Kyle’s Reviews > Doctor Sleep > Status Update

As intriguing as the shining relationship between Dan and Abby might be, minus the age difference and worries about being baited for jail, they need each other to undo centuries of damage done by the True Knot. Rose and her ancient team have other things to worry about: the unexpected gift given to them in the baseball boy’s steam. Who knew that the unvaccinated would play such a heroic role in a prepandemic novel.

Dan’s life begins to settle down a decade into sobriety and he takes on the titular doctorally name. Not only Dan but the whole story, Abra included, has become a bit more mellow as the plot catches up with the Obama presidency (no off-hand nickname for this seemingly tranquil era, perhaps King’s better judgment) until a boy named Brad gets picked up by the True Knot. These soul-sucking goons are also drying out.

Apart from a vaguely-remembered viewing of The Shining and a much more engaged screening of its sequel, there is not much to connect with either the original novel and its sequel (other than the author’s loathing of Kubrick’s classic that prompted King to write this novel). For my first foray in King’s endless oeuvre, it is not bad although a repeated tendency for perverse trauma as inciting incidents.