Doctor Sleep

Written by Stephen King
Year of Publication:  2013

This book is the sequel to Stephen King's popular 1977 novel The Shining.  It takes up the story of Dan Torrance, who was a five year old boy in the original novel, thirty five years later.  Dan has spent much of the intervening time trying to repress the nightmarish memories of what happened to him in the Overlook Hotel and also to dampen the powerful psychic ability which he calls "the shining" with drugs and alcohol.  However, he has now settled down into a quiet life in a small New Hampshire town, attending Alcoholics Anonymous and staying clean and sober.  He also has a job at the local nursing home, where he uses his shining ability to comfort the dying, earning the nickname "Doctor Sleep".  However, Dan makes contact with an eight year old girl named Abra Stone, who lives in a nearby town and whose own shining ability is far more powerful than Dan's ever was.  Abra is targeted by a group called the "True Knot", seemingly normal middle-aged people travelling around in RVs and Winnebagos but who in reality are powerful psychic vampires who feed off the essence or "steam" given off when children who have the shining are tortured and killed.

This is a hugely entertaining novel and one of the best that Stephen King has published in recent years.  It really is back to what he does best.  The characters are likeable and engaging and the book moves along at a good pace.  Although it is very different in tone and plot to The Shining, the earlier book is constantly referenced throughout this (and it is worth remembering that this is a sequel to the book and not the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, which King famously disliked).  One of King's talents as a writer is his ability to place the fantastic events in a very realistic seeming world, full of pop-culture and other real-world references.  This novel includes a few references to NOS4R2, a novel by King's son, Joe Hill.