Doctor Sleep

Executive Summary: An interesting take on concepts established in [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585] that makes this feel less like a sequel and more like a spin-off. This is a fun albeit very different book from it's predecessor.Audio book: Mr. Patton does an excellent job reading this book. He has many distinct voices and accents that adds a little something to the story. I was surprised they used a different reader than the [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585], but as it turned out to be a fairly different book, I think it was a good decision.Full ReviewI'm not a fan of sequels. I'm not really sure [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585] needed a sequel. Sure there were lingering questions about Danny and Wendy at the end, but they weren't critical in my mind.That said, Mr. King's novels tend to interconnect on several levels, so I was curious to see what he would do in a sequel to one of his most popular books.Doctor Sleep is a very different book from its predecessor. The shining plays a key role of course, but I would categorize this book more as Paranormal Thriller rather than Horror. I would however recommend you read/reread [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585] before this though.The first part of the book catches you up with Danny, his mother and Dick Halloran, and then proceeds to catch us up to Danny in the present day.Unfortunately for Danny, Mr. King is a big believer in like father like son. Danny has become an alcoholic and has the same anger issues Jack struggled with in the first story. It hard to blame him given his traumatic childhood coupled with the horrors being so strong in the shinning has exposed to him.A good part of this story felt like an advertisement for the Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not sure if that's how Mr. King got himself sober, but it certainly seems like it, as he talks about it to excess. It does make for an interesting idea of “what might have happened if Jack Torrence sought help?”, but I could have done with less time being spent on that aspect of the story.Keeping with his themes of the cyclical nature of life, the other main protagonist is a young girl who is even stronger in the shinning than Danny was in his youth.We are also introduced to the True Knot, a pack of “physic vampires” that are near immortal by traveling the country and feeding on the shinning for their longevity. Can you guess where this is going? I could.So it wasn't the most unpredictable of stories, but in many ways I enjoyed it more then [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585]. I'm not a big horror fan. This book explores the shining in much greater detail than its namesake novel. Mr. King introduces some well developed new characters, and doesn't just retell the same story again with minor changes like many sequels tend to.So will you like it? If you're a big horror fan hoping that Mr. King can scare the hell out of you again, probably not. If you're like me and enjoy the fantastical nature of Mr. King's novels then you just might.3.5 Stars, rounded up because [a:Stephen King 3389 Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg].