em’s Reviews > Skeleton Crew > Status Update

20th story: the ballad of the flexible bullet: this one was pretty interesting! the pacing was a bit off for me and at points it definitely lost its level of engagement, but i still enjoyed it a fair amount

19th story: gramma: this one as a whole was pretty okay but omfg. stephen king this is an intervention. you need to stop describing every single non-loveinterest female character as “grotesquely fat.” you can’t tell a reader that a female character is morally questionable by solely using literally every other paragraph to describe how she’s “elephantine” & a “pile of flesh” & “sagging and doughy”

17th & 18th stories: the milkman duology: i feel like i’m missing like 99% of the information i should be getting; i’m not sure that these two stories work well on their own

16th story: uncle otto’s truck: not necessarily very remarkable or very spooky but also not bad

15th story: survivor type: this was the story that made me start reading this book in the first place and thank god i was not disappointed 🙏🙏🙏 i wish the rest of the collection was like this— what i imagined king’s writing consistently being before i started reading this damn collection

14th story: nona: this one was cool! i’m not sure how i feel about the narrative voice but fire horror elements 🐀

13th story: the reaper’s image: not bad!

12th story: beachworld: i enjoyed this one!! personally might have written the ending differently but i love a good descent into madness and the scifi elements were very cool

10th story: okay no immediately i’m pissed off again. cool concept but omfg pissed off. wife evil because fat! reader knows wife sucks because she is fat! you know wife has become more mean because she is fatter! like what 😭 omfg stephen king write a story without saying “if wife is good— she is so pretty and tiny and thin :) if wife is mean— she is fat and ugly!!!” challenge FAILED

9th short story: the raft: i finally checked this out from the library again after i think literally a year because i need to just finish this collection so it can stop haunting me i’m already too far through to stop reading it. i actually think this short story is one of his best— pretty quintessential to the horror that i associate with king. gruesome but engaging. a good story to get me back into this book