Customers say
Customers find the concept intriguing and well-thought-out. They describe the fantasy as classic Stephen King with mythical overtones. However, some find the book too long and drags at times. Opinions differ on the pacing and character development, with some finding them compelling and engaging, while others feel they lack depth or are flat. There are mixed reviews regarding the writing quality, with some finding it excellent and readable, while others find it difficult to get into.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Featuring a conversation with the authors!
In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: What might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: They become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place….
The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain?
Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously absorbing father/son collaboration between Stephen King and Owen King.
by theten
A beautiful weaving of myth & reality
Itâs difficult for me to express how this book made me feel. In a way, itâs the realest book Iâve read this year, although it deals with supernatural beings, other worlds, & possible biblical implications. The struggles, the interactions, & the responses to Aurora are heartbreaking in their verisimilitude. Was I happy with the ending? I donât know, but I do know that if the women had chosen differently, I would not have believed it. I find the people crying about the Kings being âSJWsâ hilarious, & can only wonder if 15-year-old boys have somehow decided theyâre adult women & need to reveal that on every negative review. It really does seem as though this book struck an unpleasant chord with some people, & now theyâre seeking any way to distance themselves from actual reflection.I, on the other hand, fully embrace the difficult truths this novel presents. I donât see it as man-bashing in any way; in fact, I think it presents the reality that men & women must navigate on both sides. More than any novel Iâve read this year, itâs made me consider the roots/bonds of marriage & relationships, & the way in which we approach or run from them. The drama throughout, both world-altering & petty, felt spot-on to me, & unfortunately I can imagine âBlowtorch Brigadesâ springing up remarkably quick in such a world.My one issue (if I can even call it that) is with the incident b/n Jeanette Sorley & Lila Norcross. I applaud the Kings for only making me realize at pg. 308 that Jeanette was black, & it jolted me when I recognized my own surprise. Why did I assume she was white? Why was I so surprised that her race hadnât been mentioned until then? Because of this, I was rather disappointed by the resolution with Lila at the end. It felt a bit like Jeanetteâs character was simply an inciting incident for a white woman to consider racial implications. That frustrates me too, because there was so much more to Jeanetteâs character, & her sacrifice is perhaps needed in place of Evie for the women to make their decision. Yet it still read to me as though she became a bit player in Lilaâs story, & I didnât want that for her.Overall, I think this book is an amazing contemporary fantasy. It touches on issues beyond gender, beyond race, beyond parenting, and forces us to acknowledge our realities through myth. Well done Kings!
by Elizabeth Rose
Interesting but a little frustrating
I found it a little difficult to get into this novel. Once I did (about a quarter of the way in), it did move along briskly, but I found myself a little frustrated about certain characters. Frank, for example (choosing a main character with an issue revealed early so as not to spoil the story) had an anger issue that did not always read normally or easily. Sometimes it did seem like his outbursts were consistent with his characteriztion. But his self-awareness seemed inconsistent with the men (and one woman) I’ve known with anger issues. His blindness to his own behavior during outbursts, and his need to be “a good guy” did seem about right though.I definitely appreciated the approach of the story, ultimately being about how our culture encourages men and women to behave differently, and especially when the chips are down in one way or another. None of us is at our best when stressed and facing unknown outcomes even when we think we are doing our best. We may be doing the best we can under the circumstances, but we are still not at our best.Not surprisingly, these authors did focus a lot on the men in the story, and the women didn’t always get as much attention. One woman character who stayed awake during most of the ordeal, for example, started off as one of my favorites, but then spent half the novel wandering around in the background giving the reader almost no idea of her motivations. Then she is used in a big climatic moment, and we’re supposed to believe she had only one motivation that had only been discussed almost as an aside early in the story. It was a bit of a muddle.Also muddled was the experience of the cocooned women. That was when the book came alive for me, but we kept shifting back to the angry and depressed men, which had parts I literally only skimmed, because it was repetitive and boring. And while I can imagine the men doing all the things they did, why did no character in a story that deals so much with the ways in which many women are physically and emotionally vulnerable to the men in their lives, even think to point out the ENTIRE vulnerability of women in cocoons, whose cocoons – while somewhat protective – were not infallible. Once in a cocoon, a woman had no way to either fight back or escape WITH AGENCY if attacked by the men around her. I think I know what the authors were hoping to symbolize, but they didn’t do this correctly, in my opinion. Any power seeking to help women see how they might survive on their own, without men, and with agency, would have made it happen without making their physical bodies (and, by necessity, their emotional well being) ENTIRELY dependent on men.I was also disappointed in the climax. It felt more like an anticlimax, in that a lot of questions that had been raised were not well answered. I don’t need a complete explanation – we are supposed to use our imaginations when we read after all, and fantasy/horror/sci-fi does require a willingness to suspend disbelief. But we need SOMETHING to kickstart our imaginations, and there were too many gaps there, in my opinion, to do that well.All-in-all, it was an interesting thought exercise, and had its good moments. It also might be more rewarding for men reading. For this woman, however, it will not be one of those King books I reread with joy. I doubt I will reread it at all. Sorry guys.7/10 stars rounded up on Amazon to 4/5.
