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Summary: Stephen King should stick with short stories.
Review: Lately, Stephen King has been better in short spurts.With the exception of "Black House," his reunion with "Talisman" co-author Peter Straub, any lengthy writing by King ("The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon," "On Writing," "Dreamcatcher") has been measured and found wanting. Even King himself appears to recognize this, having made noise of an eventual retirement, after releasing at least five more books. One of those books is "Everything's Eventual," a collection of short stories. And judging by "Eventual," King might want to abandon his lengthier novels to write short stories full time. Here is a way for King to do what he does best, tell stories, without having to suffer through all the trappings a novel might be expected to do. With a short story, King can pop in, set the stage for an event, do the event, and then pop out and on to other things. This is win-win for the reader, too. If one story looks like it's going the way of "Insomnia" (snore), then you can skip ahead to stuff that's more along the lines of "It." It's a medium that seems to suit him a hell of a lot better. The title story itself isn't the greatest, a confusing tale about a young man who finds himself in possession of something like a whiteboard that anything he writes will come true, and under the employ of a mysterious gentleman. But there are a couple goodies to be discovered. Introduction: I keep failing to mention just how much I enjoy King when he is just being King, and talking to us, his Constant Readers, about what it is he does. Sometimes, the intros are better than the books. "1408": The story, one of three from King's audio collection of "Blood and Smoke," of a man who makes a living staying in rooms and houses that are supposedly haunted and then writes about it. But 1408 of the Hotel Dolphin definitely isn't "supposedly" haunted. "Lunch at the Gotham Café": A maitre' d at the café in question goes postal, right as Steve Davis is meeting with his wife and her lawyer to discuss a divorce. Also from "Blood and Smoke." "The Little Sisters of Eluria": A small prequel to King's ubernovel, the "The Dark Tower" series Roland the gunslinger finds himself beset by creepy green people, and under the care of witches. Really good overall, but especially for those who can't wait for the next installment of the Dark Tower saga, "The Wolves of Calla." "Autopsy Room Four": The best in the book hits us right off the gate. A man wakes up paralyzed from a snake bite with doctors prepared to do to him all the things they do to dead people. It's probably my favorite, and will have any reader spell-bound.
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Summary: What a relief
Review: Years ago, when I could count of King's work to be scary (this is going WAY back), I would wait until Friday night to start a new release. I would do this for 2 reasons: I knew I wouldn't be able stop reading it until I was done, and I knew that I wouldn't sleep very well afterwards. I would need the weekend to recover.
I haven't needed to do that since The Tommyknockers. I haven't even read Black House, although I have owned it since it was published. And yet I faithfully buy every one of King's books as soon as it is released, hoping that our guy SK will bring in another hit that will give me those little prickly feelings at the back of my neck at 2:00 a.m., while I sit in my living room, alone with his book.
Happily, Everything's Eventual has fulfilled that hope. While all the stories aren't "shrieking creepers," they are all well-written, engaging tales. And The Man in the Black Suit, The Road Virus Heads North, and 1408 are destined to become classics that rank with the best of Poe, Lovecraft, Campbell, and early King.
I had nightmares after The Man in the Black Suit. I can't get 1408 out of my mind. What a relief - our guy's still got it.
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Summary: Everything's Eventual
Review: Stephen King has out done himself again! A book about 14 dark tales kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. No one story ties in with another, but each one is breathtakingly ingenious. From the autopsy room to the walls of rest area rest rooms, the stories were packed with non-stop action and excitement. Stephen even added his own comments with each story. I really enjoyed this book! The language is vulgar in some stories so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. But if you love deception with a light twist of horror, then this book is definitely for you.
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Summary: Excellent!!!
Review: Stephen King is in top form with this latest collection of short stories. One of his best books ever.......a must read!!!
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Summary: Steve-O does it again
Review: Stephen King has once again proved himself The Master with this excellent collection of short stories. They won't all scare you - some will give you chills and others will give you nightmares - but they all bear witness to Mr. King's unique brand of compelling storytelling. The "Sisters of Eluria" (a short prequel story to the incredible Dark Tower series) alone is worth the price of the book. I especially liked the small prologue and/or epilogues with each story. It's always interesting to take a gentle probe into the mind of a man some call a lunatic and others call a genius.
