The Eyes of the Dragon – The Hobbit to The Dark Tower

This is the last novel I needed to read before embarking on The Dark Tower series. Connecting The Eyes of the Dragon to the series, I’ve heard it said it is what The Hobbit is to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I can’t say that I agree with this description yet, but this was my motivation to read The Eyes of the Dragon.

 

The Eyes of the Dragon is not like any other Stephen King book I’ve read. Both the genre and the style are starkly different to his predominantly ‘horror’ body of work.  The Eyes of the Dragon is definitely a child-friendly ‘crossover’ fantasy novel, a story that can be enjoyed by both children and adults. This is probably the only King novel that I’ve read so far that I would have no issues with my niece reading! Indeed it was written for his then-13-year-old daughter.

 

The novel was published the year I was born so unsurprisingly I didn’t get to experience the controversy this book created among fans of King. Many fans were angry and dismissed this book because it was completely different to his other work which goes to the heart of the issue of what kind of writer Stephen King is. King himself gets annoyed at simply being dismissed as a ‘horror writer’, but I suspect that the dismissals come from a place that dismisses the genre generally uses the term horror pejoratively way.

 

Stephen King is definitely a horror writer and this should be celebrated, there’s nothing pejorative about horror in my mind! Stephen King’s work however cannot simply fit into the horror genre: he is also a non-fiction writer, a science fiction writer, and for the purposes of this blog, a fantasy writer. I think it was unfair that he was heavily criticised by his fans for ‘genre-swapping’, because I think this exercise can improve a writer’s creativity overall and I think King has said this is the case for him.

 

Thank God (not dog) a lot of Stephen King fans did react angrily to The Eyes of the Dragon though. Without this reaction we wouldn’t have been graced with Misery: a book about a novelist whose fans won’t let him write anything other than what they know and love him for. A quick fun fact about Misery: King was going to publish Misery under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, but was ‘outed’ before Misery was published. Misery does definitely have a “Bachman Book” feel to it.

 

Having read some negative reviews about The Eyes of the Dragon, I have to say that they are generally looking at the book in isolation whilst simultaneously criticising it for not being horror. I think the reason why I enjoyed this book is because I firstly took this book for what it is, crossover fantasy but also because I had context for the book. Having read and loved The Stand, I developed an understanding and fascination for Randall Flagg, who is also the main villain in The Eyes of the Dragon. Without having a ‘Flagg background’, I can imagine some of this book’s significance may be lost: read The Stand before you read this!

 

The protagonist, Peter, is next in line to the throne of Delain. The King’s magician, Flagg, has the King under his thumb but is worried he won’t able to manipulate Peter in the same way when he would become King. Flagg plots a successful plan to poison the King and then frame Peter for the regicide.  Peter who is then convicted of regicide does not succeed to the throne, his younger brother Thomas does instead, and he is imprisoned in the Needle which is a tall tower (possibly a dark one?).

 

Peter devices a plan to escape the tower using threads from the napkins he receives for his meals to create a rope. The story goes into detail about how this ispossible – he was in the tower for 5 years having 3 meals a day so acquired quite a lot of thread. Peter in the tower slowly working on his escape conjured up an image for me that was a cross between Rapunzel and the Shawshank Redemption. Fun fact: The Eyes of the Dragon was originally titled Napkins.

 

An interesting part of the book was when Thomas’s butler Dennis would often spend the night with Thomas especially when he was drunk or upset. I read between the lines and if Thomas and Dennis were characters in the Game of Thrones, I think we would have got gritty debauched details of what they really got up to when Thomas needed comforting in the middle of the night. The ending of the book satisfied my speculative interest in Thomas and Dennis. When Peter is restored as King, Thomas decides to leave Delain to hunt down Flagg; Dennis decides to join Thomas and they “had many strange adventures.”

 

The classic fantasy tale has its place and The Eyes of the Dragon is definitely one of those tales. I would be interested though in an amalgamation of gritty, trippy debauched King set in an olde-worlde fantasy land. A Stephen King version of the Games of Thrones would be amazing. Who knows, I may discover this with the Dark Tower series!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map Drawn Up: At least for now

KING OF MACABRE I have realised is at present a blog that is documenting my courtship to marriage of Stephen King. The fact that I’m only on my fourth book means that I cannot be considered an authority – at least not yet – on Stephen King. I am happy to say that I have to some extent mapped my way forward with his work.

Since posting ‘Novel Navigation’ I was sent a link to the ‘Stephen King Universe’ and here it is:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cmmJvItL6XE/UFjb6kdOlRI/AAAAAAAACac/uPpEHx2bG1Q/s1600/Stephenh-King-Universe-FLowchart-900px.jpg
Looking at this flowchart for the first time just filled me with childish excitement!

It’s brilliant because there are references in his books that the reader will only pick up on if they have read one of his other books. I experienced this for the first time when I read Misery and found a reference to The Shining’s Overlook Hotel.

I am pleased therefore that I read The Shining before I read Misery because it enabled me to pick up on the reference. The flowchart connects the references in his books so it can be used as a navigating tool to decide what order a new Stephen King reader could take. I am not suggesting however that a new reader must be read in a strict chorological order because that’s certainly not the route I’m taking.

I have found out that there is no general consensus among Stephen King readers about what order to read his work in and to be honest, I’m quite glad that this is the case. It really depends on what the individual reader finds appealing. His work is quite diverse so not all of his books therefore will appeal to the same reader.

The books that I have read so far, I have already had an awareness of, either because I have seen the film or by references in popular culture. After I have finished It, I am going to read The Stand which is a completely new story to me so I’m quite excited to start as I have no expectations.

