I recently read "Fairy Tale" by Stephen King and found it to be quite enjoyable. As a fan of King's work, I found this book to be a great addition to his collection, and although it's not his best work, it's still a solid read.
The plot is intriguing and kept me engaged throughout the book. It's a classic story of good versus evil, but with a modern twist that makes it somewhat unique. The characters are well-developed xD. The villains are okayish terrifying and give the book a sense of urgency and danger.
King's writing style is, as always, fantastic.
One thing I particularly enjoyed about this book was the use of fairy tales as a theme. King's re-imagining of these classic tales was refreshing and added a layer of depth to the story that kept me hooked xD.
Though the book does have its flaws. At times, the plot can be confusing, and the ending is somewhat underwhelming. There are also a few scenes that drag on for too long and could have been cut down.
Overall, "Fairy Tale" is a moderately enjoyable read that will kept me entertained from beginning to end. It may not be King's best work, but it's still worth picking up.
Dunno why I'm writing this, but I'm kind of eager to share.
by imagine-aincrad
45 Comments
One of the most disappointing books I’ve read in a while. For how long it is, it barely has anything to say. The way the two big baddies are dispatched is so lazy and for much the prisoner battles was hyped up the matched ended up meaning nothing except to thin down the cast. There is a lot wrong with the story. My PSA is skip this one.
the beginning definitely dragged for me but when the first major point in the plot (at least for me) happened, i couldn’t put the book down and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the read! 😇
I agree. There was one quote I liked.
“Time is the water, Charlie. Life is just the bridge it flows under.” Stephen King
I really liked the first part, even if it could have been just a few pages I loved the development of the relationships among the characters and it was incredibly well written. The second part didn’t work as well – it seemed to me like the idea was half developed, and the plot was really predictable – but overall it was a really enjoyable read for me.
It’s the only king book that I’ve been unable to finish, I’ve been sitting at around 70% for months now. The prison section is so bloody boring, I don’t care about any of these characters
I made the mistake of listening to the audio book. The narrator was shrieking in these God awful voices most of the time.
The beginning was exciting and I was genuinely intrigued. Halfway through I was so bored by the journey and annoyed by those damn voices I stopped and listened to The Dark Tower series instead.
The one thing Fairy Tale convinced me is that I’d love King to write a straight ‘slice of life’ book in a small town as he’s so great at it.
Loved the beginning of the book and read thru it in a day. Then when he goes to the alternate universe it goes downhill hard. It took me a month to get thru the rest. I normally don’t continue reading if I’m not enjoying it but it’s King!
I finished it but I thought it could have been executed much better. Compared to his last novel Billy Summers, this one was a disappointment. I’ve been reading King since a little kid and read like 99% of his books. This one was at the bottom along with Black House, Cell and Wolves of Calla.
I liked it well enough. Decent, but not amazing.
But, I feel like King hasn’t spoken to anyone under 50 in many years. I’m also getting the feeling King doesn’t read much or he reads and takes away weird things. Like ‘I want to do portal fantasy, but my own (fairy tale)” or I want to do a super power school book ,but my own” (institute), but they’re never quite as good as what’s out there.
The sundial. Super important, then completely irrelevant.
Am I weird for liking the first chunk of the book where it’s a mystery in our world more than everything in the Fairy Tale world?
I enjoyed it, Fairy Tale was a nice mellow Christmas break read.
It seems the older King gets, the less tolerance or desire he has to gruesomely describe the brutalization or horrific death of children and the more his characters wind up with happy (or least less terrible) endings. It’s interesting to me, like is he a grandpa now and just doesn’t have as much heart to write those things?
Currently re-reading (listening to) the extended edition of The Stand, it’s been about 15 years since my last read and wow. He was not afraid to kill kids back then.
I liked it, although I found the prison subplot boring. It made me wonder what if King had written scripts for the TV show “Grimm”?
Whatever happened to good editors?
This book was like so many others produced in recent years.
At least a third of it could have been removed.
Ridiculous amounts of padding and repetition throughout.
