Worst of Stephen King - Worst books or stories

[A shitty ass clover]

how come Buick 8 is not on the list?

 

[Pig Boss]

I would agree with the 2000s being his worst, I mostly got off the train after Regulators/Desperation, not that they were bad per se but I think I was just burnt out on SK at that point (having read everything up to that point aside maybe a few short stories/novellas).

I still reread both IT and The Stand (uncut) every couple of years or so, and finally decided to give the Dark Towers a shot after I saw that it had been finally completed (in fact it had been completed a long fucking time ago, I had read the gunslinger in the early 90s and didn't want to continue until he published everything when I read he planned on making like 8 volumes long. I read it and I was really happy. Then I saw the Mr Mercedes tv show and that was pretty good. Then I saw Doctor Sleep and it was really good, and now I'm back catching up with what I've been missing.

Honestly, only the first four (three and a half) Dark Tower books are good. Maybe even slightly less than that since the first half of The Wastelands is shit and the last quarter of the Wizard and Glass is also shit the books five through seven are also shit. There's an amazing world buried in the clay of the Dark Tower and King was not the man to be trusted with it's excavation.
But hey, if you like the first four books then I suggest you pretend the story ends there and read the comic story The Dark Tower: Beginnings which acts a prequel to the main story.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Honestly, only the first four (three and a half) Dark Tower books are good. Maybe even slightly less than that since the first half of The Wastelands is shit and the last quarter of the Wizard and Glass is also shit the books five through seven are also shit. There's an amazing world buried in the clay of the Dark Tower and King was not the man to be trusted with it's excavation.
But hey, if you like the first four books then I suggest you pretend the story ends there and read the comic story The Dark Tower: Beginnings which acts a prequel to the main story.

See, I don't get this. Wizard & Glass is probably imo the best thing King has ever written. And I don't understand why anyone would think that Wolves of the Calla is not just as good as at least Drawing of the Three or even The Wasteland. You want to argue that the sixth book is the weakest link? Sure. No one's going to argue with you. It's also the shortest one. As far as the last book goes, imo the majority of it is good, and I can see why it would be polarizing, but I thought it was about as good a way to finish the series as any, and in fact thematically it's basically perfect.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

I kinda like the stuff everyone hates, and hate the stuff everyone else likes. Everyone hates on The Tommyknockers, but I kind of liked it. Guess I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraftian. And even ignoring the prepubescent train that was run, I'm not a fan of IT (the novel.) Not awful, but far from his (or anyone elses') best.

Of the book's I've finished:

29. Rose Madder (1995) - God, did this book suck. I cannot express how much it sucked. I think I stopped reading King for five years after finishing this. If you like this book, I'm pretty sure I have to hate you.
28. Insomnia (1994) - Not much better. King at his most meandering; 8000 pages of bilge leading up to a typical King non-ending.
47. Under the Dome (2009) - 200 pages could have been cut from this monstrosity without anyone noticing. Interesting concept, poorly executed. Usual shitty King ending, if that even needs to be pointed out
36. Dreamcatcher (2001) - People farting themselves to death. I doubt anybody not named King could get such a book published.
37. Black House (2001) - Sequel to possibly my favorite King novel of all time, The Talisman. Not as bad as the others, but not a worthy sequel. Not at all.

I DNF'd:
46. Duma Key (200
44. Lisey’s Story (2006)

31. Desperation (1996)

32. The Regulators (1996)

So I can't really speak to them, but I didn't like what I did read. I can say that much. Maybe they're actually worse than the books mentioned above, dunno.

edit: I liked Hearts in Atlantis, which I see has run away with the poll. Proving my contrarian point further, I guess. Not in my top 5 King books by any means, but IMO at least average; Firestarter/Bag of Bones tier.

 

[Pig Boss]

See, I don't get this. Wizard & Glass is probably imo the best thing King has ever written. And I don't understand why anyone would think that Wolves of the Calla is not just as good as at least Drawing of the Three or even The Wasteland. You want to argue that the sixth book is the weakest link? Sure. No one's going to argue with you. It's also the shortest one. As far as the last book goes, imo the majority of it is good, and I can see why it would be polarizing, but I thought it was about as good a way to finish the series as any, and in fact thematically it's basically perfect.

