Author: Stephen King, Owen King
Year: 2017
Stephen King wrote Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen, and it’s pretty much like he rewrote Under the Dome with someone else adding input on a new story arc to fit the same framework. It’s a story of a normal town with normal people thrust into abnormal stress and danger, which is interesting in its own way, and definitely makes for mass media marketing success. Though it may not be the best King you’ve read, the simple fact that he is still producing great content after about 50 years of writing is just incredible, and Sleeping Beauties is another part of that fascinating mosaic.
The town of Dooling, WV is dominated by a woman’s prison, where Clint Norcross works as a psychiatrist, and an impoverished small town drug trade, which his wife Sheriff Lila Norcross attempts to curb. But both situations fade to the background when a global disease strikes with shocking outcomes. Every woman on the planet, if she was asleep or when she next falls asleep, is covered in a protective, white, gauzy coating that originates from her own body. Attempts to tear the cobwebby fabric away have disastrous consequences, as the men of Earth begin to understand that the future of humanity may just have been extinguished.
Very Under the Dome-like, still Stephen King, but with another’s added mind, Sleeping Beauties is a nice read with a solid plot, and more to say under the surface if you’re willing to look. The action centers around a woman taken to the prison who doesn’t seem affected by the new “virus”, and the violence that erupts around her when men fight for possession of the thing they don’t understand. It’s pretty cool, there’s a secondary element that’s more fantasy, and that’s fun too, making this a book that’s easy to consume and not cheap for that.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