Sleeping Beauties

Instead of a really great fantasy story, with the undercurrent of the power dynamics between men and women and lots of food for thought, I read a book where the social commentary took precedence. This leads to a lot of sometimes dull, sometimes insufferable characters who exist mainly to fill their role, rather than engage my empathy and curiosity. Intellectually I was left cold as well. The central idea I pulled from this was that men are naturally violent abusers at worst and out of touch/out of control with their emotions at best. But when women are violent it''s because some man has pushed them into it, one way or another. There's some lip-service to women taking responsibility for their actions but that's not the overall vibe. I can't help but compare it to [b:The Stand 149267 The Stand Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1213131305l/149267.SX50.jpg 1742269], which also featured a virus and a large cast of characters. That book was entertaining, filled with people who did incite emotions, negative or positive, and I was interested in learning about their fate. The end of The Stand didn't thrill me but at least I enjoyed the ride. The only interesting Sleeping Beauties' character was Dr. Flickinger, meth addict and plastic surgeon, who had very little to do with the story.Evie, the supernatural center of Sleeping Beauties, does not inspire the same level of fear/excitement as Randall Flagg. Somehow such a powerful being spends all her time locked in a cage. Where Flagg was free to roam, Evie's role is to manipulate in place. She wants two sides of men to fight over her body; there's Frank's group that wants to take her apart (for medical/scientific purposes), and Clint's group that wants to protect her. About half way through this incredibly long set-up to the finale, I was wishing it was over. The men are left to cope without their women, which they do to varying degrees. The ultimate outcome is left to the women, but the men can't do anything to affect it either way, so I'm not sure what the point was, especially as it turns out exactly the way you think it would. No new thoughts or surprises offered.

I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator did a great job! If you do the audiobook, I recommend downloading a Kindle sample of the book because there are tons of characters to keep track of but the book has a list of them all in the beginning. I consulted it a lot! I really liked this. I was worried because of Owen King not getting great reviews on his novel, [b:Double Feature 15802120 Double Feature Owen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1468706055s/15802120.jpg 21525516]. But the Kings made a good team, and rewrote one another to blur the lines of who wrote what. I also like when Stephen writes with his other son, Joe Hill! Wonder what would happen if all three of them worked on a book. Anyhow, while this is the story of all the women falling asleep, there are a lot of strong female characters, and they are never silenced in the narrative. The story begins when “Aurora” is across the globe from the Appalachian town where the story is set, a few women never fall asleep, and we also visit where the women “go” while asleep. Sleeping Beauties explores women who've come from lives of abuse, and who've turn to violence, drugs, and/or crime as a result. The sheriff is a woman, as is the prison warden, the prison being one of the main locations. We also spend time with the warden's daughter, an up and coming reporter. And then there's Eve Black who is at the center of everything.I think the Kings channel women very well, and very progressively for the most part. I think there were a few too many mentions that seemed to refer to women as the ones who do laundry and iron, and it would have been nice since we had a number of good guy men to have met one that had some domestic skills. Also, I feel that at moments the book put womanhood in general too much on a pedestal, which constrains women in another (well-intentioned) way. I'm happy to have Eve Black be the most goddessesque character, than you very much. We get to explore the world (Our Place) where the women go, and I will not describe it too much in order to avoid spoilers. What I found interesting is the portrayal of the women as mostly missing the men, but how for some of the profoundly abused this was the first freedom, the first sense of safety, the first opportunity to build their own lives, they'd ever been allowed. In an extremely poignant plot twist, we discover that the actions of the men in the real world – main world? – could still reach the women in Our Place if their sleeping bodies are tampered with or destroyed. Perhaps in the strongest social commentary of the novel, the sleeping women are only dangerous if the cocoon they're in are tampered with, and then they become feral until the threat is destroyed. So you have these women who are very literally doing nothing to no one, and a portion of men decide they must be destroyed because they'll fight back if you, you know, try and rape them. Ugh. The last third before it really got to the ending lagged a bit for me. As mentioned, the book never stopped representing the women, but at one point there's a battle between a couple different factions of men, and I really struggled to care beyond how the results would change the outcome for the women. I understood that this outcome was based on the men proving they could “do better” – be less warlike, more intellectual, and cede control to the mysterious Eve. But I still would have preferred to hang out a little more in the portion of the book with the sleeping chicks. One of the recurring characters is a fox. I loved the fox. I also had to smile because the first time I encountered the word “vulpine” was in [b:Rose Madder 10619 Rose Madder Stephen King https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1375870513s/10619.jpg 833191], a Stephen King novel, which also featured (less fortunate) foxes. The fox in Sleeping Beauties, like the human men, is asked to consider another way of living.

