This Stephen King book disappointed

Fairy Tale is a 2022 Stephen King novel with a beautiful cover. I am that guy.

I choose books based on their covers. I don’t bother with the synopsis, because I like wading into a new story without expectations. In this case, I am glad I ignored the synopsis because it tells you too much.

Fairy Tale is Charlie Reade’s story. A regular teen with decent grades and a promising future in sports, Charlie carries a heavy burden. After losing his mother in a hit-and-run accident, the boy watched as his father sunk into alcoholism to escape his grief.

It fell on Charlie’s shoulders to care for himself and his father. Now seventeen, Charlie’s life has taken a curious turn. A chance encounter brought him to Howard Bowditch when the recluse took a severe tumble.

What began as a simple act of kindness gave way to a life-changing adventure when Mr Bowditch died, leaving Charlie his most prized possessions: a large house, an old dog, a mound of gold, and a portal to a parallel universe called Empis with two moons, a magical city, and an ancient evil.

The novel is called Fairy Tale because the meat of the story is the journey Charlie undertakes when he jumps to the parallel universe. So what’s the problem? Fairy Tale has an incredibly strong start. You know that bit about Charlie and Mr Bowditch? It consumes a full third of the novel. It is also the most compelling aspect of this book.

I was wholly invested in Charlie’s relationship with Mr. Bowditch, the many acts of kindness it took to melt the older man’s fossilized heart, and Charlie’s growing fondness for Bowditch’s dog.

This is Stephen King, so you had plenty of eerie mysteries unraveling at the edge of Charlie’s relatively ordinary existence, the most notable being the scratching and banging that occasionally erupted from inside a shed Charlie was forbidden from opening, not to mention the questions surrounding Bowdith’s gold.

But the emotional thrust of the story was Charlie’s growing bond with Mr. Bowditch. And when Bowditch dies, you feel it. You also understand why Charlie would risk so much to take Radar (the dog) to Empis. But then you get to Empis, and the boredom sets in. Nothing of significance ever happens. Charlie spends several chapters walking through a painfully dull setting, making tedious observations, and talking to the many disfigured individuals he meets.

You know things have gone wrong in Empis. Some sort of ‘graying’ disease is eating through the population, and an entity known as Gogmagog is to blame. Every step Charlie takes brings him closer to Gogmagog. But turning back is not an option because Radar’s life is on the line.

That sounds like a decent hook, but the execution is lacking. When I said ‘the boredom sets in’, that was not an exaggeration; I kept dozing off while trying to read this novel, which is shocking because I read Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep in January, and could not put that book down.

I know what King can do. He is better than this. Part of me thinks the author expected Fairy Tale to appeal to dog lovers. You spend a lot of time with Radar, and the aging animal is very sympathetic. So maybe I would have gushed about the novel if I had a dog. But I don’t, so Fairy Tale was a massive disappointment.

I could not even finish it, but that does not mean I’m done with Stephen King. I am still relatively new to the author, and I am curious to see what some of his more famous works have to offer.

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