I finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King yesterday. I was delighted about similarities I noticed between this book and The Talisman that he wrote with Peter Straub. But, overall, I loved this entire book. I don't have any major complaints, only silly gripes that don't actually detract from the story or characters in any way. I love the entire adventure from start to finish. I will say, though, that this is one of King's thicker books. And I know a lot of people, even some King fans, don't like how long some of his books are. They think they could often benefit from an editor who cuts out a lot of "unnecessary" stuff. I'm not here to say they're wrong or they're right, but I am going to say that people who feel that way about some of his other thicker books will likely feel that way about this book.

However, that's a big reason that I love King's writing and I love his chunkier books. I love the way he digs into the characters, even the ones we don't see much of, the ones that are just there to die, the ones that we don't even get to meet but whom the main character is reminded of for some reason. I eat that stuff up. I think, for me, it makes the book more immersive and the characters more real and so the things a lot of people complain about regarding King's writing are things I adore and major reasons he is my favorite author. So when you see me gushing about one of his books please keep that in mind.

Under the cut I'm going to go into what I noticed as far as similarities between The Talisman and the things I wish we had gotten in Fairy Tale but didn't. Spoilers for both books will be below so if you haven't read either of them and major spoilers will ruin things for you, don't go any further. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So, I'm going with The Talisman first. I want to preface this by saying that I have never finished that book. I loved, absolutely adored, what I did read of it but I had gotten an ebook file from my library for it and I didn't get too far before I was confronted with the fact that part of the file was corrupted and I couldn't read any further. So, if you have read both of these books and noticed things I didn't that are similar this could be a reason for that. I kind of forgot about the book after that but reading Fairy Tale made me think of it and I now have a physical copy I'm going to read next.

So, the first thing is that both of these books are portal books where the main character, a young man in Fairy Tale and a young boy in The Talisman, must go through on a quest to save someone they love and get entangled in far more than they bargained for.

In Fairy Tale 17 year old high school senior Charlie wants to save his dog from dying of old age. In The Talisman 12 year old Jack wants to save his mother from dying.

Another thing the characters have in common is an older adult character who tells them about this portal to another world and sets them on their quest.

The books diverge wildly, in that the world that Jack visits seems to be grittier and there's more violence right away. Charlie's other world is full of mostly good people who aren't interested in cruelty and violence. Most people Charlie meets are nice, and those that aren't are kind of neutral or just bitter.

Something that didn't get explored too much in Fairy Tale but was a major point in The Talisman is the idea that the people of these worlds are counterparts of each other. Charlie notes this concept a couple of times, most notably with Christopher Polley from our world and Peterkin from Empis. He states multiple times that he thinks they're Rumpelstiltskin characters and that, while he can't prove it, he is convinced himself that when Peterkin died in Empis it was the moment that Christopher Polley was killed in our world.

So, not only is the idea of counterparts existing for people in our world to people in Empis present, but so is the idea of intertwined fates.

In The Talisman Jack is told that people in this world all have a version of themselves in the other world and whatever happens to them happens to us and that to save his mother in our world he must save her counterpart in the otherworld.

In Fairy Tale it's mostly just alluded to.

I really enjoyed these similarities and parallels and I'm so glad that I had some knowledge of The Talisman in order to pick up on them.

Now, onto the things about Fairy Tale I wished were different.

It's widely known that King puts references in his books to the books he wrote before the current publication and this book is no different even if you take away all of the similarities with The Talisman.

There was a reference to Cujo that I was a little bummed about, irrationally, for an example. In this book Cujo isn't an event that actually happened bit rather a movie instead. I suppose it could be a movie based on true events but if so it wasn't so much as hinted at. This is a me thing, though. I just prefer the idea that all of these books take place within the same universe, in the sense that it is acknowledged that these things really happened and aren't just fictional books and movies within the books themselves. Most people probably don't care.

I wish that Mr. Bowditch could have watched Charlie play at least one game. I don't care which sport. I thought it was very touching that he wanted to and I thought he seemed disappointed that he wouldn't get to. I wish he could have gone to just one. I understand why Charlie didn't want that but I sure wanted it.

I wish Hamey had lived. I really got attached to his character and as someone who had bowel problems myself I identified with him in that way. I also just really felt sorry for the character and it was so sad to see him start out caring for Charlie in that dungeon and asking if Charlie would protect him only to watch his mental and emotional resignation to his fate and tell Charlie he didn't have to protect him after all. I wish he had lived and been able to he treated properly for his ailment. Maybe the doctor or Claudia could have helped him out a bit.

Barring that, I wish that Hamey would have been one of the ghosts that came to visit Charlie on his sick bed after the defeat of the big bad. It was left up to the reader to decide if these were real ghosts or figment of Charlie's imagination while he was trying to fight off poison, but either way I wish Hamey had made a visit.

