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Good Citizen posted:The Stand is the obvious other stand out not on your list. Also Salems Lot and Cujo Salem's Lot is on my bookshelf from a library sale. I'll put it on my to-read list. I've been interested in the Stand, but again, that's a long motherfucker of a book. I'll have to wait until work calms down
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Jul 31, 2025 15:22
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sephiRoth IRA posted:. God I wish Steven King were better at writing within an outline. The Dark Tower is such an interesting setting and it’s completely wasted because the man had no idea where he was going with any of it. Anyway I heard his book about the Kennedy assassination was pretty good. readingatwork fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jul 31, 2025 |
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Jul 31, 2025 19:20
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didn't he have to hire someone to make what was essentially a wikipedia of the dark tower because he couldn't remember poo poo? or was that just a rumor?
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Jul 31, 2025 20:10
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I love IT and I read it when I was…26 I think?
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Jul 31, 2025 20:20
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sephiRoth IRA posted:Are any of his others must-reads? I guess I read the gunslinger a long time ago but never went further than that. Duma Key Cujo was the first one I read when I was 8 or 9 and snuck it off a shelf. My parents quickly discovered what I'd done though because it absolutely terrified me to the point I was afraid to go to bed and then had horrible nightmares when I finally would fall asleep.
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Jul 31, 2025 20:34
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I remember loving duma key
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Jul 31, 2025 20:47
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Thanks for the recommendations everyone!
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Jul 31, 2025 20:49
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I'll also go to bat for Tommyknockers. It's long and isn't perfect but the good bits are really solid and it's one of his least bad endings
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Jul 31, 2025 21:52
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I think I've only ever fully read Pet Sematery, Dreamcatcher, Duma Key, and The Outsider. Not a huge fan of his novels, his novella and short story collections are peak King though
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Jul 31, 2025 23:33
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sephiRoth IRA posted:Salem's Lot is on my bookshelf from a library sale. I'll put it on my to-read list. I've been interested in the Stand, but again, that's a long motherfucker of a book. I'll have to wait until work calms down The Stand is long, but reads fast. When I read it over a decade ago I blew through it in like two days. Tommyknockers is long and feels that way, but the supernatural stuff was definitely so out there that I liked it regardless. King being coked out of his mind while writing it seems obvious in retrospect.
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Jul 31, 2025 23:47
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Is there a short story collection of his that doesn't have at least one good one? They might be a good next project.
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Aug 1, 2025 01:16
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sephiRoth IRA posted:What i enjoyed more was Mike's ending interlude, and the forgetting. Some of the best writing of the book is there, and it would have been a better book to end it there. Instead we flip back to Bill and Audra, which was kind of a let-down. Getting back on Silver and channeling childhood has a certain symmetry, but I really didn't care about Audra. My wife and I discussed whether a person could really maneuver well enough to grab the pedaler's erection while on a bike going over rough terrain at great speed, and we concluded that Bill just had that huge a hog. Mike's story is really the throughline of IT, the movies continually do his plotline dirty but it's maybe the best one in the book
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Aug 1, 2025 01:27
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In case you all haven't checked it out, the King thread is here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3130206 The Dark Tower series is great, even if Song of Susannah isn't, it rewards having read a lot of his other stuff but is really just excellent, an incredible achievement taken altogether. I'll echo everyone saying Salem's Lot, Tommyknockers, and Pet Semetary, while also adding that From a Buick 8 is overlooked and cool, and Under the Dome and the first third of The Stand are also excellent. He's got some misses across the huge body of work, but honestly the more of him I read, despite a lot of the warts in his early work (and the recent stuff with Holly in it), the more I like his stuff.
