Worst of Stephen King - Worst books or stories

[Cloaca Rimjob]

I remember reading cujo and found the part were the jilted lover breaks into the house and has a ham-shank over the woman's bed absolutely hilarious. The level of detail he went into.

Spells the word 'cum' as 'come'.

The gravest of all sins, unforgivable!

Spells his name with a PH, rather than a V, which is the objectively gayest way of spelling it.

When I was younger we used to call one the protestant way and one the catholic way. Cant remember which. Same with Sean and Shaun.

 

[A-Stump]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a bit: King doesn't write copious amounts of child rape scenes because he's secretly into that, but merely because he's a hack who can't figure out other ways of shocking the reader and depicting a corrupting influence in other ways than "innocent child gets corrupted into sex". His content is awful by design, he's a horror writer after all, but he's also kinda bad at it and doesn't have much imagination.
Also, him writing himself as a God in Dark Tower is less self-aggrandizing than it sounds, the Dark Tower is basically his attempt at being meta, while also being entirely literal about it. The multiverse there is his collected literary works, and he thought it would be a good idea to include himself in it. At least he takes the piss out of himself in that.
Still sucks, though. I mean, I enjoyed his books as a kid and I really liked the Dark Tower, but growing older it just becomes too apparent how he's a rather unimaginative hack.

I'll touch on a few things here:

A lot of the time the sex stuff isn't even played up for shock value. He will literally bookend it randomly into stuff. There's likely way more examples than I could think of but he has a problem of just kind of, you know, putting it in there with no provocation to speak of.

As for his appearance in the Dark Tower, maybe you remember it differently than I do but he's so pompous he makes it a point to have his characters go 'Oh wow this King guy is so cool and special I sure am glad the Crimson King didn't ice him'. Or how about the ghosts of Stephen King Christmas Past, Present, and Future who show up and babble for awhile about reality.

His attempts at grounding himself as a self-insert was to basically call himself a big pussy but then turn around and say 'But yeah I'm a big deal'.

 

[skykiii]

'My Pretty Pony',

Wait, what?

 

[TV's Adam West]

To this day, I don't know if the langoliers is the worst thing I've ever read and that's why I love it, or if the movie was the best thing I've ever seen and that's why I love it.

 

[Cloaca Rimjob]

To this day, I don't know if the langoliers is the worst thing I've ever read and that's why I love it, or if the movie was the best thing I've ever seen and that's why I love it.

I remember watching that as a child and feeling so bad for Bronson Pinchot's character. The CGI was so bad in that film, didn't matter, the flying meatballs teeth could do some real damage. Bit of a plot hole.... how did his old man know of the langoliers?

 

[Less Nasty Old Person]

King has a weird habit of slipping kid fucking into his books. Many only know or reference ITs gangbang scene but I'd say there's worse. Lets see what the contenders are...

The part in Tommyknockers where for some reason he feels it very necessary to describe little boys being anally raped by their father

The junkyard scene in IT. Those who have actually read the book will know what I'm talking about.

The Talisman. Yes I'm aware it was a collab but the bathroom scene with the sheriff had King's grubby weird little fingers all over it

Gerald's Game. I haven't seen the miniseries or movie or whatever they made of it but I feel like they omitted the key point in the book which is where the main character has to remember her father jizzing on her backside to escape her bonds. No, I'm not joking or exaggerating. That really is the major stepping stone in the story.

'My Pretty Pony', a short story where he again for no real reason at all decides to describe a teenage girl jacking off her little brother in the middle of it.

Oh but the worst one of all is obvious to any who have read it

Black House. It's Black House and will always be. I know it was a collab with Straub again since it's Talisman's sequel but King's hand in it really shines through with the horrible shit. He threw away all pretenses and just went full-on sicko. Want to read 625 pages of graphic child rape, torture, and murder? No? King clearly wanted to write about it. The van that hit King two years before the release of the novel must have really knocked his marbles around because he thought describing some old dimension traveling Albert Fish knockoff sucking off a little boy and biting his dick off made for good reading material.