I did read good advice on a forum today and that this, “the key is persistence.” Sometimes there are passages in any book where it feels a chore to get through it and if you are unfamiliar with the overall plot of the book, it might be tempting to give up. The Stand is a meaty book and I don’t know much about it so I will need to bare this advice in mind.

I have previously mentioned that there are significant Stephen King events happening this year and one which I did not mention is the TV adaptation of Under the Dome airing in June. Again, Under the Dome is a meaty book which I don’t know much about but I do plan to read it so I can then start to watch the TV series when it begins to air.

Luckily, I’m getting good practice with tackling a huge book at the moment reading It.

PROLOGUE: Stumbling across Stephen King

2013: the year I decided to finally read Stephen King. Of course I have always been familiar with his stories and from a very young age I was exposed to the films based on his books – even though I wasn’t supposed to. I’ve always been attracted to material that my evangelical childhood household would certainly not approve of in fact prohibit. The attraction was much more than just the fact that such material was prohibited however, I’ve always felt connected to the dark and the strange. It was only however in 2013 did I finally make the conscious decision to read Stephen King.

It began after listening to a radio 4 discussion about The Shining just before Christmas 2012. In a nutshell, it was commented that the novel simply must be read. I remember watching Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining when I was about 11 and I just devoured its apparent obscurity. This memory and the radio 4 commentary were persuasive enough for me to decide that The Shining will be the next book I’ll read.

One of my 2012 Christmas presents was a Waterstones’ voucher and knew exactly how I would use it. After Christmas I went to Waterstones to look for The Shining. Stephen King’s books were ‘buy one get the other half price’ so, like a good consumer without necessarily intending to buy a second Stephen King book, I decided it would make sense to see if there was another one that looked enticing. I then came across It.

Picking up It, I remembered the news agent down the road where I had grown up had the iconic film poster of It next to the videos to rent for most of my childhood. I remembered watching the beginning of the film when I was very young, Pennywise talking to Georgie from the drains, but I didn’t actually watch it all the way through for some reason. These familiar memories of It were good enough reasons to buy the book together with The Shining to make good use of the ‘deal’.

Not being an overly cynical person, I do make new year’s resolutions. One of my 2013 new year’s resolutions was to read more. I had my copy of The Shining and my copy of It which would enable me to fulfil this resolution. As I bought It as consequence of buying The Shining, I decided to read The Shining first – also It is 1376 pages long. I have to confess that reading The Shining took me longer than I first imagined. Not because I didn’t enjoy reading it, but because I had been out of the habit of reading and didn’t commit to reading every day.

My birthday is in February: my partner, among other things of course, bought me Carrie and Misery to read. I have to confess initially I wasn’t thrilled. Perhaps it was the guilt of still not finishing The Shining and then having 1376 pages of It to read after that. I do have a track record or starting books but not finishing them. I may have initially been concerned about my growing reading list, but this was indeed crucial to me becoming an avid Stephen King reader – I won’t use the term ‘fan’.

I finished reading The Shining in February 2013 on a Saturday morning. I had recently bought Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining DVD in preparation to watch after I would finish the book. Straight away after finishing the book I put the DVD on – I hadn’t watched the film in about 15 years so it was almost like watching it for the first time. After watching the film, I was completely taken aback at how different the book and the film were. Specifically I was very disappointed with the portrayal of Jack Torrance in the film – criticising the film however I would find out is sacrilege.

Comparing the book and the film of The Shining, I immediately developed a raw appreciation, which would become passion, for Stephen King in book form. I needed to start my second Stephen King book. Although I intended to move on to It, I now had Carrie and Misery. At the beginning of a Hodder and Stoughton Stephen King book, it lists all the books they have published for Stephen King. Reading through this impressive list, I discovered that Carrie was Stephen King’s first published novel. Carrie is a very small book so it made sense to me to make this book my next read. I also remember watching the film as a pre-adolescent so I thought it would be fun to watch the film again after I would finish the book – although my memory of it was very poor.

I started reading Carrie and unsurprisingly it was a page turner. In anticipation that I would read the book quickly, I thought I should buy the DVD. I found and purchased on Amazon a Stephen King box set which consisted of Misery, The Dark Half and Carrie. Perfect. I was unfamiliar with The Dark Half, but when I would read Misery, I would be able to watch the DVD straight away afterwards. I’d finished reading Carrie within a week without much effort and could watch the film straight away.

The differences between the book and the film of Carrie were nowhere near as stark as The Shining, but they were still there – specifically the ending. Of course a book and a film are never going to be the same. I suddenly became fascinated with the process for a screenplay writer to turn a novel into a film. I needed to discuss this with someone, anyone.

Straight away after watching Carrie I moved onto Misery – probably because I was still intimidated by 1376 pages. Again, like The Shining and Carrie, as soon as I finished reading the book I watched the film. As described in Misery, I had well and truly developed the ‘gotta’. I needed an outlet, space to analyse, discuss STEPHEN KING.

2013: a year to be excited about Stephen King. The sequel to The Shining (1977) is set to be released in September. Joyland, Stephen King’s second published novel by Hard Case Crime is set to be released in June. A re-make of the film Carrie is being released in cinemas in time for Halloween.

With my new found obsession in the same year that big upcoming events are taken place led me to conclude that I needed a forum to express all things Stephen King. I know I was attracted to Stephen King because of my natural curiosity and interest in the macabre so I wanted to consolidate my related interests within the same space. This finally gave birth to King of Macabre – a space to analyse, discuss, debate etc. all things King and all things macabre.

I am currently reading It and I am no longer intimidated by the 1376 pages because it is not a chore and I am so glad I made that off-the-cuff decision to purchase It. After reading It, I will watch the film and now I have the forum to write about it! My plan is to then read The Dark Tower series. I am so excited!