The Return of Danny Torrance

[Small_Hen]

Though I know King didn’t intend for this back in 1970 when he wrote the Shining, I liked the idea of the little retcon that:

Danny already “knew” about his little sister. Tony showed her to him as a baby in a crib when Danny was living in Bolder. Danny simply misinterpreted her as a vision of his mother and father’s future baby, who never came into existence.

I finished Doctor Sleep last week, and found it to be the most engaging King novel I’ve read in a long time. Maybe it wasn’t quite on the level of The Shining (one of my favorite books when I was a teenager), but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

[StarvingButStrong]

@Anonymous_Coward

NOS4A2 and Dr. Sleep both have nods to each other but I don’t think they’re canon based on Joe Hill’s comments. They’re more of a fun easter egg for the readers.

Okay, I’ve read both, but I guess too hastily/sloppily. Can someone reveal what the references were?

[Just_Ed]

@StarvingButStrong

Okay, I’ve read both, but I guess too hastily/sloppily. Can someone reveal what the references were?

Wiki has pretty good pieces on both books, including the connections:

Doctor Sleep:
In addition to briefly referencing Castle Rock, one of King’s recurring fictional towns, Doctor Sleep lists Jerusalem’s Lot as one of the “company towns” maintained by the True Knot. The novel is also notable for featuring ties to NOS4A2, written by King’s son Joe Hill. Early in the novel, Danny’s mentor Hallorann shares a story from his childhood in which his malevolent grandfather repeatedly threatened to hand him over to Charlie Manx, the antagonist of Hill’s book. There is also a bumper sticker on one of the True Knot’s vehicles referencing Christmasland, Manx’s alternate dimension in NOS4A2. At one point, Dan says, “There are other worlds than these,” a line originally spoken by Jake Chambers in The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger.

NOS4A2:
Hill also included several references to the works of his father, Stephen King, in NOS4A2. Manx refers to the gates to Mid-World and Shawshank Prison, as well as stating that the True Knot follow nearly the same profession as he does. The phone map also shows Derry, Maine and a place called “Pennywise’s Circus.” Towards the end of the novel when Vic is returning from Christmasland, Hills writes that she ‘returns to the clearing at the end of the path’, a reference to the Dark Tower books. In an interview, Hill says that these references were not meant to tie his works to King’s shared world. He claims he was “just fooling around.”

I caught the references to Manx and Christmasland in Doctor Sleep, and remember coming across Shawshank in NOS4A2, but I read that one first, so the mention of the True Knot went right over my head.

Manx mentions a couple of other characters in the same speech where he references the True, one of which is from another of Hill’s own novels (Craddock McDermott from Heart-Shaped Box), but there is also the mysterious “Walking Backwards Man, who has an awful watch that runs in reverse.” Which is intriguing, because it doesn’t seem to refer to an existent work (if it does, somebody please enlighten me).

[Maserschmidt]

@Just_Ed

Manx mentions a couple of other characters in the same speech where he references the True, one of which is from another of Hill’s own novels (Craddock McDermott from Heart-Shaped Box), but there is also the mysterious “Walking Backwards Man, who has an awful watch that runs in reverse.” Which is intriguing, because it doesn’t seem to refer to an existent work (if it does, somebody please enlighten me).

The Walking Backwards Man is also briefly mentioned in Heart Shaped Box…a little google-fu and so:

Heart-Shaped Box LP

[StarvingButStrong]

Ah, thank you Just Ed. Now that you mention it I do remember noticing some ‘famous’ towns on the NOS4A2 map.

[Just_Ed]

@Maserschmidt

The Walking Backwards Man is also briefly mentioned in Heart Shaped Box…

Thanks! I read that a while back and so completely missed the reference. Wonder if that’s something Hill is actually working on or just a throwaway reference he likes to use . . .

@StarvingButStrong

Ah, thank you Just Ed. Now that you mention it I do remember noticing some ‘famous’ towns on the NOS4A2 map.

Yep, I’d recognized the towns too (and of course Pennywise), though I haven’t read any of the Dark Tower series, so didn’t get that one.

I like that King and Hill seem to have a genuine appreciation for each other’s work; even though they’re father and son, it’s not necessarily a given (though they do write in a similar style).

[Cat_Whisperer]

I recently finished the book, too, and I really enjoyed it. I have enjoyed all of Stephen King’s later books, though - they don’t seem very much like his earlier books (except for his trademark world-building and character development), but I think I like them even better. I had a bit of a hard time reading about Dan hitting his rock bottom, but I realized why King wrote that - so we would understand that it was indeed his rock bottom, that he was having a seriously crappy life at that point. The book seemed relentlessly full of awful people being awful at that point, but mercifully it eased off fairly quickly.

[Scubaqueen]

:::groan::: I’m not gonna even bother to see how far back in the line I am for getting it from the local liberry.

Maybe I can read it next summer…

[Cat_Whisperer]

You could still put your name on the hold list and see how it goes. I recently borrowed “Game of Thrones” first season from the library - I was something like 150th in line, but it only took about a month or six weeks to get the dvds.

[Charley]

I got it on my Kindle yesterday and I’ve just finished it. I really liked it - the best of his that I’ve read in a long while (although I liked 11/22/1963 and even Under the Dome until the end).