I would have liked to get some more stories from Mr. Bowditch about his adventures in Empis that he didn't talk about in those tapes because they weren't pertinent and he knew he didn't have a lot of time left to tell Charlie what he needed to know. He said there were many more and I'm very curious. I wonder if King will write a short story or two about one at some point and put it in a short story collection, line he did with 'Salem's Lot. I would love that.

It was suggested by Mr. Bowditch that other people in our world might have visited Empis and mentioned a couple of authors whose books he thought may have had basis in things found in Empis. Could there be other portals to Empis outside of the one in Sentry, IL? I would love to know.

I knew Charlie would make it impossible for anyone to get to Empis through the portal in Mr. Bowditch's shed, but I still wish he hadn't. Mostly because it means Radar won't get another turn on the sundial and will die and I prefer to think of Radar living forever either with Charlie who decides to eventually take a turn himself or with Charlie's descendants. Who doesn't want dogs to live forever, right?

Anyway, I think that's it for now. There was an excerpt from his next book at the back of Fairy Tale and I'm looking forward to that one!

[abookclubofonesown]

fairy tale | stephen king | 2022

charlie reade is seemingly a regular two-sport playing high school kid, but he had to learn how to take care of himself (and his dad) after his mom is killed in a  hit-and-run and his dad becomes an alcoholic in his grief. his dad gets sober, eventually. at 17, charlie answers radar the dog’s barks of plea and calls 911 for mr. bowditch, an reclusive curmudgeonly old man who fell off a ladder and broke his leg. however, mr. bowditch has this shed in the backyard that makes weird noises and it’s locked. when mr. bowditch dies, he leaves a cassette tape for charlie with the full story of the shed and the portal to another world it conceals. 

this was my first time reading a stephen king book. i’d heard mixed reviews about stephen king, but this was available at my library and the premise seemed interest enough so i picked up. my thoughts on this book are mixed. 

i really enjoyed the first like quarter of the book - where we’re introduced to charlie, his dad, mr. bowditch, and radar. i really loved the relationship between mr. bowditch and charlie as well as between charlie and his dad. these were perhaps the two relationships that i was the most invested in - which puts the great majority of the rest of the book at a loss for me. once mr. bowditch dies, charlie’s choices take a turn that i both understand and don’t find enjoyable. he seems like a sweet kid, but he does some decidedly un-sweet things which.... make sense for the situations that he’s put in. the characters of christopher polley (and later peterkin) do feel like plot devices - obstacles and rascals that charlie must overcome. they are purely greed driven with an edge of irredeemable hatred that one sometimes finds in supremely unpleasant people. so they did feel all that compelling as characters and were just kind of annoying. 

in a book titled fairy tale, i was so much less interested in the fairy tale-esque land and story that it made the the back half of the book a bit of a trudge. i was really invested in the story and characters of the “real” world (or maybe better described as “our world”) that i was reading the fantastical portion of the book just to get to the section where charlie was back in our world. it was set up that empris (the other world) was a world that our world would exploit and that no one should know it exist lest all fall to ruin and exploitation. so you know that charlie is not to going to be a regular customer and that it’s really a temptation to avoid - and thus it would be an experience that profoundly affected the character of charlie, but would ultimately be a contained story. personally, i was more interested in how that time in empris would affect charlie as he lived his life in our world - which i got in the last chapter. it’s not that i would excise the chapters that were set in empris from the book (like i did with the jacob chapters of new moon when i was younger), but i would maybe pick up the pacing of those chapters or something. i don’t really know. but it just felt that i was more interested in a different story than the one being told. 

i think my biggest sticking points that kept me from fully enjoying the book was 1) the way king writes women and 2) this one specific simile that he used repeatedly. the simile was that some actions of the Bad Guys in empris reminded charlie of ISIS destroying religious iconography. i think this was a good analogy, but i think it could have been used once to good effect rather than like the four times it was used in the same context. think of something else. 

but my biggest pet peeve was the women. it felt like basically all of the women mentioned in the story were viewed by charlie, the narrator, in a sexual lens excepting a few (his mom, mrs. richland, mrs. silvius, and claudia - who were old(er) oh and jenny who was his weird sci-fi horror childhood friend and who’s body was described in all ways unfeminine, he made it a point to say that he wasn’t interested in her like that and they just had similar tastes in books). but a lot of the women were viewed as potential sexual partners for charlie who starts off the book as a virgin. speaking of virginity, he swipes his v-card with eris who was one of the prisoners in deep maleen where charlie was also imprisoned during the majority of his time in empris. this scene and authorial decision was bonkers????? like it was after all of the fighting and you absolutely Do Not Know who old eris is even though they make a big deal about charlie not being able to even kiss leah because she's like double his age. in my mind eris was older than leah but i don’t know. it was just VERY ODD. charlie is recovering from his injury that he sustained in the big end fight and eris comes to his chambers and says and i quote “will you lie with me, charlie?” and it’s even described as a thank you-fuck or mercy-fuck (a toss up, in charlie’s mind). i just really hated this plot point and felt it was supremely unnecessary. it like cheapened to whole thing. 

i generally enjoyed the book but there were a lot of decisions made in the back half of the book that didn’t sit well with my spirit and dampened my enjoyment. 

tl;dr: probably my first and last stephen king book. 