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Aug 1, 2025 15:20
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My love for Under the Dome was matched only by my fury at the ending
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Aug 1, 2025 15:39
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SniperWoreConverse posted:didn't he have to hire someone to make what was essentially a wikipedia of the dark tower because he couldn't remember poo poo? or was that just a rumor? tbf modern fantasy writers use tools to essentially do this as they go along so King hiring somebody to put one together would be a solid call
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Aug 1, 2025 15:41
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Consistency is stupid, nerds obsessing over things like canon don't deserve to read
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Aug 1, 2025 16:02
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What exactly makes The Dark Tower such an achievement? Throwing your characters from other books into a blender and pressing the button doesn't seem particularly difficult to me. (For the record, I read it and while I liked the first three well enough, the rest left me rather unimpressed.)
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Aug 1, 2025 16:25
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On a related note, if you’re into the concept of a horror author somewhat awkwardly trying to tie together their entire cosmology you can also check out the Labyrinth series by Brian Keene. I haven’t read it yet but it gets referenced back to a lot in later clickers and earthworm gods etc
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Aug 1, 2025 17:13
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anilEhilated posted:What exactly makes The Dark Tower such an achievement? Throwing your characters from other books into a blender and pressing the button doesn't seem particularly difficult to me. King is exceptionally good at creating interesting characters and putting them in an interesting situation and TDT takes it a step further by putting things in a unique and creative setting. Also the mixing up your characters and worlds thing was a lot more novel before Marvel/Sanderson/etc made it commonplace. caspergers posted:Consistency is stupid, nerds obsessing over things like canon don't deserve to read The inconsistencies don’t bother me that much but the lack of planning is infuriating. The man (TDT spoilers) introduces his world’s antichrist way too late in the game, builds him up as this massive existential threat, and then unceremoniously has him die of food poisoning before doing anything. WHY!? He’s also not great at writing action so a lot of the big confrontations are underwhelming and over in a matter of seconds or just don’t happen at all.
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Aug 1, 2025 17:49
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wanted to reread one of the short stories in Wounds and ended up just rereading the whole book. drat thats a good collection. Butcher's Table is such a great story feeling kind of listless. anyone have any good recs for novels about demons or poo poo? doesnt have to be short stories. ive already read most of the good stuff that this thread brings up, so please dont recommend Between Two Fires, i know its excellent
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Aug 1, 2025 18:08
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ScootsMcSkirt posted:anyone have any good recs for novels about demons or poo poo? Last Days by Adam Neville, it's a great book about a documentary filmmaker investigating a cult and it's kickin rad, it's got some demon stuff in there that's cool as hell, although not of the possession variety of demon.
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Aug 1, 2025 18:25
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caspergers posted:Last Days by Adam Neville, it's a great book about a documentary filmmaker investigating a cult and it's kickin rad, it's got some demon stuff in there that's cool as hell, although not of the possession variety of demon. God this one was so oppressive, I really liked it up until the last 60 pages or so. I don't know why but some horror authors are just poo poo at endings and Neville is one of them 
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Aug 1, 2025 18:34
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sephiRoth IRA posted:God this one was so oppressive, I really liked it up until the last 60 pages or so. I don't know why but some horror authors are just poo poo at endings and Neville is one of them My justification for the ending was his needs are met, structurally speaking. I was satisfied enough when he hit send on the email, ensuring he got the truth out even though he died for it. But I will concede at least it was poorly executed.
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Aug 1, 2025 18:42
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caspergers posted:Last Days by Adam Neville, it's a great book about a documentary filmmaker investigating a cult and it's kickin rad, it's got some demon stuff in there that's cool as hell, although not of the possession variety of demon. sounds good. Ive read All the Fiends of Hell from Neville and i thought it was all right. sometimes post-apoc stuff feels kinda aimless, but his descriptions and encounters with the demons were always pretty hair-raising excited to give it a shot
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Aug 1, 2025 18:50
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caspergers posted:My justification for the ending was his needs are met, structurally speaking. I was satisfied enough when he hit send on the email, ensuring he got the truth out even though he died for it. But I will concede at least it was poorly executed. This is a good point. It didn't make the book terrible by any means, it just failed to land for me. Definitely worth a read. Don't get the reddening , however, that book was truly bad start to finish. I should have given up halfway through.