This was my first SK experience. Reading the reviews now makes me think that I really should have read more about it before delving into it. I was hating it even 200 pages in. I thought MAYBE it will get better. I am happy to read from the negative reviews that I am not the only one who felt that this was drawn out and boring. I am also happy to read that this is not like SK's usual writing. Maybe I will try to give him another chance.

This book reads like a time capsule a lot of the time. I understand they made modern references so that when people do go and read it they can understand that it is happening in the modern world and not in some 40's setting, however if that was the plan then it just felt like it was being shoved down my throat over and over again. Mentioning celebrities or popular colognes was just completely unnecessary and took away from the story.

I could probably write a detailed paragraphs on each of the characters and what I disliked about then but I don't feel like this book even deserves that. I guess all of the characters just felt weak. There was no depth to any of them so I really had a hard time even caring about any of them surviving. Even Don Peters, who is the scum of the Earth in this book, I honestly didn't even care if he died at the end. Usually if I hate a character and they get their just desserts I would be excited and happy for all of the inmates that were assaulted by him. The ending was super predictable too. I think I would have at least found it more enjoyable if the deliberation was longer. It was just so obvious they were going to come back, even Lila, who sort of went back and forth on it immediately decided yes she is going back.

I also felt like there wasn't any explanation for the whole ordeal. Was it a test? This is also not an interested kind of wonder. It's more of a, why did I have to go through that to not get anything out of it at the end?

Hope if I ever come back to SK I will have a better experience. For now, I am going to stick with books that have less than 12 characters at a time, and less than 700 pages of boring, drawn out plot.

Almost 5 stars but it slowed down around the middle, just dropping it down to a 4.

As enjoyable as the book was, the one thought I consistently had was why isn't this talked about more, as The Handmaid's Tale and The Power etc are. It touches on themes that have come to the fore over the past few years with the second half especially dealing with how men's behaviour/nature affects the world and the women in it. Whether you agree with the premise or not it raises some interesting questions.

2½ stars slight spoilers

I wasn't impressed, sadly.
I mean, the premise is interesting and it starts out good enough with a couple of handfuls of interesting characters, but very soon a lot of them start to blend together, and after a while I had trouble remembering who was who, except for a handful of main characters.
There was a lot of filler and I usually like it when Stephen King writes long novels (I wanted 11/22/63 and IT to last forever), but there was just so many characters that were introduced and then killed off few pages later without having an impact on the overall story.
It drags on for a couple of hundred pages and around the middle, when one of the characters “passes over”, it picks up speed and has a lot of interesting stuff going on, but they are interspersed with the less interesting stuff. Had the novel been cut in half, or even just two-thirds, it would have been so much better.
Around 85 pages from the end it becomes really riveting and sadly just reminds you how much better the book could have been.
The writing was serviceable, I missed a lot of King's usual humour, musings on humanity, and shocking situations, all of which I think he usually excels in. I have never read anything by Owen King, so I don't know how much of his voice was coming through.
So, overall... it is not a book I would recommend to anyone right off the bat.
In a few months The Outsider comes out; I have high hopes for it, but will try to not expect too much.

