Sleeping Beauties: A Novel by Stephen King (Epub)

Description

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.

One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.

Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.

User’s Reviews

Review “Stephen King and son team up for a beauty of a horror tale [that is] epic, ambitious, heartbreaking and, when it comes to its central horrors, all too timely. Sleeping Beauties melds the elder King’s talent for exploring the darker sides of human nature when people are thrust into terrifying situations with his youngest son’s gift for juggling multiple genres and complex characters. The final chapters bring all their skills together in a fast-paced, explosive finale and emotional aftermath. A thought-provoking work that examines a litany of modern-day issues.”– USA Today“It’s a violent, dystopian thrill ride that will leave you horrified– and hooked.”–People “Entertaining. . . Sleeping Beauties is a bulging, colourful epic; a super-sized happy meal, liberally salted with supporting characters and garnished with splashes of arterial ketchup. This epic feels so vital and fresh.”– The Guardian “King fans who enjoy his blunt language and vivid gore will find lots to like.”– Associated Press“A fast-paced thriller [that is] ambitious and sympathetic, Sleeping Beauties is both a love letter to women everywhere and an incisive look at what drives men to violence, neatly wrapped in enough fantasy elements to soften the more caustic edges of the commentary. From “Carrie” to “Dolores Claiborne” to “Lisey’s Story” and beyond, Stephen King’s compassion for women is an identifying characteristic of much of his work, and “Sleeping Beauties” continues the trend. The Kings have created deeply textured women to populate their book.”– Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“Sleeping Beauties is an ambitious work that combines some age-old Stephen King themes with a distinctly sci-fi premise. Sleeping Beauties is no “take your kid to work” project on Stephen King’s behalf. Owen King is an accomplished author in his own right, and their collaboration reflects positively on both. No matter which King was tapping the keys, readers will enjoy a riveting novel with plenty of characters to root for, and to root against … and, in another King trademark, to root both for and against.”– Bangor Daily News“This delicious first collaboration between Stephen King and his son Owen is a horror-tinged realistic fantasy that imagines what could happen if most of the women of the world fall asleep, leaving men on their own. The authors’ writing is seamless and naturally flowing. Once the action begins, [SLEEPING BEAUTIES] barrels along like a freight train.”– Publishers Weekly“Another horror blockbuster, Mercedes and all, from maestro King and his heir apparent…In a kind of untold Greek tragedy meets Deliverance meets—well, bits of Mr. Mercedes and The Shawshank Redemption, perhaps—King and King, father and son, take their time putting all the pieces into play: brutish men, resourceful women who’ve had quite enough, alcohol, and always a subtle sociological subtext, in this case of rural poverty and dreams sure to be dashed…A blood-splattered pleasure.”– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Following the renewed interest in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and an increasing climate of wolf-whistle politics, this examination of gender stereotypes, systems of oppression, and pervasive misogyny within American culture feels especially timely…The large cast of characters allows for a multitude of narrative perspectives—from both the affected women and the men they’ve left behind. Violent, subversive, and compulsively readable. The true horror of this father-son-penned novel derives more from its unflinchingly realistic depiction of hatred and violence against women than from the supernatural elements.”– Library Journal“The novel provides enough action, thrills and humor to keep readers burning the midnight oil….There’s comfort to be found in tales such as this… Sleeping Beauties is a well-tooled horror thriller, a worthy venture from a productive family business.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Aside from Gwendy’s Button Box earlier this year, it’s been quite a few years since I’ve read anything from Stephen King. Although I count him as among my all-time favorite authors, and consider myself a fan, I regret that I’ve become something of a lapsed Constant Reader. Nevertheless, I had been looking forward to Sleeping Beauties for quite some time and when it finally released I had worked myself up into a good old solid hankering for an epic horror tome.Unfortunately, Stephen and his son, Owen King, just didn’t live up to my expectations and hopes. While the premise is incredible, I found the execution to be sorely lacking. This book is a slog. It’s slow, and the majority of its 700 pages present an awful lot of leaves to be bored by. This sucker is jam-packed with characters, most of them one-note and forgettable, while others are simply uninteresting. Dr. Norcross, for instance – one of the lead male figures and prison psychologist (an Appalachian women’s correctional facility is the main locale for the majority of Sleeping Beauties), Norcross has a heck of a backstory with his youth spent in the foster care system. The events that have shaped and built his life are wildly intriguing, but the adult we’re presented with is pretty damn dull, and his marriage is on the rocks thanks to some half-baked and cliched marital melodrama the Kings tossed in. I might have found to reason to care about the slippery slope the Norcross’s marriage was sliding down, but frankly I didn’t much care for his wife, Lila, the town sheriff, either.King (Stephen, at least; I haven’t read any of Owen’s work previously) is a master at building memorable characters, and yet I struggled to find any reason to sympathize or care about any of the what felt like hundreds of names dropped into this sucker. Even the central antagonist, Evie Black, with her cell phone video game obsession, penchant for sleeping above the covers, and Biblical fantasy roots, is a pale threat. If you’re looking for personalities like Stuttering Bill, Roland, Pennywise, or Leeland Gaunt, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I doubt Sleeping Beauties will be making its way to the top of legendary King titles anytime soon. Instead, it’s more redolent of lesser King works, particularly Under the Dome, which I hated. But while Dome felt an awful lot like a remix of better, more memorable King hits, Sleeping Beauties merely feels redundant, hitting on a lot of the same derivative elements. It’s a better book than Under the Dome to be sure, but once the women of the world start falling asleep and chaos ensues, Appalachia feels almost identical to Chester’s Mill.It’s not all bad, thankfully. There are a few moments, here and there, that impressed me and convinced to stick with this book (and honestly, if it were anybody other than King, I would have quit this book pretty damn early on). Without spoiling too much, the polar opposites between Appalachia and Our Place were really well done; as one world burns, another is built, and those moments were intriguing as all get out. The nature of the cocoons enshrouding the sleeping women, and what happens when their sleep is disturbed, presented some fantastic moments of horror. And the last hundred pages or so showed the Kings hadn’t forgotten to put some gas in the tank after all, giving us some pretty solid action to wrap everything up.I’ve seen other reviewers comment on this novels’ political nature and how the Kings were standing up on a soapbox. It’s not an impression I walked away with, but this is a book about the sexes and what happens when the balance between men and women is significantly altered. The disparity between sexes is inherently political, but I never found this book to be extreme in its presentation of political ideas one way or another. Frankly, if Stephen and Owen had been more polemic Sleeping Beauties might have been way more interesting for it. As it stands, it’s merely tepid at best.

