Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King

First Line: Ree asked Jeanette if she ever watched the square of light from the window.

The reports began coming out of Australia, and then it seemed, within the blink of an eye, it was all over the globe. Women were going to sleep and not waking up, a sticky white substance forming a cocoon around their bodies. It was very quickly learned that if those cocoons were disturbed in any way, the women would wake up and react with incredible violence.

In the women's correctional facility outside the small Appalachian town of Dooling, a mysterious woman calling herself "Eve Black" is immune to the sleeping disease. As knowledge of this woman makes its way outside the prison, the men find themselves dividing into two factions. One side believes she could be part of a cure and must be kept alive; the other believes she's a demon who must be killed.

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted." As I read that quote in the very beginning pages of Sleeping Beauties, I wondered if Mitch McConnell ever thought he'd make an appearance in a bestselling novel. My next thought was that this particular quotation could mean a very political slant to the story. I was looking forward to finding out whether or not it did.

Most of the action in this novel takes place in a women's prison, which undoubtedly symbolizes how many women are confined to various sorts of prisons-- physical and otherwise-- around the world. Other than that, I did not find Sleeping Beauties to have some huge political agenda. What I did find was my dreaded "too much middle" that slowed down the story. I also found a cast of characters at the beginning that was long enough to choke a horse, but I didn't panic... and I didn't get the characters confused even though many of them appeared so briefly I wondered why they were mentioned in the first place. 

There was a glimmer of brilliance from time to time, like a description of stupidity that made me laugh (and almost cry) in sympathy, or a scene in which we learn what happened to a teenage boy who decided to rape a cocooned elderly woman. But the characters-- even the ones I liked-- never really came to life for me, and that's one of the reasons why I love reading Stephen King's books. Add to that all those pages that could've been left out, and I found the middle third of the book tedious going.

The only thing that kept me going forward eagerly was wanting to know what happened to all those sleeping women. To say that I was disappointed in their final decision would be an understatement. But perhaps the Kings, father and son, wanted to see how many women would be disappointed? It's hard to say. What I will say, however, is that the collaboration between Stephen and Owen King was not a total success for me. Of course, your mileage may vary.
 

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King

ISBN: 9781501163401

Scribner © 2017

Hardcover, 720 pages

Fantasy, Standalone

Rating: C

Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.

Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Title: Graveminder
Author: Melissa Marr
ISBN: 9780061826870
Publisher: William Morrow, 2011
Hardcover, 336 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: B-
Source: Publicist

First Line: Maylene put one hand atop the stone for support; pulling herself up from the soil got harder every year.

Rebekkah Barrow must return to the small town of Claysville-- the town she's been trying to escape most of her life-- to attend her beloved grandmother's funeral. Many times as a child Bek would accompany Maylene, and she never forgot the peculiar ritual her grandmother would always perform: she would take three sips from a silver flask and say, "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

As Bek stays in her grandmother's home, she discovers that there is more than meets the eye in Claysville's strange funeral rituals. The worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected in this town, and if the dead are not properly cared for, they will return to the land of the living to sate themselves with food, drink, and stories. Only the Graveminder-- a role that Bek has inherited-- and the Undertaker--Byron Montgomery, a man with whom Bek shares a complicated past-- can set things right once the dead begin to walk.

I was sent this book by the publicist unsolicited, which can be a very dangerous thing. I am under no obligation to read or review books I haven't requested. To add to the mix, fantasy is not a genre that I care for. But something about this book caught my eye, and the book did hold my interest throughout.

Bek and Byron are both well-drawn characters, and I sympathized with their previous attempts to avoid what they didn't realize was their destiny. The descriptions of the land of the dead and the people who live there were creepy and made me uneasy, and the dead walking in Claysville actually gave me the shivers.

Only two things marred this book for me. The person behind all the evil doings was easily deduced, which took away some of the suspense. Also, even though Bek and Byron were new to their roles, by the end when they were surrounded by a group of the "bad guys", they dispatched them very easily off stage. I feel the suspense would have been ratcheted up even more if everything had been kept on stage and if they'd had more problems in trying to set things right.

Am I now hooked on the fantasy genre? No. But I did enjoy reading this book. I would imagine that fans of this type of book will enjoy it even more than I did.

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