Like an idiot I always plough on until the end.
The end result is “I am glad that is over” instead of “What a great read”
The actual ending itself was also a damp squib.
Loved the first 3/4. It took me awhile to finish
I enjoyed it. Unlike others, I enjoyed the audiobook, and thought he did really well. I agree that the ending was underwhelming, but thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book and have recommended it to others
My unpopular take – I did not like FT. It had more characters than a Russian novel. Three Russian novels. I had no problem sorting out the players in multi-character THE STAND. But I struggled to recall why Peterkin (or whoever) and that frigging red cricket were relevant to the latest blind alley crisis. The “we who are about to die salute you” stuff between the prisoners and degenerate ruling class was exciting as hell – also exciting when SPARTACUS and GLADIATOR did it. A boy and his dog? Harlan Ellison would sue.
Murmurations of monarchs has been done. Derivative.
To me this was another example of a brilliantly page turning vehicle that was ultimately “long-winded King.”
And I have read 100% of his best stuff SHINING, DEAD ZONE, SALEMS LOT, PET CEMETERY, MISERY, THE STAND and a dozen others. And I’ve read almost all of the “long-winded King” books he now confesses were coke driven efforts.
(Hello TOMMYKNOCKERS.)
King is my favorite “genre” author whatever that means.
Always hard to top ERB, REH, and HPL as cited in his dedication. King is still my most consistent favorite.
Director Paul Greengrass (NEWS OF THE WORLD, CAPT PHILIPS, BOURNE…) snapped up the FAIRY TALE film rights immediately. God help him. My son works at an indy bookstore and bought me the first copy from the first box he ripped open. That’s how hard core I am.
Not saying the Emperor has no clothes, but this all seemed threadbare at 600 pages. Flashes of brilliance therein, but…
Agree 100%. Enjoyed, not his best, but good. It starts out really well, and kind of loses steam.
Can I get it spoiled a little
I do believe King would be great at high fantasy. The dark tower series was so unique.
This was a rare do not finish for me. I just couldn’t get into it. Q
I completely agree, this book was really enjoyable. I discussed about it for a ELA reading project. (I kinda thought I wouldn’t be allowed to cause of the profanities). I got it at my local Walmart and it was actually my first read by Stephen King and I was honestly amazed by how well he was able to describe a boy in high school so realistically and how it wasn’t all glamoured. The MC was really realistic and genuine. He didn’t make the MC seem like a perfect kid or like stereotypical and I find it very difficult to find any books that don’t that do that within books I commonly see floating around when I visit book stores. Overall, this book has a pretty realistic portrayal discussing family loss, discovery, and life in high school.
Edit: as boring as the prison section was, it was still kinda nice to read. It would’ve been worse if the prison part wasn’t included since it would’ve been a gap in the book.
I love all his work
I’d heard a lot about this novel before I read it, mostly to do with the second half being underwhelming. I absolutely adored the first half and read it in a few days, but half way through, when >!Radar finally reaches the roundabout and becomes young again (tear inducing, for somebody with an old dog)!< I just put the book down to go to sleep, and just.. never picked it up again, with no desire to. I had very little interest in the side plots, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s where it ended for me, with >!presumably Charlie and Radar sneaking their way out, and somebody else solving the gargantuan problems that Empis faces!<. I’ve never done this with a book before, but I think doing this with Fairy Tale has left me with very fond memories of it, rather than burning out into boredom as I’d suspect I would.
Sorry this typing was a mistake while my phone is in the pocket.
I loved his Eyes of the Dragon, another fantasy magical tale. Got to look into this new one.
So I just finished reading it a few minutes ago, took me about a week, which is pretty fast for me, I usually take at least a couple months to read a book. All in all, I thought it was honestly pretty decent, but this is also only the second King book I’ve read, with the first being The Institute (which I really enjoyed), so nothing to compare it to. As everyone says, he had me in the first half, the whole Deep Maleen and Fair One sequence went on for longer than it needed to, and the overall climax was rushed, and rather lackluster. I also didn’t like the extra little tidbits that he kept throwing in, like “that’s not what they said, but it’s what I heard”, those got old real quick, like I get the point, you’re one of them now. I’m going to take a stab at The Stand next, but I have the super thick, extended version, so we’ll see how that plays out.