⭐ This is a painful review to write. I have read just about all Stephen King that has been published. I’ve also reviewed most of what I’ve read, giving an occasional 3 stars to an anthology or a short story, but the vast majority of my scores for novels have been 4’s and 5’s, mosly the latter. I can recognize King’s writing style anywhere. I knew (very strongly suspected) that THINNER was written by SK long before it became public knowledge that Richard Bachman was just a pseudonym that King used to prevent the market from being saturated by too many Stephen King novels in too short a time.SLEEPING BEAUTIES does not *feel* like a Stephen King novel. Not even close. The vocabulary is different, and characters, although similar in feel, are not quite right and there is far less development of the inner voices of each than is typical. The pacing is sluggish. And although I have never, ever thought this about any other SK novel, SLEEPING BEAUTIES was just too damn long. Instead of reading the whole thing in 2 or 3 days as per usual for a long SK novel, this one took forever. Something like 8 or 9 days. I never got into the “just one more page, just one more page” mode that has happened with everything else I’ve read. It was a struggle to get through it and I finally made up my mind to get it over and read the last 250 pages in one go until early in the morning today.So what’s the deal? Pretty obviously (and again, just like with THINNER, only a guess on my part) most of the prose was written by Owen King, not Stephen King, regardless of the order of the authors. There are little hints and flashes of SK here (the character of Don Peters being one, the overall dual world scenario and a few others) but by and large this just didn’t feel much or sound like SK. The characters were mostly flat. The interpersonal relationships, usually a great strength of SK, were blurry. In fact, Joe Hill’s writing is much more like SK’s than this writing was.I never understood what Evie was or where she came from or why. She just didn’t make any sense. Yes, we’re talking fantasy here but even with fantasy stuff has to make sense and/or be explicable in some manner. There have to bee some rules. Nor was the nature or rationale of the deal she worked out with Clint, (who by the way was one of the least likable protagonists in a novel that I have read in quite a while) clear. It was more akin to something reminiscent of Abraham and God in the Old Testament viz the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah than modern fantasy.And for those of you constantly complain about King’s penchant for letting his political views color his fiction (As it happens, I am often bemused by this comment, usually failing to notice explicit political messages in novels where people complain about it the most), most of the entire novel is a giant screed against our “modern male dominated society”. Some of the female inmates were sort of interesting and/or had a legitimate beef, but the whole women versus man conflict that was the backbone of the story was way, way overcooked, and has been handled better by others in many other novels. Many or most of the men here were gun-toting, violent, hard-drinking drinking sexually predatory charicatures of real people, and I was turned off by the suggestion that men are basically bad and women are basically good. Bah Humbug. So now I see where many of the really bad reviews came from. In this case, the Stephen King bashing that is au courant seems justified. Of course I’ll be around for the the next SK novel. I just hope it’s the pure unadulterated stuff. Owen needs some seasoning before he’s ready for prime time.Not recommended.J.M Tepper

