Thursday, March 31, 2011

Night Shift by Stephen King

Synopsis

In places where fear swells and blood runs cold, sinister forces and unspeakable things are working the night shift.


From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge you into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.

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I love Stephen King.  I really do.  He is without a doubt one of my favorite authors...if not the favorite.  He never fails to completely captivate me and suck me into his stories.

With that in mind, it pains me to say that I didn't really like this book.  I think my main problem was the fact that it was completely short stories, which yes I knew going into it.  The thing I love most about King's writing is the constant build-up and release of tension.  The suspense is the best part and, when it comes to short stories, there's usually only one build-up and one release.  That's not enough for me.

Now, it wasn't all bad for me.  Of the twenty stories, I did really enjoy three of them.  "Trucks", "Sometimes They Come Back" and "Children of the Corn" were all really good.  Why, you might ask?  Because all three were made into movies that I had already seen and so I already had an appreciation for.  Even then though, the stories weren't nearly as suspenseful for me as the movies were.  One of the rare occasions where the "book" falls short of the movie.

Bottom line, it's not a completely horrible collection of stories.  If the author had been anyone other than King, I would fully give it two thumbs up.  Because it was King and I had these huge expectations for mini-Shinings, I'll give it one and a quarter thumbs.

~Missy