Fairy Tale, one of Stephen King's best in a very long time. My review.

Stephen King started writing FAIRY TALE during the worst of Covid, saying that he simply wanted to write a story that made him happy, to take him away from all the bad news of the real world. And the title is truth in advertising as this is the story of a magical kingdom beset by a great evil that is vanquished by the arrival of a prince, a hero, who saves the day. I have been a constant reader of King for decades, loving his horror thrillers the best, but also enjoying his forays into other genres as well, especially his recent Bill Hodges trilogy, which was mostly a straight up detective thriller. And if making it to the end of his epic fantasy series, THE DARK TOWER, was a challenge, those books also contained some of his best writing in my opinion. FAIRY TALE is certainly in that genre, but it’s a story rooted very much in the tradition of The Brothers Grimm and OZ, with a big helping of Lovecraft when it counts instead of Tolkien or George RR Martin.

FAIRY TALE is very much a portal fantasy, a long-held trope of the genre where a protagonist from the “real” world travels to a magical land and has an adventure, good examples of this is the aforementioned WIZARD OF OZ and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Such stories always begin with the protagonist, and in this story that is Charlie Reade, a 17-year-old high school kid living in a town in the American Midwest. Charlie has been through a lot in his young life, losing his mother in a horrible car accident when he was a child, and then losing his father to alcoholism for many years after that. When his father dries out with the help of some friends, Charlie believes God has answered his prayers, that he has received help when he needed it, and now owes a debt to help others when he can. Charlie comes to the aid of an old recluse in the neighborhood named Howard Bowditch, when he suffers a bad fall and a broken bone. Through helping the old man in his recovery, a deep friendship is forged between the boy and the very senior citizen (just how senior is revealed in the book). Charlie also forms a bond with Mr. Bowditch’s equally elderly dog, Radar. Really this first third of this book is the story of Charlie and Howard Bowditch, and how their relationship comes to be, is Stephen King at his best, taking his time to build up his characters, let seemingly mundane events happen, and set the stage without (almost) anything supernatural occurring. When Mr. Bowditch dies and leaves everything to Charlie, he becomes heir to not only Radar, but an old house with a locked shed in the back. Through a tape recording left to him, Charlie learns the truth about Mr. Bowditch’s life, and that inside the shed is a well with a staircase leading down into the earth, or so it seems. In truth, this is a portal to another world, another universe, and it is now Charlie’s responsibility. In an effort to help the ailing Radar, Charlie and the dog, go through the portal to the land of Empis, where there is a magical sundial in a ruined city that can rejuvenate the dog. Charlie’s adventure here takes up the remaining two thirds of the book, one where we travel through a ravaged land and encounter among other things: a flesh-eating giantess, undead soldiers, over-sized crickets who can communicate with people, a foul dungeon full of doomed prisoners, blood sports where combatants fight to the death, an evil dwarf (that’s a trope for sure), a princess in need, a corrupted prince, and a monster whose name no one dares speak. Of course this being a Stephen King book, somebody breaks wind. Some of the choices King makes in this part of the story are debatable, but for me, most of it worked, and what didn’t, did not detract.

I think FAIRY TALE is one of King’s best books of the 21st Century, up there pretty close to 11-22-63, and far superior to REVIVAL or BILLY SUMMERS. One reason for this is the main character, Charlie, who is a classic “good kid,” tall and athletic (which comes in handy for him when he gets to Empis), but still compelling just the same. King has always had a talent for creating great child and adolescent characters, and giving them distinctive voices. The book is told in the first person through Charlie’s eyes, and he is quick to remind us that he has not always been an angel, and feels regret for things he did in the past when acting out because of the anger he felt over his mother’s death. This only makes us like Charlie more. Some have pointed out that he doesn’t sound or act much like a 21st Century teenager (the story is set in 2013), that he sends emails instead of texting, doesn’t seem to play video games, and often references old B/W movies on TCM. You could chalk all this up to Stephen King being over 70 years old, but nothing dates faster than what is cutting edge at any given time. Besides, despite what pop culture portrays, not every teenager and young adult lives their life glued to a smartphone. I cut King some slack on this.

Some will no doubt be disappointed that King wrote a fantasy novel and did not set it in THE DARK TOWER universe, that there were no outright references to Roland or Randal Flagg in Empis or that Charlie didn’t come through the portal in Delain, the country where EYE OF THE DRAGON is set. But if King didn’t feel he had anything new to say about those magical realms, then I’m glad he didn’t try. I’m happy he gave us something new, and at just under 600 pages, it is just long enough to tell the story. Salute to the artists who did the great illustrations that begin each chapter.

And if Amazon Prime, Netflix, or some other streaming service wants to spend some money on a Stephen King adaptation, then they couldn’t do any better than FAIRY TALE, one of the best fiction books I’ve read in a very long time. It made this Constant Reader very happy.

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