A new king of horror is born
SLEEPING BEAUTIES
by Stephen King and Owen King (Hodder £20) NO LONGER content with dominating the horror genre for decades, Stephen King now seems set on creating top-notch chillers as a family business.
He has already produced one bestselling offspring, Joe Hill — now here’s Owen King making his co-author debut with his father.
Together, they have come up with a short, gentle tale of village life . . . Of course they haven’t. Sleeping Beauties is a 700-page brick of a book, whose presiding evil spirit is the Black Angel (‘Her fingers are death and her hair is full of cobwebs and dream is her kingdom’).
Gulp. The bad stuff is kickstarted by a very Kingish high concept — everywhere, women are falling asleep to be shrouded in a weird cocoon, which holds their bodies in a kind of coma while their minds are taken who knows where.
The plot zooms in on the Appalachian backwoods town of Dooling and the local women’s prison, where a band of heroes tries to guard the strange and frightening prisoner who has supernatural powers and seems to be the only person who can offer hope for the cocooned abductees.
Hokum, of course, but of the highest quality and made immersively believable by the usual Kingian control of a vast cast of brilliantly drawn characters. Bravo.
I AM BEHIND YOU
by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Quercus £18.99) A CREEPY novel by an author being touted as ‘the new Stephen King’. Swedish Lindqvist has already had a worldwide bestseller with his Nordic chiller Let The Right One In, and he has followed that up with this genuinely scary tale.
Four sets of caravanners wake up one morning to find that their Swedish campsite, and the rest of the world, has vanished and been replaced by an endless bare field. And cue the Twilight Zone theme tune . . .
Lindqvist’s victims, who have to cope with their new, blank world, are vividly brought to life (not quite as fully individual as King’s, but not far off).
There’s elderly, reactionary Donald, repressing violence and listing U.S. presidents to combat senility; Peter, the ex-footballer trapped in a ghastly marriage; a couple of solid farmers who have found late-flowering love with each other; Molly, a strange, wilful girl who can read minds . . . even Benny the dog is given a convincing inner life.
Each of these caravanners — except Benny — finds that they have to confront their own demons in the strange, empty and increasingly hellish place in which they find themselves.
Plus, there’s a properly demonic creature who really is out to get them.
Stockholm’s answer to Stephen King? Well, Lindqvist certainly has the talent. All he has to do now is write a squillion masterpieces.