I’m about 25% through this, & there’s some top serious Hello Fellow Kids vibes with the main character. It’s like King wrote an anachronistic, present day teenager so that he wouldn’t have to research what an actual present day teenager acts like. The main character seems plucked out of Stand By Me. This should have been a period piece!
I was hoping that the entrance to the other world would be discovered or the villains from that world would come out of the well and start messing shit up.
My 11 year old dog passed away back in November . I could feel the hope of Charlie thinking he could make Radar young again. I would have done the same, I would have given everything to turn back time to spend more time with my dog too. I had to skip the parts where they would describe Radar’s pain.
I. Gave up on the book shortly after Charlie was in prison and Radar was young again. For me it was enough.
When they brought in the 32nd prisoner I really thought it was going to be Charlie’s Dad. He would have been looking everywhere for him, even in the locked shed. They could have been matched up in a fight to the death and then worked together to escape.
i was not only underwhelmed, i was struck by an ASTONISHING sense of plagiarism.
There was a little-marketed but wildly popular video game RPG in the late 90s called Legend of Legaia. It featured many of the elements which this book blatantly ripped off: a sullen prince seeking power who discards his adoring baby sister in order to attain power over the entire kingdom; various real-world tie-ins and fiction references; a foreign hero who lost his mother years before the game begins and with an ailing, almost useless father; said hero accidentally stumbling upon said baby-sister princess and becoming her dashing knight; rescuing various peoples from various dungeons that were only dungeons due to the machinations of the rampant evil otherworldly power which controlled said traitorous prince; an affliction which, when physically encountered, would transform normal people into either bloodthirsty monsters or decaying zombies unless they possessed a certain talismanic relic native to the alien evil’s world.
And it’s not just slight similarities. It’s almost as if King saw a grandchild playing LoL and decided he could turn its story into a passable book (he failed) which no one would recognize because the game is relatively obscure (and on that point, was almost universally correct).
I’m dead ass serious. Go find a copy of the game or download it on your PSN and give it one playthrough, even a quick one just for the sake of matching story elements. I guarantee you’ll come back telling me I’m onto something.
Enjoyed the book overall. The prison section did drag on way too long. This also contributed to the ending feeling rushed to me as a result.
It also amuses me that I still do find myself wanting fairy tale endings, even if I don’t want to admit it.
My take on the book was the 1st 3rd was pretty decent. Once the fantasy emelments kick in and the journey for the Sundial starts, it feels like it slows down a lot. Especially considering the MCs time crunch he’s in.
Once he succeeds at the main objective, I feel like the book should have ended. The later part felt like it could have been better if broken into its own book or separate journey. Givening more time to build up this other world and its characters. Rather rushing towards saving the otherworld plot being forced upon us.
I found it weird that someone born in 1996, just three years after me, wouldn’t know what a landline phone looked like. I know they were common in households well into the 2000’s so wouldn’t Charlie have seen one before the one in Mr. Bowditch’s house?
Does anyone have a full list of the characters in this book bc I haven’t found a list of them yet
It is so interesting to hear everyone’s opinions on the book. I actually really struggled to get through the first half but I wanted to find out what happened to Radar. Then when it got to the prison part I thought it was finally getting good. That whole part made the book overall good for me. I do agree that his editor did a bad job. There were those repetitive reminders another commenter mentioned about the difference in language. And the parts about his friend Bertie Bird were so irrelevant, they should have been edited out. The part about his mom dying was also extremely irrelevant. I would have liked for Charlie to visit the other world again at the end and give an update on everyone.