Spoiler: It's just one big spoiler for the books

Wizard and Glass is great when it's running along nicely. People forget the Oz part of the story, the endless monotony of the Oz and the Topeka station and the fucking Orbs. Blaine and Susan make up for it, mostly, even if the story is just another one of Kings weak as fuck 'tragedies' .
Wolves of the Calla is a total loss because of the fucking Dr. Doom, Snitches and Lightsabers shit and for the endless, incessant prattling of the folksy retards they're defending, even though Roland already justified why they don't do that for townsfolk in The Wasteland just before they cross into Lud. My memories of books five through seven are murky at best because I read them once a long time ago and was so disgusted that it soured me on the whole series.
And all the time spent following Jake around in New York just so King can retcon one of the most character defining moments Roland had. (Who pushed Jake, was it the Man in Black, was it Jack Morton? Was he dressed as a priest? Was he just wearing black robes? It depends on which book you read because King can't make up his mind)
Then there's all the time wasted in The Dogan and Susannah chatting on about the Chap in book six. It's just fucking dreadful.
There's no catharsis to the ending of book seven, it felt like the book series I'd been reading over the course of a decade had withered on the vine and died off. How can a series which had such a strong opening turn so sour? I don't even want a happy ending, I just want an ending at all.
Also, lest we forget: Stephen King literally self inserting like a fucking 13 year old spastic writing himself into his Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic.

I like the world of the Dark Tower, I only like some of the story.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

Besides everything that had been said here, I am not over how both he and Gaiman use father-on-daughter incest as plot point multiple times, and both IRL have daughters who are lesbians.

 

[King Metalia]

No Doctor Sleep option on the poll. I must admit I find myself disappointed with that.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

No Doctor Sleep option on the poll. I must admit I find myself disappointed with that.

I really liked both the book and the movie.

I have to say. I'm impressed with Billy Summers. I'm about 2/3rd in and it's really fantastic so far. Pure crime novel, nothing supernatural (so far), really recommend (though keep in mind that half of the time Stephen King fucks up his endings so I might be back to bitch soon)

 

[Dysnomia]

No Doctor Sleep option on the poll. I must admit I find myself disappointed with that.

Is it that bad?

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Is it that bad?

It's not. It's really good.

 

[Elbow Greased Strength]

Spoiler: It's just one big spoiler for the books

Wizard and Glass is great when it's running along nicely. People forget the Oz part of the story, the endless monotony of the Oz and the Topeka station and the fucking Orbs. Blaine and Susan make up for it, mostly, even if the story is just another one of Kings weak as fuck 'tragedies' .
Wolves of the Calla is a total loss because of the fucking Dr. Doom, Snitches and Lightsabers shit and for the endless, incessant prattling of the folksy retards they're defending, even though Roland already justified why they don't do that for townsfolk in The Wasteland just before they cross into Lud. My memories of books five through seven are murky at best because I read them once a long time ago and was so disgusted that it soured me on the whole series.
And all the time spent following Jake around in New York just so King can retcon one of the most character defining moments Roland had. (Who pushed Jake, was it the Man in Black, was it Jack Morton? Was he dressed as a priest? Was he just wearing black robes? It depends on which book you read because King can't make up his mind)
Then there's all the time wasted in The Dogan and Susannah chatting on about the Chap in book six. It's just fucking dreadful.
There's no catharsis to the ending of book seven, it felt like the book series I'd been reading over the course of a decade had withered on the vine and died off. How can a series which had such a strong opening turn so sour? I don't even want a happy ending, I just want an ending at all.
Also, lest we forget: Stephen King literally self inserting like a fucking 13 year old spastic writing himself into his Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic.

I like the world of the Dark Tower, I only like some of the story.

I personally thought The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass were the best in the series. WL is just extremely atmospheric and there are so many mysterious pieces left unexplained that really make you feel like you're in a world that's moved on. W&G also developed the multiverse concept further and I liked the tie-in to The Stand as well.

