Book Review: Fairy Tale, by Stephen King
A portal fantasy with the old King twist.
Scribner, 2022, 608 pages
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself-and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.
Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.
King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy-and his dog-must lead the battle.
As a Constant Reader since I was in junior high school, I have never not enjoyed a Stephen King novel. He's a voluminous writer who spews words the way most people breathe, and in my opinion he's a vastly more talented, if less consistent, writer than contemporary high-wordcount darling Brandon Sanderson.
King is a seat-of-his-pants writer who starts with an idea and just lets it go wherever, and you can tell that in almost every book he writes.
It is definitely evident in Fairy Tale, which starts as a story of a boy coping with the death of his mother and his father descending into alcoholism, making friends with a grumpy old man, who turns out to have a portal to another world in his shed, and the boy then goes to the other world in order to save the old man's dog, and winds up rescuing a princess and saving the kingdom from Cthulhu.
While known for horror, this isn't the first time King has written more traditional fantasy. The Talisman, which he cowrote with Peter Straub, was very similar in theme, being about a boy who want to another world to save his mother. Fairy Tale also bears similarities to The Eyes of the Dragon, a book he wrote many years ago for his then-young son which was also a traditional epic fantasy.
Like most Stephen King books, Fairy Tale is long and full of tangents and subplots that could have been cut but would have made it less rich. If you want tightly plotted stories, you don't read King.
In many ways this is a traditional portal fantasy, even YA-ish at times. Charlie Reade is a teenager who goes to a magical world through a literal portal, and has Adventures. There is a magical kingdom, complete with a deposed princess who must be saved from her evil brother (don't worry, King is woke and the princess is no mere damsel in distress), and there are giants and undead and dragons and magical curses and all that traditional fantasy stuff, but it's all with a Stephen King twist, meaning at times it is gruesome and vulgar and violent, and King makes no bones about being heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft and the Brothers Grimm.
There are really two separate stories here. The first part of the book is about Charlie and his childhood. It starts with his mother being killed when Charlie is seven. In typical King fashion, he is unsparing with the grisly details; Charlie doesn't just tell you his mother was hit by a truck while walking across a bridge on a rainy night. She was smashed against a stanchion and her head and shoulders were separated from her body and went tumbling down to the river below. On the one hand, this is just King being King, grossing you out with gore that most writers wouldn't bother detailing. On the other hand, he portrays Charlie as a fundamentally good kid with a dark side, and knowing that images like that are stuck in his head tells you a lot about how damaged he is.
Following his mother's death, Charlie's father spends a few years at the bottom of a bottle. By the time Charlie is a teenager and the second part of the story begins, his father has sobered up thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous. King himself had his own battles with the bottle and this isn't the first book in which he's stuffed a long ode to AA saving one of the characters into the story.
At this point, Charlie is now a good kid, popular and athletic, but he occasionally mentions having done some "dark things" with one of his buddies during the long years when he was worried he and his father were going to wind up homeless.
There is an old man who lives in a creepy house everyone calls "the Psycho house" and one day, Charlie hears him calling for help. The old man fell off a ladder and broke his leg, and Charlie has to call 911 and when the old man has to go to the hospital, Charlie takes care of his elderly dog, Radar.
Through machinations and improbable twists, we learn that the old man is over a hundred years old, thanks to a magical adventure in another world, and Charlie ends up taking Radar there seeking a magical sundial that can supposedly restore the dog's youth.
This boy and his dog story goes dark places, even if Charlie does end up kissing a princess and bringing his Goodest Boy back. Fairy Tale is classic King, with all the King flourishes; the shout-outs to his favorite authors, from Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury to H.P. Lovecraft, and putting a few spins on traditional fantasy tropes.
I did notice a few things about the story that reminded me that King has also been writing forever and that he's kind of long in the tooth. Fairy Tale is set in the modern day (Charlie was supposedly born in the 90s and he's narrating this story as something that happened years ago), but he acts and talks like a kid who grew up in the 50s, and his description of the small town he grew up in is likewise King's typical small-town Maine setting where not much has changed since electricity. Charlie hardly swears at all, he has a smart phone but never mentions porn, and when we learn about the "dark things" he and his young friend got up to, they are basically shitty juvenile pranks like blowing up mailboxes and smearing dogshit on a teacher's car.
Fairy Tale is not his best work, but it's far from his worst. Late-career Stephen King might have lost of bit of the edge that made some of his earlier works so extremely dark and unsettling and horrific, but he still tells a fine story. This is a Narnia-meets-Wonderland-meets-Lovecraft story, and if you want something internally consistent and methodically plotted, this is not that kind of fantasy novel, but if you like going where King takes you, it is not disappointing.
Also by Stephen King: My reviews of Blaze, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Lisey's Story, Cell, The Shining, Duma Key and Doctor Sleep.