Not finished yet…..I was hooked but damn ACT 3 has LOST my attention and intrigue. Maybe I just care about the dog????? But I’m suffering through this bullshit gladiator moment. Ugh.
realise i’m commenting on quite an old thread here, but i just finished the book and loved it. i must really be in the minority here because i thought the prison sequence was the best part of the book. it was so sad and hopeless and harrowing. like, it made all the world-building beforehand more worthwhile because of the context it had put the characters in. obviously we all have very different ideas of what we think of as horror, and to me that there was very much horror. which is not to say that i didn’t the more fantasy side of stuff. the beginning where charlie was getting to know mr. bowditch was well written, and started out compelling enough, but i would’ve cut about 50 pages there, because it was a bit drawn out and i did start to get bored. that’s my only complaint really, it took a good while for the fantasy elements to start. like obviously we have to need to have the backdrop of charlie loving radar enough to risk his life putting her on the sundial, plus his trauma of his mum getting killed and his dad’s alcoholism, that does make his journey to and around empis that more impactful. of course, the coming-of-age thing and other ideas like not giving up hope have been done, but what really resonated with me is charlie’s thing of “don’t drink water from the dark well lest you get poisoned” (not the exact quote) how if you play up to your dark tendencies, they overtake you. charlie’s got this itch he likes to scratch, this delinquent, violent side of himself, and he feels shame around it, but there’s this other side of him that likes it. very literal metaphor when you compare that with flight killer, similar story, traumatic youth, seeks power either to exact revenge or as a coping mechanism, an outlet. in this case a very unwieldy power, which has a cataclysmic effect on the people of empis, and elden himself physically. flight killer represents how charlie could end up if he didn’t check or curb his own dark side. this idea of wells representing and leading to self-discovery, again it’s quite literal because charlie travels to empis via a well. and he had to go to empis to become PRINCE SHARLIE.
I absolutely loved this book. It was engaging and hit home to me as a 61 yr women in the twenty first century. I could not stop listening. My eyes can not read as they did when I was younger so I love audio books especially horror and true crime , bless my dark heart . I’m a realist that just loved the fantasy and adventure of it all . All ages over puberty should listen. I have had many dogs in my life that I have outlived and anyone who has had a dog they have lost and loved will love this book .
Maybe his books are just to long . Who am I to judge such a great story teller , I haven’t finished this book but I get bored easily and I’m NOT looking forward to that . I hope you are wrong but I doubt it ! So I’m just crossing my fingers.
As many others have said in this thread the book is moderately entertaining. The first part with the character development was excellent and the middle to 7/8 done was not excellent but readable. I have read most all of his books and have always enjoyed them. Over the last 7 years though Mr. King has decided that he wants to also be a political pundit…why I don’t know. Like the saying goes, “shut up and sing (dribble, write, whatever)” – that is what I wish Mr. King would do. I have heard about this phenomena call Trump Derangement Syndrome and would not believe it hadn’t taken over my own brother’s life. The vitriol spewed is incredibly devisive and for what? In this book, Fairy Tale, Mr. King manages to mention Alt right, global warming and the harm our ancestors imparted on the indigenous peoples of America. Not even remotely relevant to this novel.
Fairy Tale was just the right book for me. I’m not a fan of King’s books in general, partly because he was rude to my father back in the 90s, but I absolutely could not put this book down after I started reading it.
I don’t think the editors have much say in his books these days? This one needed 100 pages cut out, or re-written. He just goes on about nothing for days. Plus the ending was SHITE.
I found the action sequences in the palace nonsensical. Why did they have to go up to come down? Why?
This book had some great moments, but really falls down hard halfway through the second act.
The passage where he describes the protagonist first incident with Rumpleskin or whatever that guy is, if you are a writer, it makes you want to cry how he manages to write tension. Like, no other can come even fing close. My brother came into the room while I was reading it and I almost fainted. It is just absolute, nail biting perfection. His books can be long, maybe nowdays some have cringy moments and he is repeating his motifs a lot (just stop with “there is a land where writers go for inspiration and Im gonna make it real yo” trope), but there is no way to put his books down. Reading his stuff is making me feel like a bookworm kid again who let himself be amazed at things he read. I hope he writes till he is 120.