by KGBeast
Eine Krankheit breitet sich in Australien und einigen anderen weit entfernt liegenden Orten der Welt aus, die anscheinend nur Frauen befällt. Nach dem Einschlafen wachen diese Frauen nicht wieder auf und um ihre Gesichter â und schlieÃlich um ihre ganzen Körper â bildet sich ein weicher Kokon.Wie gesagt, das alles geschieht in weit entfernten Orten. In den Lokalmedien in Dooling, West Virginia ist dies höchstens eine Randnotiz Lila Norcross, Sheriff von Dooling, denkt in erster Linie über die Untreue ihres Mannes nach. Dieser wiederum kümmert sich aufopferungsvoll als Psychiater um seine Patientinnen in der örtlichen Strafvollzugsanstalt für Frauen â und macht sich Gedanken darüber, wie man einen übergriffigen Wächter loswerden könnte. Er ahnt nichts vom Verdacht seiner Frau.Da kommen die beiden überraschend dienstlich zusammen, als Lila eine Frau verhaftet, die kurz zuvor wohl zwei Crystal-Meth-Produzenten massakriert hat. Diese Frau, die schlieÃlich bereit ist, mit dem Namen Evie Black angeredet zu werden, scheint nicht sonderlich besorgt zu sein.Als die Krankheit aber schlieÃlich auch Dooling erreicht reagieren die Menschen sehr schnell â und in der Regel sehr unbedacht. Alle noch wachen Frauen versuchen mit allen legalen und illegalen Mitteln den Schlaf auf Distanz zu halten. Und die Männer merken, wie kompliziert eine Welt ohne Frauen werden kann. Und dann kommt das Gerücht auf, dass die neue Insassin der Strafvollzugsanstalt ganz normal schläft â und auch regelmäÃig wieder aufwacht. Eine Konfrontation bahnt sich an, die über das gesamte weitere Schicksal der Menschen entscheiden könnte.Dooling steht hier stellvertretend für die gesamte Welt und der Kampf der Geschlechter steht hier absolut im Mittelpunkt. Es geht um die groÃen und kleinen Ungerechtigkeiten und Grausamkeiten, um die psychologische, mentale und körperliche Gewalt, die Frauen tagtäglich erleben müssen â und die schon vor der letzten Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA zu einer massiven Gegenbewegung zum Feminismus geführt hatIm zweiten Teil dieses Buchs finden wir die eingesponnenen Frauen in einer Welt ohne Männer wieder, was den Kontrast zwischen Männern und Frauen noch einmal verdeutlicht. Hier kommt â zusammen mit Evie Black â nun ein phantastisches Element in die Geschichte hinein, die im Endeffekt noch genauso viele Fragen offen lässt, wie etwa âUnder the Domeâ.Wie immer haben die beiden Autoren ausgiebig recherchiert und neben dem genannten Hauptthema geht es auch um Fragen des Strafvollzugs, der institutionalisierten Betreuung von Kindern und Jugendlichen ohne elterliche Betreuung, um die informationelle Isolation vieler Amerikanerinnen und Amerikaner, die in der Regel nicht über ihr County hinaus denken und weder von nationalen noch von internationalen Problemen eine Ahnung haben â und auf dieser Grundlage auch ihre Wahlentscheidungen auf nationaler Ebene treffen.Eines der politischsten Bücher Kings. Aber auch eine komplexe, personalreiche Erzählung voller Gedanken zum Menschen an sich und wie er vielleicht besser sein könnte, als er tatsächlich ist.
by Amazon Customer
Once you start reading, it is impossible to stop until you get to the end. Intelligent, thrilling, a wonderful story.
by Harsh Gopal
When I was done with the book, the first line of the author’s note made me smile.”If a fantasy novel is to be believable, the details underpinning it must be realistic.”Right? Absolutely right.Sleeping Beauties is a joint effort by the Father and Son King duo and the plot is very very interesting. The idea that women who fall asleep start to get covered in a cocoon, a white sticky thread(Something similar to the ear-wax), intrigued me. The whole incident happens just like any other normal day-to-day activity in our life where people eventually start freaking out at the happenings. There’s a lot happening.We all know how much King hates Donald Trump and that is evident in Sleeping Beauties.There are a LOT of characters in the book and the list of characters at the beginning of the book scared me. I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t have to look at that list to remember the characters.There were references to a dead cat and Mercedes. Is the fanboy in me connecting dots or are they for real? :DSleeping Beauties is a metaphor that lasts 700 plus pages. Its a fable on how the current world has taken the opposite genders for granted. Its a great book no doubt, but I wish it had a tighter ending.
by FanAmazon
Du Stephen King Dand toute sa splendeur avec la touche de son fils. Un roman certes très gros mais aussi très passionnant.720 pages en Anglais.Selon votre exemplaire,le motif imprimé sur la couverture est différent.
by Sheri
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Loved the fresh plot and the book being women-centered is very meta. There were small details that showed the authors understood some of the routine female-male conflicts: men can be thoughtlessly messy in the home and that enrages women. The through line that the root of all female problems stems from men is cynical, but I can see how that might be a perspective. A thought-provoking novel from a solid writing team. Iâll be watching for more from this collaborative writing pair.