Amazon com Customer Reviews Revival A Novel Fabulous Story November 11 2014 By This review is from Revival A Novel Hardcover I m feeling very ambiguous about Revival It s far too ambiguous in Revival by Stephen King 9781476770383 Hardcover Revival Pub Date 11 11 2014 Stephen King s splendid new novel offers the atavistic Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the Revival A NovelHardcover November 11 2014 www A dark and electrifying novel about addiction fanaticism and what might exist on the other side of life In a small New England town over half a century ago a
Finally, a return to the form of Stephen King we’ve been waiting for. Or at least I was – I’m one of those annoying Stephen King fans who says “nothing’s as good as his first five books, blah blah” like I’m expecting everyone to stay the same writer they were at 65 as they were at 35.
The dustjacket promises King’s “most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written,” and that’s a bold claim to make – especially when stacked up against “Pet Sematery” or “Salem’s Lot.” I’m not sure I would call the conclusion ‘terrifying,’ but I would absolutely call it dreadful – with a capital D.
But I will avoid even the hint of spoilers to say what worked.
First and foremost – the overall editing is very tight, very controlled and on-point. I felt like a few of his recent books were overwritten and bloated; they looked good on a bookshelf maybe, but at 700+ pages the stories just went on so long. And there’s a point where the tension fades away too much, and the reader is waiting for the next event to occur. For a thriller/horror that’s not what I want as a reader.
Here, in about 400 pages, the story always connects together. There were never any long lulls of boring exposition and mundane diversions. Everything matters to the story, and keeps the flow of the action moving.
The story’s overall villain may or may not be who you expect. What matters is that the motivations and reasonings behind various decisions makes sense – nobody behaves in a way that I feel like cheats the reader or jumps to an unearned conclusion or revelation.
Length: 417 pages.
UPDATED December 15, 2014:
I had the great good fortune to read an advance copy of The Evil Hours, a biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s an outstanding nonfiction book about PTSDS, but what struck me most was the similarity of the victims of PTSD and Stephen King’s writing of several of the characters in Revival, in their side effects following their ‘miraculous cures.
My point is this: we all know King, just as does any respectable author, a good deal of research before writing. In Revival, it is obvious King researched certain aspects, which also served as a premise utilized by Lovecraft.
What is not so readily deduced is the, at least I think, research King did in regards to PTSD and how well he slipped it into this story. In my opinion, this is masterfully done. Why? Because he never refers to it as PTSD, and nevers draws any parallels with combat veterans. Yet, I now am certain, he discussed the issue with either victims, medical staff, or VA counsellors.
Therefore, I encourage readers to read Revival AND to read The Evil Hours when it becomes available January 26, 2015.
There are four Stephen Kings.
1 Nonfiction Stephen King. This is probably the Stephen King I like most. When he introduces a novel, or writes about himself, or On Writing, he connects with me in some deep ancestral recess hidden from entry by most anybody.
2 Phone it in Stephen King writes novels that are better than 90 percent of all the writers out there, but that seem to be just rehashes of other stories or that just didn’t seem worthy of the master.
3 Milkman Stephen King.