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I heard about Stephen King's plans to write a prequel to The Shining a while back and while I was intrigued with the idea, I just forgot about it because I take most announcements with a grain of salt (like that time I heard Alien 3 was going to be on Earth).
Well, the official site has released a plot synopsis for the book (titled Doctor Sleep), which is to be released sometime in 2013.
Synopsis:
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless — mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
While I grew up with Stephen King, and two of my all time favorite books, The Stand and IT, are penned by him, I can't defend his work in the past two decades or so. I've read a lot of it (the ones that interested me at least), but the quality post-Misery has been hit or miss, mostly leaning to the latter.
That said, I'm really interested in this book. I always like the 'whatever happened to' followup type story, and the fact that Danny is a drunken mess trying to find his way sounds intriguing.
I wonder if this is going to tie into the Talisman universe at all.
*That picture above is from Frederico Chiesa Photography. Click here for some more of his phenomenal work.
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