Anexis Matos

Fairy Tale is the second book I read by Stephen King. I have an entirely different experience with this book than Sleeping Beauties. If you’d like to see my review of Sleeping Beauties, check it out below. I recommend that you read it before continuing this one. That way, you can compare my two different experiences.

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King: An Interesting Future

Synopsis

Charlie inherits a house from a man who he helped some time earlier. There, he finds a cassette tape with a very strange story about another world.

Book Information

Genre: Fantasy
Category: Adult
Explicit violence: Yes
Explicit sex: No
Content warnings I noticed: Discussions of alcoholism and graphic violence
This is a standalone.

Review

The prose is really good. Accessible and easy to read. Personally, I find his prose in this book a lot better than in Sleeping Beauties. It’s not as dry and it’s also something I can see myself physically reading.

For the most part, this story is told in Charlie’s point of view. It’s told in first person retrospective. However, there is one chapter where the point of view changes to Radar’s. Radar’s chapter is written in third person present tense. I didn’t see why this change was made and it pulled me out of the story.

King uses soft world-building and a soft magic system. My two favorite things. I will say, however, that I believe the magic should have been explained better. I’m not sure how the magic works.

Like Sleeping Beauties, Fairy Tale is very character-driven. The plot is important to the story, but the characters are at its center. There should always be a balance between characters and plot, but plot should never be more important than characters. Characters make your story. Plot is an added ingredient.

The pacing is very good. It’s a slow-burn book. I’m a slow-burn reader, so I was super into it. The plot doesn’t fully begin until about 50 or 60 percent of the story, so, if you’d like to read something faster, this book isn’t for you.

The themes are explored well. Everything is given enough page time. There are very complicated family dynamics which I loved.

The characters are very interesting. Because I read Sleeping Beauties, I expected a big cast of characters. Unfortunately, not everyone gets an equal amount of page time. That’s the problem I find with a big cast of characters. However, while they don’t get an equal amount of page time, they all get very satisfying arcs.

Here’s a very fun fact. At some point in the book, King makes a reference to one of his other works. It happened so fast I almost didn’t notice. I find this so fascinating. I haven’t seen an author reference their own work.

With this book, there are two things that both bothered and confused me. Broad spoilers in the next few paragraphs. If you don’t want to be spoiled, skip to my conclusion.

At some point in the book, we find out that Charlie is the chosen prince. There’s a legend that’s not very well explained and the prisoners realize who he is and help him keep it secret. The main reason they figure this out is because his hair turns blond. Later, his eyes change to blue.

I don’t understand why this happened. Why not let him have the same appearance throughout the entire story? After he saves everyone, his appearance changes back to normal. I’m not sure how to feel about it. It came off strange, but it’s such a small part of the story that it doesn’t matter.

The second thing is that one of the characters is blind due to the curse. On one hand, I’m happy for the attempt at representation. It’s fine and it fits the setting. Also, the way Charlie perceives the blind character makes sense to me. I’ve experienced similar reactions.

At the same time, I didn’t enjoy reading it. He plays such a small part that, if he was removed, the story wouldn’t have changed. He could have been replaced by any of the other characters.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a great story. I had an amazing time reading it. I rate it four stars.