Dead Tree Blog

Duma Key by Stephen King

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This may not have been Stephen King's best novel, but it's up there, and it's going to stick with me for a long time. Like many of King's recent works, the book is not so much terrifying as emotionally haunting; it is full of suspense and a heaping dose of the supernatural, but its power comes from its exploration of human grief and suffering.



Faithful readers will appreciate some of the nods King makes to his other books, though some are familiar to me from their film adaptations. (For example, there's a line that seems lifted almost straight from "Stand By Me" and there are refernces familar from "The Shawshank Redemption.") The evil China figurine Perse reminds me of the can toi from "The Dark Tower" series as well as "Desperation", but I'll need to spend some quality time on Wikipedia exploring those links.



Bottom line, King will fans will love this, but like Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis, I'd recommend it as well to those who have never read him. He once again proves his chops as a writer of serious literature.


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Labels: criticism, Stephen King