REVIEW: DOCTOR SLEEP by Stephen King

Title: Doctor Sleep
Author: Stephen King
Series: The Shining #2
Genres: Horror, Mystery
Publisher: Scribner
Release: 2013
Source: Audiobook
Pages: 531

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BLURB:
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the "steam" that children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant "shining" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes "Doctor Sleep."

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

EXPECTATIONS: This book was part of my Spookathon TBR as I read previously The Shinning and really loved it. 

THE WORLD: As it is the second book in the Shinning the world stays pretty much the same. We have an ordinary world open to ordinary people and then we have these few who see the dead and have these weird abilities. Additionally we learn about these sorta vampires who live forever if they feed on the energy of the special ones. In general, this book had a strong King signature world.

CHARACTERS: Our main character is Dan, yes same boy from the Shinning except now he is all grown up and well really messed up. I guess it illustrated pretty well how trauma and seeing dead people messes you up. Which I really like because all that nonsense we get in some book where post trauma turns into all happy cute life...yeah as I said nonsense. Another important character is Abra, she is just a girl that we actually meet even before she was born and we follow her till about the age Dan was in the Shinning. Abra is special, even more special than Dan. She can do thinks you cannot even imagine and naturally she falls pray for the vampires. Now I won't go further with a plot because well spoilers but I personally still don't know how I feel about Abra. It has been awhile since I finished the book and yet I still don't know. First she is not lovable, despite being a child she has that sense of old. But I get this with almost all King's children characters except for Pet Cemetery. I guess the older you get the harder it is to write children characters. So I will leave Abra at that. But if I had to compare I definitely like Dan more, even with all his failings. 

ROMANCE: Not a center at all, one good thing Stephen King always does. 

GOOD: I don't know. I have this book pretty low rating and frankly I cannot think of anything really good.

BAD: First of all this did not read like next book in Shinning at all. Shinning was so well written, the character were so original and real where in this one...I think Dan is probably the only read thing here. I did not like the plot, the choices most characters made and in general it was not a good reading experience. 

OVERALL: I read it, I did it and now we forget about it. 

What do you think about DOCTOR SLEEP?