I'm an ardent King reader, more out of habit than anything else. In my late 30's I discovered I'd read every one of his novels and then made a habit of reading each of them as they were released. There a great ones, and bad ones. Sleeping Beauties is an average one. Co-authored by his Son, Owen, Sleeping Beauties is a slow ride to a bloody battle and it's brief moral after effects. The main character, Evie, is not only “the first woman” but symbolic christ like attributes are hard to miss.

In all, a worthwhile read and glimpse into King's maturing style.

Perhaps in the future I will give this book a kinder star rating but not today. I'm sorry to say this book was a slog. I kept at it thinking as I often do when listening to novels rather than reading them that perhaps it was dragging due to the audio format.

Here is the problem....

The length and getting mired down in minutia and detailed descriptors that led nowhere was also a problem.

I also had issues with the lack of flow. I'd just be thinking that the King's were leading me somewhere. That like the webbing cocooning their characters they were about to pull all the threads together and show me the mosaic sense of the story. Alas this was not the case.

Yes..,it all gets tied together in one big concept of “the bad guys” vs “the good guys”, however even this black and white portrayal of good and bad I found clunky and juvenile.

I had issues with perspective as well. The authors chose to write with large brush strokes what they perceived as the feelings and interpretations of culture from one large group...a group of which Owen and Stephen are not a part of in this world. In my opinion this led to some huge assumptions that lacked finesse and intricacies.

All of that being said I am a fan of Stephen King and there were definitely hallmarks of his style throughout the novel.

My apologies for a harsh review...who knows maybe I will look at this book more fondly in the future.

I don't really read Stephen King any more. I read a lot of his early stuff when I was younger, but eventually lost patience as the books got thicker, more baggy, and ended abruptly, almost nonsensically, as if he woke up one morning after typing hundreds of thousands of words and said, “I'm bored now”. Very frustrating as a reader having waded through so much to realise that it wasn't really taking you anywhere.

So it was with some trepidation that I picked up this huge, 700 page monster. And, unfortunately, it was more of the same. But worse. It seems the influence of Owen King not only failed to add some much needed plotting and structure, but also took away a lot of what makes his father so readable: good writing.

There was so little to enjoy here. Characters were bland and one dimensional, the writing workaday, and the plot incredibly simplistic. Clearly this was supposed to be some riff on sexism, misogyny, feminism and the modern world, but other than a few vague paragraphs it didn't really discuss the issues in any depth.

Amazingly, in the acknowledgements at the end of the book the Kings thank an editor who culled the book down from “ a much larger manuscript”. I have nothing but sympathy for her.

I just finished this book and I am having a hard time putting into words how I am feeling. First off full disclosure I love Stephen King, I have had issues with clowns most of my life and still managed to read IT. The first thing that drew me with this book is the beautiful cover and the big oddity is that this book is not set in Maine. The story follows multiple character storylines. We see how these people are reacting and responding to the “Aurora” epidemic, as it is called. I thought the title of the disease was super fitting and the fact that it only effects woman drew you in even further because it does have a very big feministic undertone. Eve Black as the driving force of this novel was pure genius. The dynamics of the book and the town has a very under the dome feel to it. very well done. Owen King is not a person I have ever read I have read a few Joe Hill books and after reading this I will have to devote some more time reading books by another King. Owen welcome to my TBR list.

I assumed this book wasn't my cup of tea. I assumed I would have a hard time getting through it. I assumed it was going to be too out there and unrelatable for me. Well, I'll be the first to admit I was WRONG! This book was so much more than I could have ever imagined and Stephen King challenges, once again, everything I have ever thought I knew about humans and how we do life. It's his extraordinary skill to convey meaningful truths about life and the human psyche through his works which really makes him one of my all time favorite authors, because not many authors can pull it off in such a fantasy-based genre.

I will be honest, when I first picked this book up, I didn't know what to expect. I have chosen it years ago from The Book of the Month club because I liked the cover and the author was so famous and highly regarded. I usually prefer reading more realistic fiction but I decided to give this nightmare-like novel a try because I was curious and wanted to expand my horizons when it came to books. Plus, I was slightly intimidated by the length of this book, unsure if I'd ever be able to get through it.

