Elevation

Elevation – by Stephen King

Imagine going to see a movie at your local movie theater.  You plop down your $10 or so, get settled in your seat, and the entire movie is only 20 minutes long.  Regardless of how good the movie was, wouldn’t you feel a bit cheated if you had spent that much money and received so little, quantity wise?  I couldn’t help thinking that after I read this very brief, small book that costs $19.99 in only one sitting.

This isn’t a first for Stephen King, and I’m sure other authors have done this from time to time as well. I’m not sure why, though.  Stephen King has a plethora of short story compilations as well as a few volumes containing four ‘shorter’ novellas.  Why wasn’t this story included in one of those as opposed to a self-standing volume?  Was this his decision?  His publishers?  An accountant’s move?

This was a good story.  Not great, but good.  I think I would have enjoyed it much more had it been included in one of the aforementioned compilations I mentioned. I can’t help but feel that many readers probably felt cheated.  To be fair, I checked this book out from my local library, so I don’t feel personally ripped-off, but for the diehard who must collect every hardback book by their favorite author, I can’t help but think they would feel somewhat duped.  Anyway….

This story is a bit like The Twilight Zone meets The Hallmark Channel.  Scott Carey is a middle-aged divorced man who lives in the sleepy town of (where else?) Castle Rock, Maine.  One day he discovers a strange phenomenon; he’s losing weight.  He’s losing weight fast.  What’s odd is that his body doesn’t physically show this reduction in mass.  In fact, when he holds heavy objects while standing on the bathroom scale, the objects aren’t calculated in the total weight that the scale displays.  (eerie music fades in.)    Meanwhile, he has a run in with a newly arrived lesbian married couple who have opened a new restaurant in his sleepy town.  The sleepy town is also small and conservative, so many inhabitants stay away from the restaurant and make snickering comments to each other in closed circles.  A married lesbian couple?  In OUR town??  Scott Carey makes an effort to change minds and enlighten the community.

What does his weird weight loss and his desire to spread kindness and understanding have to do with each other?  Well, not much really, but King still manages to weave the two plots together and tell an interesting story.  It’s a sweet piece of work, if not particularly memorable.  I’ve mentioned in several of my reviews that Stephen King will probably never escape the “Horror Author” moniker, and this is somewhat unfair as his repertoire stretches over much broader strokes.  This book is an example; no horror, just a strange unexplained occurrence that factors into the story.

I really enjoyed this book, yet couldn’t help but think that for most people, it would be wiser to spend the $20 or so elsewhere to get a better bang for their buck – or book.

End of Watch

End of Watch – by Stephen King

O.K. First thing’s first: this is part 3 of Stephen King’s “Bill Hodges” trilogy, but this book is actually a sequel to the first book of the series – Mr. Mercedes.  In fact, I would strongly recommend that you don’t read this one until you read Mr. Mercedes.   The second book of the trilogy, Finders Keepers, has the same characters yet it’s completely unrelated to the plot of the other two.  To be fair, all three of these books are pretty good, but I’m not really a fan of books that ‘continue the story’ of an earlier book without giving the reader some sort of warning or introductory chapter that catches the reader up who may have not read the earlier work or, in my case, read it but forgot most of it.   Ironically King did just this with his ‘Dark Tower’ series of books.  He gave a nice handy recap at the beginning of each subsequent volume so the reader could easily transition into the new story.  He didn’t do that here.  He should have.

So I wasn’t really happy with the first 100 pages or so. Fortunately, by the time I finally got that far, I was able to remember the bulk of Mr. Mercedes since King, thankfully, frequently interjected many of the key plot events into this new story.   Again, good for me, but what about the reader who didn’t have the luxury of reading the first book before this one?  Well, King keeps things fresh in this novel since he adds his trademark woo-woo to this particular novel. By ‘woo-woo’ I mean the unseen, unexplained, supernatural that makes readers suspend their disbelief.  King doesn’t apply this supernatural twist to many of his books. In fact, both books 1 and 2 of this trilogy were basically simple detective/thriller stories.  This made it somewhat jarring if one was expecting the same, straightforward story this time around.

To give a brief summary of the plot, retired Detective Bill Hodges and his ‘team’ have moved on about eight years since they foiled the terrorist plot of Brady Hartsfield (‘Mr. Mercedes’). Hartsfield was seriously injured in his failed attempt and is now in a vegetative state at the local hospital doing nothing, it seems, but staring into space. Bill Hodges and members of the local police check in on Hartsfield from time to time to see if there’s any improvement in his condition.  You get the feeling that everyone wishes he would improve so they can take the bastard out and lynch him.  Although Hartsfield is basically a blank slate, Hodges can’t help but think that something isn’t right about Hartsfield.  Is he really that far-gone?  Or is he brilliantly faking out the rest of the world and only pretending to be a fried noodle so he can “get away” with his heinous acts that he committed several years ago?

Here’s where the woo-woo comes in.  I won’t go into detail but let’s just say that a less-than-ethical doctor starts administering less-than-ethical drugs to Hartsfield to experiment, and things go wrong.  Before we know it, Hartsfield is able to control people outside of his confined hospital walls and do much of the damage that was denied him when the Bill Hodges and his crew foiled his plans and saved the day many years ago.