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Aug 1, 2025 18:56
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Agreed on the Reddening. It's just a survival story, and I don't ever really see the "story" in those. It's got some atmosphere but the whole thing was very hard for me to care about.
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Aug 1, 2025 19:14
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Joke answer for novel about demons: The Salvation War
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Aug 1, 2025 19:20
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caspergers posted:Agreed on the Reddening. It's just a survival story, and I don't ever really see the "story" in those. It's got some atmosphere but the whole thing was very hard for me to care about. I mainly liked it because it's set in a cosy, touristy area of the UK not far from where I live and it was amusing to imagine a savage blood cult haunting the seaside towns and rolling countryside of the region. Also liked the perspective shift where the protagonist realises that: the archeologists weren't digging down and uncovering some ancient evil from the past: they were digging up into a continuing force that had persisted right into the present.
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Aug 2, 2025 17:41
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I'm not much of a horror reader but was wondering about a recommendation. My wife's birthday is coming up and she's into horror and cryptozoology, so was wondering if there was something along those lines/areas that she might like?
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Aug 19, 2025 18:25
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Devolution if she doesn't mind it being a bit stupid
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Aug 19, 2025 19:01
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devo is specifically against the idea of monsters such as cryptozooids
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Aug 19, 2025 19:12
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I read the blurb and her and her family are incredibly fascinated by Big Foot, so I think it might work actually.
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Aug 19, 2025 19:57
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no i mean the band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVrijrV5cYs
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Aug 19, 2025 20:23
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In to the Drowning Deep, about mermaids, was pretty cool I thought! A bit gory but the slow build toward the obvious carnage is also quite good and the monsters are well-realized. There's also a prequel, apparently.
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Aug 20, 2025 13:35
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Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, coming out early next month, is one to keep an eye on. Super solid elevated pulp vampire horror. Doesn’t really do anything new with the vamp mythos, but the quality of the writing is impressive. Rosson is a very effective prose writer. There’s a lot of (gnarly, bloody) action in this one, and there’s never a doubt what’s happening. That’s a skill a lot of writers lack. It’s not perfect, I have a few nitpicks with the book, but it’s worth reading. It’s also set in the 70s if that gets any of you weirdos hyped up more.
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Aug 21, 2025 11:17
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I just finished The Lesser Dead and 70s vampires was an incredibly sick setting
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Aug 21, 2025 11:45
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 So like most people in this thread, when I see a medieval fantasy horror book I immediately buy it; I regret to inform you that this isn't the second coming of Between Two Fires, but not in a bad way. It's a very different kind of story told with a much tighter focus, and I really liked it. This is the same author as Luminous Dead which I recall being pretty popular in here, too.
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Aug 24, 2025 22:42
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The luminous dead was so not my bag that I have avoided the author's other work, but it's clearly popular. Is this completely different in terms of the general flow of prose and plot speed than luminous dead?
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Aug 25, 2025 05:13
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sephiRoth IRA posted:The luminous dead was so not my bag that I have avoided the author's other work, but it's clearly popular. Is this completely different in terms of the general flow of prose and plot speed than luminous dead? I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'flow of prose,' -- do you mean the general prose style? I'd say it's a good bit different just because the settings are wildly different, but maybe not extremely so. As far as plot speed, Starving Saints rotates between 3 POV characters so I guess that might seem faster or slower. The characters are basically all stuck in a castle under siege while everyone inside starts to essentially go insane/become ensorcelled, so there's on one level a lot happening between the 3 POV characters as they each try to understand what's happening and find solutions to their various problems, but the world around them (which is basically just the castle) is in a slow-ish descent. I liked Luminous Dead (and Starving Saints especially) a lot more than Starling's other work I've read so far, but if you really didn't dig the general style/approach of Luminous Dead I dunno if Starving Saints would be your cuppa tea either.
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Aug 25, 2025 11:25
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How horny is it?
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Aug 25, 2025 11:34
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