The problem is like you noted, it just feels like he completely lost the plot after W&G. There were some cool ideas being developed with NCP and their technology messing with the Tower for commercial purposes and damaging reality in the process but he went off on all those weird tangents with pop culture and that awful self-insert plot.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

Can he shut the fuck up about Trump already? I'm not kidding, I'm about 30 pages into Billy Summers and he brought him up about 5 times so far what the fuck.

The last King book I ever read (and I'm not reading any more) was The Institute. Potshots at Trump are used there, too, and King just uses the book to preach about woke politics, including:

• Mentioning Tamir Rice.
• The kids stuck in the titular institute being experimented on think of Hillary Clinton's "Stronger Together" campaign slogan for hope they'll escape.
• Calls an AR-15 a "fully automatic weapon" and he doesn't even spell the name of the gun right.*

* It's ALWAYS the people who know NOTHING about guns that say dumb things like this and push for weapon/magazine bans. The fact that he doesn't even spell the name of the weapon right (he doesn't use a hyphen like he should), and the book itself is pretty bad on its own even when he's not using it to foam about Trump and the fact that the Second Amendment exists like what he does on Twitter constantly.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Yeah, Billy Summers suffers from the same shit, where we are supposed to think that some hitman jarhead who is literally paid to murder people is going to be a huge anti-trumper who can't stand fox news and has clear left-wing politics and just randomly goes 'Urgh, Trump' and decry his views on immigration randomly.

Like, shut the fuck up and write the book, it doesn't make it better in any way whatsoever. The book itself was good, once again suffered from King not knowing how to write an ending, and because of the occasional TDS stuff, I'd give it a 7/10 as a result. Could have been 9/10 with a proper ending and no TDS stuff in it. If you don't mind the TDS, probably an 8/10.

Don't get me wrong, the first 2/3rd of the book is fantastic, and I'd genuinely give it a 9.5/10, it's about as good as anything he's ever written, but the last 100 pages or so take a nosedive where the TDS ramps up and the story doesn't know where to go.

 

[Zaryiu2]

Would it had been better if Stephen King didn't become a big time writer?

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Under the Dome was one I specifically remember having a bullshit ending and Revival sounds like a fun homage in comparison. Nothing like ending a 500 page book with a wet fart of aliens did it! Why? I don't know!

 

[Ammyterasu]

For me it's "Cell", the one with the phone signal turning people into mindless "zombie" drones... I knew not to expect much from modern King, yet I was still baffled by how lazy and stale it was.
And now I just found out that they made an equally shitty movie out of it, with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Crazy.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

For me it's "Cell", the one with the phone signal turning people into mindless "zombie" drones... I knew not to expect much from modern King, yet I was still baffled by how lazy and stale it was.
And now I just found out that they made an equally shitty movie out of it, with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Crazy.

It literally has no ending.

 

[Zaryiu2]

For me it's "Cell", the one with the phone signal turning people into mindless "zombie" drones... I knew not to expect much from modern King, yet I was still baffled by how lazy and stale it was.
And now I just found out that they made an equally shitty movie out of it, with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Crazy.

There is a Canadian movie that you might find better , although it's more related to radio signals than phones Pontypool is pretty decent (although you should avoid the post credit s scene as it's nonsensical)

 

[Ammyterasu]

There is a Canadian movie that you might find better , although it's more related to radio signals than phones Pontypool is pretty decent (although you should avoid the post credit s scene as it's nonsensical)

Thank you, I will check it out. The plot sounds much better indeed.

 

[KiwiFuzz]

I like the big epics: The Uncut Stand, It, Needful Things. The little nasties are also good: The Shining, Misery, Pet Semetery.

As has been said by literally everyone else in this thread, he's good at getting a big story going and not very good at wrapping it up.

The three big epics that I like, I enjoy despite the deus ex machina nature of the endings.

I'm thinking out loud here but part of what makes a book like The Shining or Misery work is that there's a very limited cast (four people and two people, respectively) and a very limited set (Annie's house and The Overlook). So at the end, either they're going to die or they're not and either they're going to escape or they're not and either the place gets destroyed or it doesn't. King works well inside that box.

A little known fact about King is that when he was little he went to play at a friend's house and there was a train track in the back yard and he saw his friend get absolutely creamed by the train. That would fuck a person up.

Oh, and nobody has mentioned Eyes of the Dragon. That book is tits.