Well, the fact that I got through it in ten days and had a hard time putting it down should tell you everything you need to know! I was literally reading it late into the night and during the kids' naptime, guess I just really needed to know what was going to happen. And I mean, what a unique and masterfully done plot! Not many people can take something out of their nightmares and construct it into a meaningful story with a beginning, middle and an end but Kind did it perfectly. No detail was overlooked and the plot moved with such effortless speed, not too rushed, not too slow. Things were revealed in their right times and everything was perfectly woven together to deliver a powerful novel about the human race.

I also really liked the different perspectives of all the characters in the story and how we got a little blurb for each of them in all the various situations and their perceptions of the events as they transpired. I found myself being able to relate even to the worst characters, the ones with the seemingly worst souls and least regard for other human beings. It made me realize that all human beings are flawed, each in their own way, it just comes out differently in every individual.

Further, I think Stephen King is the only writer I know that can expand on seemingly pointless details but make them into something that conveys something so significant about the different characters and to the plot as a whole. The writing flowed smoothly and it was easy to get lost in the world that Stephen King had created from his imagination.

I am really not one for fantasy based fiction but for Stephen King I can make an exception. Not only will I continue reading all his other work, but I have no doubt that his books will continue to move me and change me for the better, reminding me of important truths and life lessons I might have forgotten or withdrawn from. The way that he writes, it's easy to imagine his seemingly unbelievable world and even be transported into them. I would, without any hesitation, recommend this book to anyone who wants to be moved beyond anything they could even fathom, from a single book. Even if you think that fantasy is not your cup of tea, give this book a chance, you won't be disappointed!

At about 25% I started to lose track of the characters – which wasn't surprising considering their high amount and shallowness. Also, the story is too political for my taste.

So far, I couldn't really wrap my head around the message of this book, but in the end I don't really care anyway. More important is that I get entertained—and that wasn't the case with Sleeping Beauties for 95% of the time.

2.4/5 stars

I will start by saying that I really tried hard to like this book. I read this when I was in high school but dropped it. This time I picked up both the audiobook and the physical book in order to make sure I actually finished. (Sometimes my brain simply cannot compute an audiobook.) It took 2–3 days (I had to pick up the book again today because I already forgot everybody's names. I lost the sheet with all their names/info.), but I was able to get through it. I've only read a couple of Stephen King's books, and by far this is my least favorite one. The only reason that I finished so quickly was because I did not want to have to deal with dwelling on it any longer.

Things I liked

- The narrator did an amazing job of adding emotion and making this long book bearable.

- Evie was an interesting character to follow as well as the rats.

- Norcross's backstory was actually complex and interesting but that isn't transferred much into how he acts as an adult.

Things I Disliked:

- There are too many characters to keep track of. I ended up having to annotate the character's name, chapter they were introduced in, & a little bit of info on them because I kept having to go back. (This could just be a me problem.) Some characters didn't seem to be anything more than a series of stereotypes. Others were given too much thought to not even end up becoming relevant to the plot.

- As mentioned before, I do believe this could have been shorter. I do feel like certain parts could have been cut out. Such as giving too much attention to characters that contribute nothing to the plot or worldbuilding.

- The pacing was driving me insane. It went so slowly, but we were bouncing through so many different people's POVs. Just when I was actually getting interested in what happened BOOM, another person's POV, and its back to square one trying to remember the last time they were mentioned because sometimes you need that to understand what's actually going on.

- The ENDING just sucked in my opinion. It was rather predictable and at that point I was glad I was done. I'm actually proud of myself for getting through the full 23 hours of the audiobook. Even if I took so many breaks.

Halfway through and still not interested on how the whole supernatural elements came about. Is there a point? Maybe so, but this is one of those books that would've been better if it just cuts straight to the point than going around in circles exploring each of the character's backstory. This isn't a TV series!