Owen King

I had this book on pre-order since the 3rd of April and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and get reading. I made sure I had finished my previous book the night before, and then the delivery man didn’t get here until almost 3pm on release day!! That’s like trying to hold kids off from opening their xmas present’s until 3pm xmas day!

So finally book in hand I decided to take it and sneak off, away from the kids and animals and I went and grabbed myself a caramel latte from Starbucks and that is where I stayed for several hours.

When I opened the book it started with just over 3 pages listing the characters and I thought “Oh god, I’m going to snuggle with this one, I’m rubbish with remembering names!” but No, that wasn’t an issue at all, even I kept up with who’s who owing largely to the fact of how well written and fleshed out each of the characters were, bringing each of them to life.

The basis of the storyline is the women, or what is happening to the women all over the world. As soon as they fall asleep they become shrouded in a cobwebby type cocoon, and if the webbing is pulled away from their sleeping bodies they savagely attack and kill whoever is in their path.

As the sleeping sickness, Aurora, hits the women’s prison in the small town of Dooling, West Virginia there is one inmate not effected by the virus. She can sleep and wake with no effects at all.

Lila Norcross, Dooling’s sheriff must try to stay awake, with the entire towns women folk all cocooned asleep or soon to be, she has her hands full as the men start to hear rumours of Evie Black, the only woman who isn’t effected by whatever it is that has taken all their wives, mothers and daughters.

Lila’s husband, Dr Clint Norcross, is a psychiatric officer at the prison and when the prison warden Janice Coates succumbs to sleep herself it is left to him to protect the sleeping inmates as well as new inmate Evie.

With the men being left alone with no women, some cannot cope and take their own lives, some decided that the sleeping women should be killed to stop the disease-spreading while the majority turn to violence under the guise of solving the epidemic.

What has happened to the women and girls? Why has this happened? Did Evie Black cause this and if so can she bring the women back?

This book has a bit of everything you love with a Stephen King novel, there is a defiant “The Stand” feel to the book, but it is an animal all of its own!

The writing of the combined father and son is seamless, you quickly find yourself fully immersed in the World of Dooling and the battle of the Aurora plague. It is so well written that you genuinely do care about what happens to some of the characters, even if that means you would like to see them dropped into a fiery cesspit of hell for eternity!

Sometimes with big books they can get repetitive and the endings get dragged out to long, or so over descriptive it becomes tedious, but NOT this book, i could have read another 700 pages without loosing any of the magic! I honestly did not want the book to end!!

This is more of a science fiction and fantasy tinged horror story as opposed to an outright horror so it will appeal to a wider audience, even people who don’t like King’s older work!!

I picked up my first ever Stephen King book when I was 10, IT, and have been a fan ever since, I found a copy of Different Seasons when i was having a sort out and it was a library copy i had taken out on 4th September 1995!! Whoops!

I’m not overly fond of politics, and even if you love politics I can’t understand the reviews this book has received purely based on that! This book is Fiction, it’s not being sold or advertised as anything other than that! So for people to be having a pissing contest because it is to political, read it for what it is – Fiction. One of my favourite reviews is –

“Too political! I don’t enjoy having my president ridiculed constantly. Disgusting!” and “Everything is politics…I have read not even a chapter and I have to see our president compared to a horrible character in the book”

Come on, really? No matter what his or his sons political views are, or what his true feelings are regarding Trump, those lines were written in a work of fiction so read it as fiction. He’s not asking you to believe it is he?? Not in this book anyway!

So please everyone, shove politics and Trump to the side, ignore all the negative reviews and one star ratings, pull up a chair and enjoy a really good, well written five-star story!
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Definitely an epic, this doorstop of a book slowly sets the scene of a world without women as they succumb to a strange plague. Like all King novels, this is heavily character driven. Though I would struggle to choose parts to cut, the book feels overly long. I struggled to continue with it in many places, especially once we learn what happens to the women after they’re cocooned, which was when my interest wavered even though I’d survived a communicative fox and other strange creatures appearing, which I saw no reason for. By then I’d invested too much to give up, but this took me ages to finish and I sometimes felt I was turning each page through sheer will. What people get from this will depend on their experiences. Let’s just say I’ve excellent reasons to want to return home, so my viewpoint is no doubt influenced by that choice. The book’s expertly composed, well thought out, and immersive, but I spent much of it wondering if there was a point. Had women written this, I can imagine an outcry that it’s an attack on men… and in that exact sentence is perhaps the point of the book, but while it’s an interesting topic to explore, I found the innate message somewhat flawed. Yes, it examines much of what’s wrong with the world, but I struggle to believe a world ran by women would work better; the same ridiculous power struggles often rise to the fore, no matter who is in charge. This novel is entertaining in parts, not so much in others. It’s explorative. It’s needlessly overlong, not scary, and anyone expecting the usual Stephen King novel may find they are disappointed (or pleased) that it’s not. However, I now want to read something else by Owen King.… (more)

What would happen if all women in the world were unconscious? One morning it begins: women and girls in Australia fail to wake from their slumber and are discovered wrapped in gauzy white cocoons. As more and more women and girls fail to wake up, the world begins to panic, and those who are still awake go to extensive lengths to remain so. How are men handling it? Not well.

The initial observation I made during the first few chapters is that all characters, sympathetic and unsympathetic, seem to have a snarky air of superiority. I suspect that is merely King's writing style, but it took some getting used to. The story was entertaining and action-packed, reminiscent of the King I read in my younger years. Overall, though, it was a hefty tome in which a lot happened, while at the same time nothing really happened. For all the heavy-handed messaging throughout, the ending was anticlimactic, inconsequential and disappointing. And it never answered "why?"… (more)