Fairy Tale

I love fantasy worlds. Fairy Tale took me to unimaginable places with characters so bizarrely unique that each new encounter left me amused and astonished! And who wouldn’t love a story about a boy wanting to save an old dog?

This Stephen King book is unlike any of his others, so don’t expect to be horrified. Expect, instead, to be carried along on a challenging adventure that never quits. Yes, there are monsters, but the focus is on how Charlie is able to meet them all and somehow remain alive—and changed—by the end of the story.

King brings old fairy… show more.

I’m a big fan of Stephen King so when I saw he was writing what I nicknamed Narnia for grown-ups I was very excited and this book did not disappoint. 

King is a master of the slow-burn character build up, and when the time came, I was almost disappointed to be leaving his version of the ‘real world’ in favor of exploring the fantastical. The relationship between our main characters was is well crafted and I was so invested that it wasn’t until Charlie started getting curious about the Shed and the Money that I even remembered we were building… show more.

I’ve always been a fan of King’s work, and the title of this intrigued me. When I began reading it, I was hooked.

It is the story of Charlie, a teenager with a bad past who yearns to be a better person. This really spoke to me and mirrors my own life to an extent. Charlie finds his chance when he saves Howard Bowditch from a fall and encounters the man’s pet dog, Radar, who is also old and failing with only limited time left.

Radar’s plight, the love Charlie and others who know Radar feel for him, actually made… show more.

Stephen King is a master storyteller. I’ve always loved his work, and this was no exception. It was another of those books that kept me reading a long past bedtime.

It’s a simple story: a teenage boy helps a grumpy old man out and is rewarded with lots more work and an epic adventure to save a dog. I must stress that the dog is a very good girl. The old man and the teen both have varying levels of goodness, depending on circumstance.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I love the world-building in this story… show more.

I don’t just want to pick this for the sake of it, but I found the first half of the book engrossing as it takes place in our world, and the second half quite dull in places as though the author was on unfamiliar territory with fantasy and just wanted it over with.

The fantasy otherworld I felt wasn’t handled anywhere near as well as Clive Barker would have done which, given King’s amazing ability of describing real scenes and people, became very apparent in his lack of ability to describe things that don’t exist. I enjoyed the book overall… show more.

When most people think of Stephen King, they think of horror. And while he’s very much known for his tales of ghosts and ghouls, he writes a lot more than that. Fairy Tale is one such example. It hits the ground running with a shocking opening, but then it subtly shifts gears into, really, what it says right there on the cover of the book: a fairy tale. 

In his dedication, King notes that he wrote it thinking of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard. I also saw strong influences by L. Frank Baum, and C.S. Lewis.… show more.

I was hooked immediately because Stephen King is wonderful at telling stories narrated by children. And this one starts through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy as he tells his story through the next decade. I really loved the protagonist, Charlie Reade, who remains a (mostly) good person despite what he’s been through.

I also loved the parallel universe, the elderly neighbor, and his dog. I was thrilled the dog, Radar, is an ongoing character. When Charlie meets her, she is an aging German Shepherd, which tickled me as my daughter also owns an aging female German Shepherd.

I've been… show more.

I love a good fairy tale reinvention, a unique spin on a familiar story. In this novel, Stephen King blends countless elements of classic fairy tales, including giants, a mermaid, and a talking horse — just to name a few — and seamlessly weaves them into an unlikely hero’s journey through a parallel world.

But in typical King fashion, this story isn’t a glittery Disney remake. Fairy Tale is set in a dark, gritty world with a horrible, disfiguring curse looming over a haunted kingdom.

The first third of the book is a slow burn, but the writing is so… show more.

The building blocks for this story are a developing intergenerational neighbor relationship, a source of gold, greed, a door to another world, and a hero.

King is a trustworthy storyteller. My most favorite of all his books is the one he wrote for his children. Fairy Tale, published in 2022, is a solid second. On a gore scale of one being none and ten being blood on every page, this one is about a four. It’s good fun. If you enjoy lingering in the alternate worlds he creates (608 pages!), this one will not disappoint.