[kissingcars]

Currently reading Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I’m almost done! I commute a lot for work and can’t travel with it, so I’m doing some kindle reading and some physical book reading.

[chowtrolls]

theres a little gremlin beast in my brain that’s been so mad at me for reading 20 minutes a day. so mad in fact that i just read ~200 pages to finish this book. second book today i have finished…….

sometimes i forget that people don’t normally read multiple books at the same time but if i only read one book then my brain gets all weird. i need multiple stories

[fairytale-poll]

BEST MODERN FAIRYTALE ADAPTATION! ROUND 2C, MATCH 2 OUT OF 2!

Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones is based off Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer; Carrie (1976) is based off Cinderella.

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones:

One of my favorite books. "As she clears out her old bedroom, Polly discovers that below her memories, in which she led an entirely normal and unremarkable life, there is a second set of memories, which are rather unusual." It's about memory and taking control of your life. Also books. It's one of those books that get better the more you re-read it.

Carrie (1976):

Ohhh Carrie is so special to me. Cinderella who takes revenge by arson, we love to see it. A fairy godmother who used to bully Cinderella and uses her good deeds as a way to apologize, we love to see it! The movie is pretty rad because it really leans into the religious/gothic aesthetic you might expect from a Grimm fairy tale and ramps it up all the way, it's such a gorgeous movie!

[spookyreader23]

Showing off my Stephen King bookshelf and collectibles for King's birthday today. I currently own 21 of his books so far. It's a growing collection, and this doesn't even show the movies and TV shows I own that are based on King's books. What's your favorite book from Stephen King? Mine are "Pet Sematary", "Later", "Carrie", "The Shining", and "Doctor Sleep".

[booksposts]

There's a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.

- Stephen King, Fairy Tale

[bekah-reading]

34/50

4/5

As always I love Stephen King’s writings. I loved this story and while it didn’t help this weird funk I’m in; it was a good immersive, atmospheric read.

The plot was good; if not fantasy-esque. I really enjoyed the plot and the characters. This one started out slow but it picked up around the first third mark.

This is a nice coming of age story of a young boy who ends up working for his grumpy, loner, elderly neighbour. Our MC ends up saving his neighbour’s life; and as a result he ends up volunteering to watch the neighbour’s elderly dog, Radar. Radar was a good girl and I loved the MASH reference. Some parts were slow and a bit lacklustre; but overall this book is a wild ride and a really good book that’s very solid.

Definitely recommend this book whether you’re an old Stephen King fan or a new one or haven’t read from him yet.

[thechaoticreader]

Go Book Shopping With Me💕📚

(Indie bookstore edition)

[chaotic-darkacademic]

“Bad idea,” I said.

[..], he said, “The universe is full of them”

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

[pluppleseverywhere]

I'm almost done with Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I've enjoyed this book so much that I'm putting off reading the last few chapters just so that I can drag things out and it won't end yet. I know that's silly but I'm doing it anyway. I have a few things that I wish we would have gotten to see but which we didn't, but I don't have any major complaints about the book at all. This is a great book, very entertaining, and I found it to be a page turner. This is an amazing adventure and I'm so glad I decided to go on this quest along with Charlie and his faithful dog, Radar.

[cjbolan]

Mr. Bowditch’s reaction in that scene made me instantly think of this .

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's Fantasy TBR - Part 5

[lustspren]

Stephen King's Fairy Tayle mini review (I suck at making reviews, sorry).

I mean, what should I say about Master King, brother. This book not only gives a twist to conventional fantasy and fairy tales that we all already know, but it also does so by making the reader feel identified with the thoughts and reflections of Charlie Reade. If there is one thing I should recommend, it is that you read this book not thinking of it as a story that revolves around fantasy, which is not the case. I feel that King uses fantasy not as a genre on which to base it, but as a resource with which to give rise and shape to his wonderful story.

It is true that the book takes its time to advance the plot, but those 200 pages of non-fantastic world build the relationship between Charlie, Radar and Mr Bowditch in a perfect and very endearing way. A relationship that later becomes very important in the climax of the book. If there is something I don't like about this book, it is the pace at which the end progressed, I felt it was somewhat rushed, and of course King makes a lot of mistakes in making his descriptions somewhat repetitive and heavy-to-read. But if there is something I LOVE about this book, it is how King mixes fantasy and fairy tales with touches of cosmic horror in pure Lovecraftian style. 4.5 stars overall.

Radar is goodest girl of all. What a wonderful dog.

[mofun2read]

Ok change of plans! My hold was ready for pickup so I grabbed this from the library today.

I’m not going to lie Fairy Tale by Stephen King had a slow start anyway. I have been reading fantasy for so many years so I just wasn’t vibing with a book about regular people. I will finish it next.

I am putting Fairy Tale down for now and starting on my E Eragon by Christopher Paolini.