If there isn't a Jimmy Saville revelation after he's kicked the bucket I will honestly be shocked. The dude clearly has something on his mind and since he writes in his problems (booze, drugs, tortured writer syndrome) I think all these things I've just mentioned point to something.

And where would we be without the graphic man on little boy rape scene in the short story The Library Policeman?

That one managed to make even my drop forged tritanium stomach tie itself in knots.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

Or that short story where the kid meets the devil in the woods while he's out fishing. The devil tells the kid that his mom died of a bee-sting, and just casually mentions that his dad will start butt-fucking him as soon as she's in the ground.

Apparently, one of the sequels to The Giver has this. The entire fantasy is so infected with rapist father motif, that, I shit you not, that really mid Shadows-Fall book by Simon Richard Green actually had a thing which used the "girl was NOT molested by her dad" as a twist.

 

[Cheesegirl78]

I lived in Maine for three years when dad was stationed there, so I don't mind him talking about the state. I would love to visit again someday.

But the child molestation and brutality towards women in his books is awful.

Liseys' Story, IIRC, had a woman get tortured by a creep that thought her wrote her late husband's books. Hearts in Atlantis had a part where the boy's mother gets gang-raped on a business trip.
The Institute was an excuse to write about child torture, IMO.
I'm sure there's more examples, but can't think of them now.

ETA: Dolores Clairborne (sp) was another one that had domestic assault and child molestation in it.

 

[Quijibo69]

And where would we be without the graphic man on little boy rape scene in the short story The Library Policeman?

That one managed to make even my drop forged tritanium stomach tie itself in knots.

I think the child rape guy comes back in a few of his books. I think he comes back in It and the Kennedy time travel one. Just a little creepy...

 

[McMitch]

Or that short story where the kid meets the devil in the woods while he's out fishing. The devil tells the kid that his mom died of a bee-sting, and just casually mentions that his dad will start butt-fucking him as soon as she's in the ground.

That’s a bit disingenuous, because the whole point of that story is Satan lying in order to hurt the boy.

 

[The Taco Santo!]

Granted, it was just the casualness about it. It did not read as if King was bothered by the thought of it.

 

[Caesare]

I lived in Maine for three years when dad was stationed there, so I don't mind him talking about the state. I would love to visit again someday.

But the child molestation and brutality towards women in his books is awful.

Liseys' Story, IIRC, had a woman get tortured by a creep that thought her wrote her late husband's books. Hearts in Atlantis had a part where the boy's mother gets gang-raped on a business trip.
The Institute was an excuse to write about child torture, IMO.
I'm sure there's more examples, but can't think of them now.

ETA: Dolores Clairborne (sp) was another one that had domestic assault and child molestation in it.

Gerald's Game has a chapter with a multi page scene of father/daughter molestation that was unnecessary.

What's this about Dean Koontz now? Can you give me the deets?

Was Koontz ever good? All I know is someone once told me his books were basically a slightly gorier Scooby Doo.

I think Koontz is far superior to King in pretty much every way. The gorier Scooby Doo analogy is funny, because he knows how to be silly when it is called for, but he's a really excellent writer. He knows how to get to the point, unlike King. He writes excellent evil characters, and he knows how to humanize without making excuses for their shitty behavior. (oh they had a hard childhood!!) They're evil and usually irredeemable.


That and he writes awesome protagonists. Really likable, relatable guys that sometimes manage to be angelic in a way. They're flawed individuals, but they work hard and they want to do what's right. And for his side characters, they're not all secretly weird or perverted or have ulterior, creepy motives. They are just regular, relatable individuals who are what they are. He's not trying to be edgy and gross like King. That being said, he knows how to write a despicable, disgusting antagonists, but they pretty much always get what's coming to them in the end and it's extremely satisfying to read them getting their comeuppance. He's not like these authors where everything has to be negative or end on a down note. His books often end on a sad note, but there is still a happy ending in there.

Idk, I really like his books. And they're easy to read and you can get through them pretty fast because you want to keep reading. He has a succinct, and very flowing way he articulates his stories. You don't want to put them down once you start, and they never go on for longer than they should.