⭐ Before I am labled a King hater, let me make this clear, I am a King MEGA MEGA MEGA fan. I just finished rereading The Stand, It and Bag of Bones, enjoying them more now than when read originally. Adored them. For the post part have read 80% of SK’s books.So? I thought the premise of this sounded interesting.Wow, was I in for a disappointment.I can’t see how Sleeping Beauties could be compared to any of King’s past novels. To me, knowing King’s writing style,He didn’t write it. His son did.To me there was none of King’s character development, no continuity in plot!Why in God’s name did it take place in a prison community , and what were The Orange is the New Black, Breaking Bad references all about ? I mean it rambled here there so much I could not follow it.If anyone says this resembles any of Kings past writing,No way.Eve interested me. And she seemed like a character from American Horror Story Roanoke. Was she a witch, druid. Mother Earth ?I can’t say it’s the first bad King novel I’ve read because it’s not his writing. I’ve read enough Stephen King to know that.2 seperate writers ye shall stay, please!!!Father and Son.(A fox too?)

⭐ I hesitate to write this because I have not finished the book. But that is part of why I think it is a good time to write it. I am a voracious reader and have been a Stephen King fan since I was in he 4th grade (when I used to sneak reading my dad’s copy of The Shining, about 1984). I am always unsure about collaborations, but some I have definitely enjoyed, like The Talisman and Black House. This one rather leaves me wishing I a cocoon would envelope *my* face.Slogfest. I purchased this book at the end of September 2017 and I’m only about 40% the way through. I keep reading when I am in the mood to wade through it (though I often fall asleep) because I keep insisting to myself I must give it a fair chance and I must finish it. But it just feels like so much work, like I am waiting to get to the good part of the story…and I’m not sure it’s ever going to come! I’ve read religious scriptures less boring than this book. I loved the idea of it, but it isn’t at all what I hoped for or expected, which I guess was more of a “Children of Men” type of theme with a world devolved into chaos and darkness.The summary and literary reviews suggest that is what I will find, eventually. Re-reading the summary it’s hard to believe it’s the same book. If I can ever get past the 50% mark maybe. To be 300 pages into a 700 page book and not have gotten close to the summary that is posted about it has been disappointing and very boring. This amount of set up seems way overblown. Usually with Stephen King’s books I can hardly wait to pick it up again and stay up way past my bedtime reading. That is definitely not the case with this one.I’ll update when I finish the book, hopefully sometime in 2018…

