I’ve never been wild about sequels. They’re often little more than just another opportunity to milk some sort of cash cow until it’s dry and cheapen the original material. It’s no surprise, then, that I was reluctant to muster any excitement when I heard Stephen King was writing a sequel to his terrifying and much loved 1977 novel, The Shining.
The Shining is a good old fashioned haunted house tale. When Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic, attempts to rebuild both his shaky marriage and career by taking a position at the Overlook Hotel as a winter caretaker, he ends up descending into madness. The Overlook has some otherworldly guests, you see, and they are using Jack and his personal demons to gain access to his son Danny, a young boy with an extraordinary psychic power. In the end, Danny barely survives after being pursued relentlessly by his father through the hotel.
Doctor Sleep tells the story of an adult Danny (now Dan) Torrance who is still haunted by his past. Plagued by alcoholism, Dan is a middle aged drifter, unable to get his life together. He eventually winds up in a small New Hampshire town, joins Alcoholics Anonymous and is able to lock away a few of the Overlook ghosts who have stalked him over the decades. Dan ultimately takes a position at a nursing home as a hospice worker with an innate talent to bring comfort to the dying and is given the nickname “Doctor Sleep” by coworkers.
As the tale progresses, Dan becomes telepathically linked to a young girl named Abra Stone whose ability to “shine” is even greater than his. Through her clairvoyant powers, she becomes aware of the “True Knot”, a band of psychic “vampires” who travel the country seeking children that possess similar abilities. Abra alerts Dan after suspecting that the group murdered a young boy in Iowa, fed off of his essence (or “steam”) and have now turned their sights on her. Abra and Dan (along with a few friends) must then engage in a battle between good and evil, putting their lives at stake to end the True Knot’s threat once and for all.
I’d like to say that Doctor Sleep was a tremendous read, filled with vivid characters and originality. I’d also like to say that the book was a complete failure, an unnecessary sequel to the terrifying source material of The Shining.
Truth is, it’s somewhere in between.
What I’ve learned about King’s works is that I read them for the characters, not the plot. King always has been one of the best writers at creating realistic, engaging characters thrust into an often extraordinary situation usually involving the theme of good versus evil. His penchant for writing characters that always feel as if you know them personally is evident in each of his works, regardless of whether they exist in a novel or a short story.
I have to admit that I must be in the minority, never wondering what became of little Danny Torrance from The Shining, but King offers up a suitable and believable evolution for the character based on his past. Danny’s abilities have both helped and hurt him throughout his life, creating opportunities and problems alike. It’s easy to see how someone like him would have found solace in a bottle, not only due to the events at the Overlook but also his family history of alcoholism. It’s also fascinating to see how he develops a bond with Abra, the young girl who shines brighter than he. Though Abra has parents, Dan becomes a bit of a father figure to her as he has both the luxury and curse of understanding her abilities and tries to help her develop them without her losing control.
The main issue I have with Doctor Sleep is that it’s a bit bloated. Coming in at over 500 pages, the novel suffers from (among other things) lack of focus. There was a time, halfway through the novel, that I considered abandoning it because the story meandered. I often wish that King had a better editor who reigned in his tales, tightening up the plot to make it more suspenseful.
In regard to suspense, another problem I had with Doctor Sleep is that the “True Knot”, the near immortal, powerful villains, are ultimately a bit of a letdown. According to Abra, these are the big guns of evil, torturing children and feeding off of their steam in order to survive. In the end, they seem to exist more as contrivances designed to move the story from point A to point B and so forth. They are simply plot devices and, as the tale progresses, should become increasingly more threatening, but instead, diminish in stature. In fact, the character of Rose the Hat is the only one that really comes to life as others (Snakebite Andi, Barry the Chink, etc.) serve one particular purpose then mainly fade into the background.
Doctor Sleep should be enjoyed mostly for the story of Dan and his personal journey after surviving both the horrors of the Overlook (which still come into play throughout the story here) and his battle with alcoholism and not for the failed attempt to create an epic battle between good and evil. King’s done that before and the result (The Stand, for example) is so much better than it is here.
Grade for Doctor Sleep: B-
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This Old Haunted House 