Thursday I came home from a challenging day at Company X and found something I wasn’t expecting waiting for me in the lobby. No, NOT the 1918 HP Lovecraft demanding a bracing walk around historic downtown while munching on broken crackers.  Not the Necronomicon Press chapbook I have been waiting nearly two months for. Trust me, a little chapbook the size of one of the vintage Betty Crocker recipe pamphlets I collect would not be in a huge padded envelope. No, this package was a doorstop of a thing, propped up under the bank of  mailboxes and almost as heavy as my tote bag. A little thrill rippled through me. June must have popped it the mail before the post office closed on Saturday. Either that or mail from the West Coast set a new land speed record.

Now what would have me tearing open a package before my apartment door had even closed? Two words. Okay. FOUR WORDS. Stephen. King. Doctor. Sleep. Back in the day when I wasn’t reading pure and utter sex and shopping trash, I was devouring Stephen King like the True Knot well…devours steamhead rubes. (Blacklight: “Huh? What are you talking about?”). Most of Uncle Steve’s output over the last ten years hasn’t appealed to me (Blacklight: “Wait…didn’t you want to jump up and down on the final Dark Tower novel until the spine broke and shove it in your dad’s woodstove? ” Me: “maybeeeeeee” Blacklight: “You totally DID!”) but Doctor Sleep got my attention. A look at Danny Torrance as a grownup? I put my name on the hold list at the library and resisted the urge to spend an entire Sunday morning tearing into Doctor Sleep as soon as Barnes & Noble opened once it was released. And stuffed an Entertainment Weekly right back in the library bag when I realized there was a Doctor Sleep excerpt in it. And yes, this is the same person who can’t watch at movie on her couch without having Mr Laptop on and checking out the IMBD, Wikipedia and TV tropes pages on what I’m watching. But there would be NO Doctor Sleep spoilers for me beyond grownup Danny Torrance and vampire things.

So when I slipped off the dust jacket from Doctor Sleep and settled down in the bedroom with there were two thoughts in my head. “Yes” and “Please don’t suck like Black House“. Now fast forward to 9pm Friday night and I’m lurching out to the living room to grab Mr Laptop and write down all the feels.

Uncle Stevie set himself an interesting challenge in writing Doctor Sleep. Going back to the well of one of your classics and writing a sequel with an older and maybe wiser character is beyond tricky. I almost wonder if Uncle Stevie and Helen (Bridget Jones’s Diary) aren’t instant messaging each other and nervously watching the best seller lists and reviews with their breaths held back. Is there anything new to explore about your character? Are you setting yourself up for cries of “you just want a big fat check”. And then Uncle Stevie has another challenge that I doubt Ms. Fielding has, as highly regarded of a novel as The Shining is, the movie version looms so much larger. And then my Stephen King fan girl confession…The Shining wasn’t my favorite King novel ever. It’s in the middle of the King canon for me. I’ve read The Stand so many times I need to kick my shoes off to count that high. And then there is the Black House factor. I loved The Talisman. I read the poop out of The Talisman. I can babble on about Twinners and Wolves and Black 13 until Blacklight rouses himself from his daily Minecraft coma to tell me to shut the bleep up. But I could only finish Black House by forcing myself to read it and remember how much I paid for it (ahh the days of having money to spend on new books). Would Doctor Sleep be the same awful experience as Black House? Or would I just stay up all night blasting through it in a white heat, ignoring that I needed to be at my desk at 5:45am the next day?

Doctor Sleep wasn’t as challenging to get through as Black House. And it was put away at 9pm last night, left on the sideboard while I trudged off to Company X this morning and picked up on and off through the afternoon into evening. I didn’t spend my time flicking to see how pages where left and wondering just how many trees died to print the copy in my hands (Under The Dome). My wrists and hands didn’t burn from just holding the damn thing up (once again…Under The Dome). And I didn’t fall asleep reading it and have it smack me in the face leaving a nasty red mark on my cheek  (you guessed it! Under The Dome). Shallow things to think about, but things to consider all the same.

Our friend Danny, who now goes by DAN Torrance thank you very much, has grown up to be a tormented man who like his father has a love of the bottle and a nasty temper lurking just barely under the surface. And he still has the shine. Oh my does he still have the shine. A series of what I like to call Bad Life Choice Theater lands him in a quaint tourist town were he starts working at the local hospice and gets the nickname “Doctor Sleep” for his talent with the dying. If there is a good night to go into, you certainly would want Dan Torrance there to guide you there. Now it wouldn’t be a Stephen King novel without a little kid with powers so enter Abra Stone, a little girl who reminds you of Charlie from Firestarter with a scoop of Carrie. And since we need a Big Bad, enter the True Knot, a group of “people” (think soul vampires mixed with the Library Policeman and Stevie Junior’s I mean Joe Hill’s (Blacklight: “you mean your boyfriend Joe Hill”) Charlie Manx) who cruise around in RVs and look just like you and me but are pretty much ageless thanks to a diet of “steam” from rubes just like our friends Dan and Abra.  However the True Knot is hong-ray and want to feast and gorge like I intend to with a box of Stew Leonard’s apple cider donut holes. Of course our heroes will battle the True Knot, crazy stuff will go down and Uncle Stevie will hit the best seller list.

Overall, Doctor Sleep is an interesting read. Like The Shining, it’s in the middle of my personal Stephen King canon. I was sad to know certain characters had died, surprised others made it to the last page and didn’t roll my eyes too much. Yes, I played Casting Fun Time (Rosie The Hat from the True Knot is totally Death from The Sandman graphic novels, Abra is a young Kirsten Dunst) but I couldn’t decide on who should be Dan Torrance. I googled EarthCruiser RVs and they’re more Hummer-ish than rock star palace on wheels that I imagined. And sometimes I wondered who would win in a contest between Charlie McGee and Abra. Closing the book after the last page (and I mean the last of the last pages right down to the Author’s Note) I was glad I read Doctor Sleep. It puts the “I wonder what happened to Danny and his mom and Dick” thought to sleep and leaves new ones open. Because if Uncle Stevie can revisit the Territories and the Outlook…maybe we could see what happened to a certain Miss Charlene Roberta McGee in the future? One can only hope and wait.