⭐ This isn’t a *bad* book. But it isn’t very good either. Like many of you, I’m an SK “constant reader”, and recognized some of his characteristic touches and tricks in certain parts of “Sleeping Beauties”. But it also displays flaws that no other Stephen King novel falls prey to, which I can only attribute to Owen King being still in the process of learning his craft.The main problem (for me, anyway; ymmv) is that the characters just somehow never come alive. By the very end of the book, I was still experiencing moments when a character would be mentioned and I would ask myself, “Who is that? And what am I supposed to remember about them, and where do they fit into the story?” (I’ll contrast that with “The Stand” or “Under The Dome” in which, even with their casts of thousands, I never had any trouble remembering who’s who and why I should care.) And even the better-drawn characters (the ones I could actually keep track of) seemed oddly two-dimensional.Which is related to my other main problem with the book: The allegorical and sexual-politics aspects of the work are handled in a very thudding, heavy-handed way, and often to the detriment of any sense that the book describes real people doing real things. In particular, the way that some of the character-arcs resolve feels patently false; not like natural outworkings of where psychology and experience would lead that particular person, but instead just where the story needed them to be to fit the points the authors are trying to make. This works in a short book like “Animal Farm”, but in a work like “Sleeping Beauties”, in which you’re expected to spend 700 pages with these (so-called) people, it’s rather unsatisfying.On the other hand, the central conceit of the story — the engine that makes it go — is an interesting one, and fun to play with mentally. And the story is action-packed; it drags you right along. So I’ll probably reread this book sooner or later, and enjoy entertaining its concepts again. But without any characters I can truly believe in, it’s not a book I’ll ever love.

⭐ So I’m trying my damnedest to finish this long slog of a book. I have nothing against King and King’s liberal leanings. I consider myself a liberal, too. But it’s pretty ham fisted and, well, frankly comes across feeling pretty arrogant and condescending. Every male in the book is either a wimp or a beer swilling, yeehaw shouting hick. I love the premise of the book. There are parts of it that are imaginative and engaging. But the characters are completely one dimensional and lifeless. Every time I pick up the book I have to try to remember who these characters are (okay, Frank is… um, who is he? Oh, yeah, the dog catcher!) And, sorry ladies, I just don’t think human society is going to collapse within 24 hours of being womanless. Months, maybe. Years. But one day and there are roving bands of crazed men burning women in bonfires? Without even trying to find a cure? Without waiting to see if they wake up, um, tomorrow maybe? Haha! Sorry, it just strains my credibility a little much. Maybe there is a second plague going on behind the scenes, which turns men into blithering, helpless, violent infants. I’m not sure. I guess I’ll see if I can make it through to the end. Only about halfway through it now and it is a chore. If the stupidity keeps up, however, I’m going to mark it as a miss and move on to Joe Hill’s new book.

⭐ Always an avid King fan. I bought every book, including the non-fiction. Some of the fiction is better than others, but this mess…OMG. It reminded me of that old fable about stone soup–con artists trick locals by claiming to make soup from stone but villagers must help by adding carrots and potatoes and meat. This book started with loads of potatoes and carrots and more potatoes and carrots and it never became soup. His usual great characters. And there they went–in circles because it never became a cogent story. And then the fantasy element of talking animals…another element that went nowhere but around and around. I won’t buy his next one without reading a sample and waiting for reviews.This was a total bust.

⭐ This is the first I’ve read of Owen King but I’ve read SK for over twenty five years. This is possibly my least favorite of any of his books. The story and setup had promise but it quickly became filled with repetitive stereotypes of both men and women. I think this played to the characters being bland and by the end of the book I had a hard time remembering who was who. The third act had more attention to the Kings politics than winding up the story that just kinda peters out. This may be one I will never read again.

⭐ This book was incredible. In the beginning I was wondering where it was going through go to make it work. I could never have imagined. I was completely engrossed and fell in love with some of the characters. I even cried a few times. The tears just came. The story premise is strange and has a “supernatural” element to it but there are so many truths in it too. The harsh realities of the nature of a good percentage of men. The strength of women and their weakness for the men who destroy them. I can’t say enough about this book but I don’t want to give anything away.

⭐ I have read every Stephen King novel, and usually am so into the story, that I finish it within 2 to 3 days. Not this one. I kept putting it down, reading something else, and then coming back to it. I kept thinking the story would get better, but that never happened. I found the story to be very drawn out. There was way to much fluff in it, which made it really boring. I found the character Evie interesting, and would have loved to learn more about her, especially since she was such a pivotal character. Instead, we were given a meaningless lead character. Maybe, if the authors didn’t have so many characters, they could have devoted more time into building up Evie. Being this was co authored by Mr. King, I kinda thought it would be along the lines of his other novels. A bit of horror, a bit of humanity, a bit of humor. This story, felt lacking in every way possible. 3 stars was the best I could do.

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