Illiterarty.com Book reviews and blogs by Bridget

In Stephen King’s post apocalyptic America, after the government’s superflu has struck and most of the population are dead, the remaining souls are caught up in an epic battle between good and evil.

Some people have it, and some people don’t—the shining, the ability to see what others don’t, the ability to commune with spirits... Five year old Danny Torrance has the shining. But will this be a help or a hindrance at the haunted and desolate Overlook Hotel, where the spirits don’t know their place?

If this was an egg, it would be a curate’s egg.

The second novel of Stephen King—the phrase “classic seventies horror” isn’t necessarily a bad thing!

I wanted to get a couple of Stephen King’s under my belt, if only to review a run of the mill horror. I’m sure I read IT as a child. Anyway, he is apparently the master of the genre, even though there are some great contemporary authors who have learned from him and managed to produce some really original stuff.

They say that the first sentence of a novel is the most important; most people who pick a book up in a bookstore will head straight to the first page to see what the sentence is as a judgment of whether to read it or not. And I tell you, Chuck Palahniuk is the master of the first sentence. And paragraph, for that matter. You are completely sucked in before you know what’s what.

If this was a TV mini-series, it would be pitched as “Stephen-King-meets-George-Romero—in Britain!!!! And we can film the whole thing for under two million! Did I say two million? I meant one point five. We’ll hire locals and feed them fairy bread.”