'On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the 'steam' that children with the 'shining' produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
'Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him and a job at a nursing home where his remnant 'shining' power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes 'Doctor Sleep.'
'Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival.'
The Shining was the first Stephen King book that I read, and probably one of the first film adaptation of his work that I saw (I'm not including the time I saw IT when I was way too young and ran out of the room the first time Pennywise killed a kid). I found the tale of the magic boy at the mercy of evil spirits to be both terrifying and gripping, and read through the book really fast. As such, I was hugely excited when it was announced that a sequel story was coming out. I began reading Doctor Sleep when it first came out, but never finished it thanks to life issues interrupting.
It wasn't until I went to see IT Chapter Two in the cinema last week that I even remembered the book existed, reminded thanks to an awesome trailer for the film adaptation. Having found the trailer to be really good, and knowing that I'd probably see it I thought that it was well past time that I gave the book another try. This time I found the book drew me in, and I read through it in a couple of days.
Doctor Sleep is something of a bold sequel, casting aside a lot of what made-up the original and doing its own thing. This isn't a story about ghosts, or of Danny Torrance being a victim. Instead, it focuses on the nature of the powers that Danny had in the first book, and showed readers that not only were there others that had these abilities, but they could do things that even Danny couldn't.
The book is spread out over a number of years, close to two decades, and shows the affect that the events of The Shining had on Danny. We discover that not only did the events leave him somewhat traumatised, understandably, but that the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel continued to haunt him even after the destruction of the hotel itself. Despite learning how to deal with these spirits Danny falls into a spiral of depression thanks to his abilities, and uses spirits of another kind to block out his visions.
Danny becoming an alcoholic was something of a shock to me, but it made some degree of sense. Not only did it help him to deal with his powers and to stop his nightmares, but it connected him more with his father Jack, who was an alcoholic too. Thankfully, over the course of the early stages of the book Danny hits his rock bottom and comes across people that are willing to help him, and we get to see him put his life back together, eventually becoming an upstanding member of the community and beloved citizen.
This alone would have made for an interesting narrative, as I enjoyed seeing how Danny dealt with the horrors of the Overlook and how he put his life back together, but King had other plans in mind, and introduces a whole new mythology. We learn that Danny is far from the only person with abilities, and learn that not only are there people all over the US with varying degrees of the shining, but a group that are preying upon them.
This group, the True Knot, are people that have the shining, but have transformed themselves into things that are no longer human. Using their abilities, they locate and kidnap children with the shine, before torturing and killing them in order to harvest their life essence. This essence, or steam as they call it, keeps them young and allows them to live for centuries. When Danny is contacted by a little girl with a powerful shine, Abra, he gets drawn into a fight to save her from the True Knot and defeat the killers.
The True Knot make for an interesting group of adversaries for the heroes of the book, and leads to a number of confrontations. The book is good at building them up, and by the time Danny and his friends come up against them you're aware of how formidable they are. Whilst some early wins show that they're not unbeatable, there's still a huge amount of tension for the final conflict on the site of the old Overlook Hotel.
The fact that the book doesn't just use The Shining to establish its universe, but revisits it really helps Doctor Sleep. The book easily stands on its own, but the inclusion of these elements helps it to feel like a bigger world. I know that it already is, as many Stephen King books exist in the same universe, and The Shining has already been established in the same universe as Misery and IT, but getting to go back to the Overlook, and seeing some of those same ghosts again adds a whole lot more.
Doctor Sleep left me pleasantly surprised, and I think it might be one of the Stephen King books that I enjoyed the most. Hopefully the new adaptation will be able to capture a lot of this magic and will also prove to be a good sequel.
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