I did expect more scares than there were and, with regard to the end,

I was astonished that Dan made it through. I thought either he’d be the sacrifice in the big battle, thus fulfilling his life’s role, if you like; or, he’d die of the cancer right at the end.

I also had absolutely no inkling about the family connection but it was more believable than it might have been.

On the whole, it worked for me and I ended it with quiet tears as I usually do with Stephen King’s books. I’m glad that I didn’t have the same reaction I did to the first book - that absolutely terrified me and still gives me shivers at the end of long hotel corridors. Having said that, I do have the urge to read it again now!

[SpeedwayRyan]

My wife ended up surprising me with a copy of Doctor Sleep and I finished it a few days ago. It didn’t measure up to The Shining for me, but it was definitely a good read and I enjoyed it. I could have gone for even more references to Danny’s childhood and The Overlook and Jack, but that’s all probably because I like TS so much.

I enjoyed the interaction between Abra and Danny, and all the descriptions of True Knot activities and subterfuge in the “rube world.” King definitely builds amazing worlds.

[Dave_Hartwick]

Picked it up at the library, I’m halfway through, not liking it much, and don’t think I’ll finish.

There were a couple things that bugged me early on, like how King works in pop culture references and makes sure you know exactly which ones he means. Like a character says something like, “why that reminds me of that woman from the insurance commercial! Flo.” OK, so some dork might actually talk like that. Fine.

Then a teacher walks up to a student and asks, “have you read The Fixer yet? That book I gave you? By [author’s name]?” To which any normal smart aleck kid would say (or at least think), “oh, I thought you meant the other book you gave me called The Fixer.”

I liked King a lot when I was younger, even the admitted howlers like Tommyknockers, so I think it’s not him, it’s me. But while I’m ragging on the book, let me also mention how lame the characters are.

Dan: Hi, I was a total scumbag, meaning I once swiped a few bucks, a horrible horrible thing for which I’ll never forgive myself, and, oh yeah, almost forgot, I used to get in barfights all the and for all I know I killed people. Anyway, now I’m all heroic. Seriously, I’m pretty much a saint. I have magic powers and it never even crosses my mind to profit from them.

Abra: Hi, I’m a totally normal teen, you can tell because of all my pop references! Game of Thrones! Fruit Ninja! I’m also all heroic, like, totally! I also have no imagination at all, just like Dan.

Both: Together, we fight crime!

Rose: Hi, I’m Rose, I’m super scary except most of the time, which means hardly ever. Did you notice how convenient it is that we can’t fly in planes? I mean, convenient for the heroes, not for me. Also, how the hell did we survive in medieval Europe, when people didn’t travel much and getting around was a serious ordeal?

Yeah, no.

[stpauler]

I just finished it. It was good but I didn’t find even a tiny bit scary. The one thing that bugged me in the last third of the book was…

Why Abra and Dan didn’t want to wait out the measles outbreak to be over as it seems to be taking over the True Knot on its own. Almost seemed like the ending could’ve just been the same without them, just a bit slower.

[Fair_Rarity]

I just finished it tonight and really liked it, for the most part. I find SK hard to read now, not just because of a decline in quality but because I can see how derivative he is. Now, he’s a great storyteller, but as I’m 20 years older than I was when I started reading him, I have 20 years more exposure to other books, shows, and movies, and I’ve seen some of his ideas aren’t exactly original.

That’s not a dealbreaker because his style is enjoyable and he’s often full of surprises, but it does take a few points off for me.

I found Doctor Sleep to be very derivative of Black House. Revisiting one of his best novels, a young boy character who went through terrible trauma who is now grown up, some evil being snatching kids with special talents, dead mothers who were alive in the original book, both with major settings in elder care facilities. Not that this book wasn’t done well, but it kind of was done before.

I liked 11/22/63 a lot, but it had a lot of issues. The guy is about my age, but was more stuck in the 70s culturally than any kid born in the 70s is. Kids born in the 70s mostly relate to 80s and 90s culture. Not exclusively, but it was distracting. I found the same kind of problem here, that the characters were too much King. Dan being kind of a dick to the clerk at the hardware store sounded like a character in a book. I’ve worked retail enough to know most customers don’t talk like that. The overly-precocious kid is grating. I liked Abra a lot. She reminded me a lot of Charlie from Firestarter, but having been a girl that age once upon a time, I think she was too mature. I think it wasn’t the Shine that made her act older but a case of GRRMartinism: not really considering kids’ developmental stages and picking an age because it sounds good.

[Reeses_Monkey]

I finished the Audible version tonight. Over 18 hours, which I listened to in the car and while doing chores around the house. Perhaps having someone read it to me gave me a different experience than reading it for myself would have done. I got the reader’s interpretation instead of making my own.

Anyway, I liked it. Though I did feel, after a while, that DS didn’t necessarily have to be a sequel to The Shining. Dan could have been any SK protagonist. I did like the references to the first book, but without them, the characters would have been all right as characters in their own novel, not tied to a previous one.

BTW, just how old was that cat by the end?

[Anaamika]

I liked the book - I was happy to see Danny finally got a family, and a life. I was really disappointed by the treatment of Doc Halloran, and it wasn’t remotely scary.