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Summary: Amazing
Review: King makes you wonder not only while reading each one of his 14 amazing short stories, but many days after.
Highly recommended to eacg of king's fan.
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Summary: An Earlier Eventual King
Review: I love this book. This is the perfect book for watching, or reading how a man can go from writing complete horrific books to new age horror books. You can clearly tell how he has progressed in his writing. He is like a fine wine. They get better when they age!
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Summary: King's short stories
Review: The book Everything Eventual was one of the best books that I have read. It has some certain good qualities to it. The book consisted of fourteen short stories. The stories may have been short, but all of them had the content to get me interested in reading more and more of the book. Every story had some sort of twist to make the book that much better. This book kept me so interested that I did not even want to put it down. It did not matter how long I sat there and read it, I always wanted to read more. Even when I finished the book I wanted to read more. I just can not wait for Stephen King to come out with his next book. Hopefully it is as good as this one.
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Summary: An Old Friend Returns
Review: First, a note of explanation on the rating. I'm giving "Everything's Eventual" four stars based on content and one extra star for the return of its author. See, for the last few years I really got the feeling King was "losing it". The Green Mile enthralled me but then...nothing. The fourth Dark Tower novel was good, but not as good as the rest. His other novels just did nothing for me. He'd carry the idea so far and then seem to drop it. "Everything's Eventual" shows me that the Stephen King I came to love does still exist and that perhaps the essense of what made him great was distilled into this collection. It's refreshing to find him , after all this time, to still be the modern master of suspense/horror fiction. The stories themselves cover a broad range of topics each handled in a quintessentially King manner. I'd give a run down of all of them but it seems that many other Amazon reviewers have done so already. Suffice to say they are top notch. Oh, I will give a particular mention to The Little Sisters of Eluria. All you Dark Tower fans should like this one. I did.
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Summary: Pretty darn eventual
Review: Most of the stories in Stephen King's first new collection of short fiction in nine years are pretty darn eventual. As the narrator of the title story, "Everything's Eventual," points out, if you want to say something's awesome, but you don't want to sound like every other Joe, you say it's eventual. Stephen King is a much different writer today than he was when he penned the direct, but effective horror stories in the late sixties and early seventies that comprised his first collection of short fiction, "Night Shift" (1977). In the mid-eighties, he broadened his creative palette considerably with "Skeleton Crew," and then followed it in 1993 with the overflowing grab bag, "Nightmares and Dreamscapes." "Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales," King's fourth collection, offers a generous sampling of everything he's been up to short-story-wise over the last decade or so. Although it's not all eventual, a reassuring majority of it is. Fans of King's ongoing horror-fantasy epic "The Dark Tower" will be pleased to find included "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (originally published in Robert Silverberg's "Legends"), a short novel detailing an early episode in Roland the gunslinger's quest for the Dark Tower. "Eluria" is one of the best stories in the new collection, and shows off many of King's natural talents as a storyteller (not the least of which is his ability to make it all seem so effortless). The title story is so immensely readable it feels like it must have written itself. A dark sci-fi tale about a young man with a disturbing ability and a bourgeoning conscience, "Everything's Eventual" is one of the best short stories Stephen King has ever written. King gives us a bit of everything in this book. He serves up several helpings of the classic gross-out/ghost story that made him famous. "Autopsy Room Four," "1408," and "Riding the Bullet" (a novella that attracted some attention a few years back for being published exclusively on-line) are some of the better examples. The best stuff in this new collection, however, the most eventual stuff, is actually the least frightening. The subtlety of character and narrative nuance demonstrated in stories like "The Man in the Black Suit," "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away," and "The Death of Jack Hamilton" (all of which originally appeared in The New Yorker) betray a shrewd understanding of the human condition that finds itself at the heart of any great piece of writing. Stephen King isn't one of the most-read writers of all time just because he knows how to make you jump. In "Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales," he proves he can still do that with the best of them-and although his name may always be associated with stories that make your skin crawl, it's also obvious from this latest collection that King is anything but a one-trick pony. In addition to dread and terror, he clearly delights in making you feel a whole host of other emotions...pity, sorrow, hope and joy among them.
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