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

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Plot

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.


But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered. And even more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander.


As Blomkvist, alone in his belief in Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation of the slayings, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.

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A lot of hype comes with this book, as well as with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  With that much expectation, a book is almost certainly doomed to fail.  Fortunately, that didn't happen here.  I completely enjoyed this book (Side note: The first book I got to read on my brand new Kindle).  Even more than I enjoyed reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, something I didn't actually realize until I sat down to the write this review.

While reading, I found myself feeling that the story didn't progress as quickly as it did in the first book (and even in the first book, it took a while to get going).  As I got to the end, I almost felt like it was rushed.  It seemed like everything suddenly got wrapped up within the last few pages (or "pages" as far as the Kindle is concerned).  Now, that I'm typing this review, I can honestly say it had a nice pace.  Sort of an abrupt ending, but that's to be expected with the middle book of a trilogy.

Larsson has (had?) an insane ability to really give his less desirable male characters these disgustingly misogynistic traits.  If I didn't already know his inspiration for writing the Millennium Trilogy, I'd be tempted to think that he honestly harbored that attitude toward women.  His writing is that good, in my opinion.  Another thing I enjoyed about his storytelling was that he would plug in references to actual events in Swedish history, within the story.  I don't know.  Maybe other authors do it too and I just never noticed, cause I subconsciously understood and didn't have to actively look them up, like I did with the references in this book (and also in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

So...bottom line, I would definitely recommend reading this book.  Obviously, you'd need to read The Girl Who Played with Fire first, but it's definitely worth the read.  I look forward to reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  Unfortunately, that will not be next.  These books cover subject matter that just leave me needing a happy little break between stories.

~Missy