My complete list of book reviews.
Scribner, 2022, 608 pages
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself-and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.
Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.
King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy-and his dog-must lead the battle.
As a Constant Reader since I was in junior high school, I have never not enjoyed a Stephen King novel. He's a voluminous writer who spews words the way most people breathe, and in my opinion he's a vastly more talented, if less consistent, writer than contemporary high-wordcount darling Brandon Sanderson.
King is a seat-of-his-pants writer who starts with an idea and just lets it go wherever, and you can tell that in almost every book he writes.
It is definitely evident in Fairy Tale, which starts as a story of a boy coping with the death of his mother and his father descending into alcoholism, making friends with a grumpy old man, who turns out to have a portal to another world in his shed, and the boy then goes to the other world in order to save the old man's dog, and winds up rescuing a princess and saving the kingdom from Cthulhu.
While known for horror, this isn't the first time King has written more traditional fantasy. The Talisman, which he cowrote with Peter Straub, was very similar in theme, being about a boy who want to another world to save his mother. Fairy Tale also bears similarities to The Eyes of the Dragon, a book he wrote many years ago for his then-young son which was also a traditional epic fantasy.
Like most Stephen King books, Fairy Tale is long and full of tangents and subplots that could have been cut but would have made it less rich. If you want tightly plotted stories, you don't read King.
In many ways this is a traditional portal fantasy, even YA-ish at times. Charlie Reade is a teenager who goes to a magical world through a literal portal, and has Adventures. There is a magical kingdom, complete with a deposed princess who must be saved from her evil brother (don't worry, King is woke and the princess is no mere damsel in distress), and there are giants and undead and dragons and magical curses and all that traditional fantasy stuff, but it's all with a Stephen King twist, meaning at times it is gruesome and vulgar and violent, and King makes no bones about being heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft and the Brothers Grimm.
There are really two separate stories here. The first part of the book is about Charlie and his childhood. It starts with his mother being killed when Charlie is seven. In typical King fashion, he is unsparing with the grisly details; Charlie doesn't just tell you his mother was hit by a truck while walking across a bridge on a rainy night. She was smashed against a stanchion and her head and shoulders were separated from her body and went tumbling down to the river below. On the one hand, this is just King being King, grossing you out with gore that most writers wouldn't bother detailing. On the other hand, he portrays Charlie as a fundamentally good kid with a dark side, and knowing that images like that are stuck in his head tells you a lot about how damaged he is.
Following his mother's death, Charlie's father spends a few years at the bottom of a bottle. By the time Charlie is a teenager and the second part of the story begins, his father has sobered up thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous. King himself had his own battles with the bottle and this isn't the first book in which he's stuffed a long ode to AA saving one of the characters into the story.
At this point, Charlie is now a good kid, popular and athletic, but he occasionally mentions having done some "dark things" with one of his buddies during the long years when he was worried he and his father were going to wind up homeless.
There is an old man who lives in a creepy house everyone calls "the Psycho house" and one day, Charlie hears him calling for help. The old man fell off a ladder and broke his leg, and Charlie has to call 911 and when the old man has to go to the hospital, Charlie takes care of his elderly dog, Radar.
Through machinations and improbable twists, we learn that the old man is over a hundred years old, thanks to a magical adventure in another world, and Charlie ends up taking Radar there seeking a magical sundial that can supposedly restore the dog's youth.
This boy and his dog story goes dark places, even if Charlie does end up kissing a princess and bringing his Goodest Boy back. Fairy Tale is classic King, with all the King flourishes; the shout-outs to his favorite authors, from Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury to H.P. Lovecraft, and putting a few spins on traditional fantasy tropes.
I did notice a few things about the story that reminded me that King has also been writing forever and that he's kind of long in the tooth. Fairy Tale is set in the modern day (Charlie was supposedly born in the 90s and he's narrating this story as something that happened years ago), but he acts and talks like a kid who grew up in the 50s, and his description of the small town he grew up in is likewise King's typical small-town Maine setting where not much has changed since electricity. Charlie hardly swears at all, he has a smart phone but never mentions porn, and when we learn about the "dark things" he and his young friend got up to, they are basically shitty juvenile pranks like blowing up mailboxes and smearing dogshit on a teacher's car.
Fairy Tale is not his best work, but it's far from his worst. Late-career Stephen King might have lost of bit of the edge that made some of his earlier works so extremely dark and unsettling and horrific, but he still tells a fine story. This is a Narnia-meets-Wonderland-meets-Lovecraft story, and if you want something internally consistent and methodically plotted, this is not that kind of fantasy novel, but if you like going where King takes you, it is not disappointing.
Also by Stephen King: My reviews of Blaze, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Lisey's Story, Cell, The Shining, Duma Key and Doctor Sleep.
My complete list of book reviews.