Review: Stephen King's Fairy Tale

 

Here's a weird one. Half way through this book I'd already written most of my review and it involved being transported back to a time when reading Stephen King books allowed me to escape much easier. This is because the start of this book and all the way until the hero sets foot in Empis is 100% bona fide Stephen King; everything from the precise settings to the introductory details about different characters, King has never failed to give his characters individual, almost unique, voices and this is no exception... Except, maybe it is?

We learn everything about our hero, Charlie, that is necessary; we know enough about Mr Bowditch to stifle any doubts; but Charlie's dad and some of the other supporting characters were simply cyphers, the story could have happened without them. His former drunk single parent might have been the main reason that drove Charlie forward but he was going to do it any way. Charlie was doing everything for either the dog, Radar or Mr Bowditch or his dad or the princess, but really he was doing it for himself. He was clear at pointing this out a number of times when the narrative called for him to remind people about what a shit he was when he was younger and how this is all penance.

However, it's a cracking story for 200 pages until the first mystery starts to unravel, from then on it's a book in search of a lost groove. The moment Charlie sets foot on the steps to Empis it becomes exactly what it says on the cover and we're introduced to yet another of Stephen King's worlds within worlds, a trope that I have to say is becoming a little tired now. We had it with Rose Madder and Lisey's Story, we had it with eight Dark Tower books, in collaborations, as short stories - the King multiverse dabbles in other worlds all the time and the two best: Insomnia and From a Buick 8 were more than enough. So many of these kind of King books seem to follow the same pattern and Fairy Tale could almost have been a tale from the Eyes of the Dragon world or an adventure Jack Sawyer might have had ... and I'd rather be praising it for originality than deciding what box I'm filing it away in.

There were some red herrings thrown in, either that or it was just bad writing, but an example is the character of Chris near the beginning, who was initially written like he was going to be a thorn in Charlie's side again, yet apart from a couple of comparisons towards the end of the book Chris Polley's only contribution was to get massively fucked up by our hero. 

There are a couple of interesting things happening in the capital city of Empis, but the main villain is too vague, his vessel hardly in it and supporting cast were cannon fodder; there was a few obligatory things that seem to happen in many King novels, that would be labelled 'wishful thinking' and a 75 year old dog, not that that has often cropped up in King's stories, apart from a 50 year old mouse that once had been crushed under the heel of a prison guard boot... You might start to see why I can't recall the last original King book; even some of the ones I've enjoyed are in some way or another a derivative of a previous work or idea, and, of course, the idea behind Fairy Tale is there are stories in it that reflect famous fairy tales, so reusing old ideas is almost at the heart of the entire book.

That's where it falls down because once we get into the 'anything goes' stage, it doesn't. We return to another common theme in King's books - imprisonment and captivity. It's almost like he got Robin Furth to compile a list of his most used stereotypes so he could make sure they were included. When Radar escaped the city but Charlie was captured, I spent the next 200 pages wondering what the dog was getting up to and how much more I would have enjoyed that to this relentless boredom of prison and the coming of the new Messiah (except he kept reminding people that he was really just a naughty boy). 

The finale sort of came and went in a blur, I think I'd been desensitised and was in need of logic, but I thought the book petered out a little and even while the epilogue had a feeling of relative finality about it, if King was 40 years younger you just know this would be his next Dark Tower. I don't like to say things like this but given his age and his desire to do some different things, I'm sort of resigned to the fact that I may well have read my last good Stephen King book, the same way I know I'll never hear new [insert name] music or see new artwork by [insert favourite artist].

Like a good football match analogy, this was a book of two halves - a compelling and chewy opening premise is laid, but when the characters come out for the second half they'd lost the plot and it all went a bit wrong and silly. It felt like it was written with TV or a film in mind, books shouldn't be written that way.

3/10