This book is much more akin to King’s style than the first two books of the trilogy.  After so many books by King that are similar, you really don’t feel like that you’re exploring new territory, but you feel satisfied overall with the journey and the conclusion.  It’s a bit like visiting a new amusement park and riding a roller coaster.  Sure, you may not have ridden this particular roller coaster before, but you still feel satisfied after the ride was over, even though it wasn’t that much different than most every other roller coaster you’ve ridden at every other amusement park.

As great of an author as King is, he still displays serious limitations at times.  I won’t go into many of his violations that grate on my nerves since the majority of them are (thankfully) absent from this book.  In this particular book, though, King is guilty of overcommunicating some of the facts that he’s trying to get across to the reader.  This is awfully apparent with his main character Bill Hodges.  Bill is old (approaching 70) and is in pretty-bad shape health wise.  For whatever reason, King feels obligated to remind us of this fact on just about every single page.  

Every. Single. Page.

It really becomes frustrated to read over and over and over and over and over again dialogue such as:

“Bill clutched the side of his stomach in pain….”
“Bill was feeling particularly awful since his medication was wearing off…..”
“Bill’s stomach could only handle banana pudding…..”
“Bill felt worse than when he got shot in the leg 30 years ago…..”
“Bill hoped that throwing up would make him feel better…..”

And on and on and on.    Every. Single. Page.  If you’re reading this review, Mr. King, this really isn’t necessary.  Reminding your readers of Bill’s condition every 20 pages or so is fine, but good Lord……

So a good book and a satisfying entry and ending to the trilogy.  I should also point out that one of the main characters in this book, Holly Gibney, is prevalently featured in a later book of King’s: The Outsider.  To be fair, I think it’s o.k. that King retire Gibney, as well as the rest of the characters from this series.  It was a fun run, but it’s time to move on.

Semper Fi: The Corps Series Book 1

Semper Fi: The Corps Series Book 1 by W.E.B. Griffin

I recently finished this author’s 9 book series “The Brotherhood Of War”.  Although I enjoyed that series overall, I thought the latter books in that collection left a bit to be desired and that Griffin should have probably quit after six or seven instead of stretching the narrative to nine. Not only did the later works seem forced, but I simply became too tired of the same characters, the repetitive scenarios, and the overwhelming military jargon.  Having said that, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to even tackle this “The Corps” series.  I figured that it would probably be more of the same.  After reading the first book, I can honestly say that I’m glad I made the decision to start this one, yet it wouldn’t surprise me if I have the same feelings and reservations once I make it to the last few books of THIS series (there are ten total).

I liked this book because, unlike most of The Brotherhood of War books, it felt like the author is letting his story breathe a bit more.  There isn’t quite so much military terminology, jargon, nor acronyms. I felt like I was reading a good old fashion story by a good old fashion author.  This is by no means a “brilliant” book; W.E.B. Griffin should never be confused with a Pulitzer Prize winner nor with an author that would make any type of New York Times Best Seller list.  It’s a fairly simple story and the short length allows things to move at a fairly steady pace.  It’s very obvious at the conclusion of this book that there’s much more story to tell, but fans of this author have come to expect a “series of books” as opposed to a stand-alone story.

What also made this book a bit different compared to The Brotherhood of War series is that Griffin focuses the majority of this book on only one character.  Yes, there are a few more scattered throughout the pages, yet only Corporal Kenneth “Killer” McCoy seems to be the focus for at least the first 2/3 of the novel. The story begins in early 1941 where McCoy is stationed in China.  China was already fighting the Japanese in World War II, yet the U.S. wouldn’t enter until December of that year when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  Still, most in the military inner circle knew that it was a only a matter of when, not if, the U.S. would get involved in the global conflict.

Corporal McCoy is one of those characters that we read about in many war novels, as well as see in many war movies.  He’s young, arrogant, cocky, and downright insubordinate.  Such a rogue would probably find himself court martialed in the military, but McCoy is damn good at what he does, so after several close calls with the top military brass, he’s eventually given a free pass at all of his misdeeds and belligerent antics. He seems to be the only one capable of the difficult, delicate work that he’s asked to do.  This kid might even have what it takes to be an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

This is definitively an R-rated book.  There’s plenty of cursing, drunkenness, debauchery, and loose women around.  I actually learned what it means when a solider states that he needs to go out on the town and get his “ashes hauled”.  If you don’t know what that means, I’ll just say that it means exactly what you’re probably thinking it means.  We also see McCoy get involved seriously with a woman or two throughout the story, and things never seem to go as they should in a W.E.B. Griffin novel where serious romance is concerned.  At least they don’t in the first book; I’m sure things will settle down after another book or two.

In many ways, though, the similarities between this book and the whole Brotherhood of War series of books do become somewhat apparent.  Fortunately, though, there was enough freshness here for me not to feel like I was reading the exact same story all over again with slightly different characters.  Hopefully I’ll have the same reaction after completing most, if not all, of the other books in The Corps series as well.