I liked this book a lot right off the bat - this book will probably be up your alley if you liked The Dark Tower series and also The Stand - it’s very tethered to a specific American place (small town Illinois) and moves back and forth between our world in America and a fantastic world, elsewhere. Fairy Tale also reminded me a bit of Duma Key, which starts out with a character who suffers an injury and, a fantastic world henceforth is conjured.
I tend to read Stephen King’s books that lean more towards fantasy than horror, but I’ve found that King slips into fantasy more often than not, or his works seem to be more fantastic to me than scary or horrific. I tend to be less afraid while reading his books and more fascinated, a bit like the feeling I got from reading Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.
Fairy Tale is brand new - it was released last week as of this blog’s writing, on September 6th. The story is about a 17-year-old kid named Charlie, who has a tough family situation and who feels guilt about some ways he has acted out his anger partially due to a bad peer influence. He does something out of character for himself and prays - he makes a promise that if his family life gets better, he will pay it forward, somehow. The rest of the book is about how Charlie gets what he prayed for and he also gets a chance to pay it forward in a fantastic world.
This book to me felt a lot like The Dark Tower only it’s only one book, and it’s just a smidge lighter. I finished it in about a week (I think the Dark Tower took me upwards of a year). I had the funny luck of reading The Dark Tower when I was 19, where the number 19 figures as a superstitious number in the main plot of the story. In Fairy Tale, what seemed relatably closest to my heart wasn’t a number but it was Radar, the German Shepherd. I had a German shepherd growing up exactly like Radar in the story.
Speaking of Radar the German shepherd, I like the illustrations in the hardback version of this book quite a bit. The illustrations provided a bit of a clue about each chapter, which, in the last half of the book, I could barely stop reading because I needed to find out what happened. Each Illustration is by Gabriel Rodriguez
I bought the Kindle version of this book originally but decided I wanted the hardcover for the illustrations. The Kindle version is great but it doesn’t do the illustrations justice (or at least it didn’t on the Paperwhite Kindle that I have)
In King there are so many moments I can relate to, and it’s been that way ever since I read The Stand while growing up in Colorado. and reading so many parts about Eisenhower Tunnel and Boulder. I’ve done some thinking about why and how his books are so relatable to me, and I think I’m not very special in this regard. I think his stories are highly relatable to most Americans, and maybe, most people. Maybe that’s what King does so well - his works are so expansive and his experience is so very American that, chances are, there will be something in his books for every person who knows parts of America, and definitely for everyone who grew up in this country. Of the thousands and eventually millions of people reading Fairy Tale, thousands of us will have had German shepherds just like Radar, and thousands more will say “Oh yeah, I’ve been to that part of Illinois” and also “Oh yeah, my father/high school friends/football coach was exactly like the ones in the book!” Fairy Tale also contains, as one could guess, several references to popular Fairy Tales, but also references to works of literature like HP Lovecraft.
In all this book is a winner for me. It’s the best King I’ve read in a while and the illustrations stole the show!