Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

The now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) must save a very special twelve-year-old girl from a tribe of murderous paranormals. On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless; mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the "steam" that children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death. Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant "shining" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes "Doctor Sleep." Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival.

yes, i loved this book. yes, it's probably one of my stephen king's favorites along with it. yes, i love dan torrance and abra stone with all my heart and might.

having said that, jesus christ, this is endless.
i clearly took a long time to finish it; i was very disinterested in reading by the end of last year/january of this year, so when i picked this up last week i was ready to get it over with. and it kept going. and going and going and going. it felt longer than it, and that's saying something.

anyway, that's why it's a 4/5 rather than a 5/5.

the thing with King books is that they have their own rules when it comes to my star rating system. A 4 star read from King is 100x better than other book that wasn't written by king that i rated 5 stars.
Even a 3 star read from King is better than most of the 5 star reads from other authors i've read.

This book wasn't even being considered to be read by me for a while, it was pretty low on the list of what i wanted to read and i wanted to read maybe 10 more King books before i got to this one but I had this period where i reeeeeeally wanted to re-read The Shining but i promised myself i wouldn't re-read anything this year so the obvious choice was to read the sequel to The Shining... this book.
I'm glad i did because its a great great novel and story but as a sequel? nah. If you read this hoping for the feeling The Shining gave you then you've picked up the wrong book. This book had no essence from its predecessor. This doesn't mean it's bad but this book is it's own novel and holds up wonderfully by itself. It's just a completely different feel and experience.
As King said in the author note, he wrote The Shining when he was an alcoholic and he wrote this book while sober and i applaud him. He incorporated sobriety into this book and it shows how far King has come since his “the bottom” days. I'd rather a 3-4 star read from a sober happy man than a masterpiece from a sad alcoholic man.
Major respect from King.

i will say it again, yes this book is a 4 star read but translating from my King rating system to my normal one... its like a 8 star read.

If you don't read King then you're missing out!

I really enjoyed this. I couldn't wait to find out what happens next. As usual, King crafts amazingly relatable characters. In particular, I found his ability to bring life to the villains and evoke a reluctant sympathy in the reader (when you're not thinking about the terrible things they do) actually made me more engaged in hating them and rooting for the eminently deserved ass-kicking I was sure would come. Really artful, in my opinion.

I did have to skip some of the rumination on missing children because it was way too disturbing. But having a potential victim as strong and resilient as Abra made a nice counterbalance.

I feel like the constant drumbeat that AA is the Way, the Truth, and the Light was a bit grating (in part because I'm not a huge fan of the organization), but though it got a little over the top, for the most part it was a believable element of Dan's development.

I listened to the audiobook, and Will Patton was amazing. I'll be searching out more books read by him!