stephen king the bazaar of bad dreams review

“The Dune,” about an old judge in a rush to prepare his will, has a diabolical twist ending worthy of O. So he knows he has an audience willing to hear him muse about “The End” and, as is his specialty, comes up with myriad ways to explore the subject. He remains scarily prolific, and his fan base remains strong. He seems content and creatively satisfied. Death - or more specifically, the fear of death - is the basis of all horror, and King, who is 68 and has always shared an intimate relationship with his constant readers, is clearly contemplating his age and wants to let us know that he’s OK with his own finality. In “UR,” which was originally written exclusively for Amazon in 2009, a college professor discovers his pink Kindle can download books from another dimension.īut the majority of these 20 stories, novellas and (two) poems, roughly half of which have been published elsewhere, return again and again to the subject of old age and mortality. In “That Bus Is Another World,” a man stranded in a traffic jam looks out the window of his cab and sees something ghastly happen inside the bus idling next to his taxi. In “Bad Little Kid,” a chubby, orange-haired little boy with a beanie cap torments a man with a level of cruelty most bullies can only aspire to attain. In the merciless “Mile 81,” something awful happens to the people who wander into an abandoned highway rest stop. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark, or a beautiful curio for sale laid out on a cheap blanket at a street bazaar.”īecause these curios belong to King, many of them have teeth. “(T)here’s something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. In the introduction to “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” his latest doorstop collection of short stories, Stephen King acknowledges he’s primarily a novelist but will always be fond of more compact tales.

Stephen king the bazaar of bad dreams review