Sometimes, his books will start out as one thing but then turn into something completely different as they go on. For instance, the story will start like a crime/detective type drama, but then end up with a supernatural twist. It's really cool.

One of his most famous series is Odd Thomas, deservedly so as they're awesome. Highly recommended. Another great one, especially if you like dogs is Watchers. That one is so good, everyone should read it at least once. From the Corner of His Eye was one of my personal favorites by Koontz. It's a bit longer than most of his books but it still flows well, unlike the meandering, wordy garbage that King writes. But yeah, that one surprised the hell out of me. I didn't know wtf to expect or where it was going most of the time but it was excellent. It was sad, depressing, makes you angry at the antagonist, yet positive, life affirming, and triumphant. It was just awesome, idk what else to say. It wasn't even one of his more positively rated books, but it really had an effect on me.

 

[Mackerel Fish Stew]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Sleeping Beauties yet, written in collaboration with his son Owen. The concept is that women across the globe start magically forming cocoons around themselves when they fall asleep, and will enter a trance to violently murder anyone who attempts to remove the cocoons. It's later revealed that they are being mentally transported to some parallel world devoid of people to form a better society? What makes it insufferable is that the book will. not. stop. hammering in the message "MEN BAD, VIOLENT, STUPID. WOMEN GOOD AND KIND. WOMEN RUN WORLD BETTER THAN MEN." There is maybe one non-child male character in the book who is not a domestic abuser, a rapist, a crazy violent addict, a cartoon misogynist, or otherwise champing at the bit to burn the women alive in their cocoons by day 2 of the disaster. And of course the women transported to the other world just happen to include engineers, electricians, doctors etc and they get a perfect society functioning from the ruins just like that And the villain of the book is a "quirky" nature goddess who gets addicted to Candy Crush. I don't know if it was Stephen or Owen who were responsible for the overbearing feminist pandering, but as a woman it just made me cringe out of my skin.

Also Billy Summers has been brought up before, but I can confirm the people complaining about all the digs at Trump were not exaggerating. It's literally at least once per chapter.

 

[Constellationzero]

I remember watching that as a child and feeling so bad for Bronson Pinchot's character. The CGI was so bad in that film, didn't matter, the flying meatballs teeth could do some real damage. Bit of a plot hole.... how did his old man know of the langoliers?

I've got Four Past Midnight. The Langoliers is pretty solid. But one thing kind of bugs me: I'd love to know what King himself feels about Mr. Toomey.
He actually goes out of his way to make Mr. Toomey very sympathetic. When I read along, I cared about Mr. Toomey and you get that real sense of King writing his problems and using pen and paper as a therapist. Having said that, he goes in and out of...actually violently hating Mr. Toomey at the same time. It was strange and a little different from the other stuff I've read from King.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Insomnia from the Salvation Army thrift store.

Anyone read Insomnia? What are your thoughts?

 

[Jason Wynn]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Sleeping Beauties yet, written in collaboration with his son Owen. The concept is that women across the globe start magically forming cocoons around themselves when they fall asleep, and will enter a trance to violently murder anyone who attempts to remove the cocoons. It's later revealed that they are being mentally transported to some parallel world devoid of people to form a better society? What makes it insufferable is that the book will. not. stop. hammering in the message "MEN BAD, VIOLENT, STUPID. WOMEN GOOD AND KIND. WOMEN RUN WORLD BETTER THAN MEN." There is maybe one non-child male character in the book who is not a domestic abuser, a rapist, a crazy violent addict, a cartoon misogynist, or otherwise champing at the bit to burn the women alive in their cocoons by day 2 of the disaster. And of course the women transported to the other world just happen to include engineers, electricians, doctors etc and they get a perfect society functioning from the ruins just like that And the villain of the book is a "quirky" nature goddess who gets addicted to Candy Crush. I don't know if it was Stephen or Owen who were responsible for the overbearing feminist pandering, but as a woman it just made me cringe out of my skin.

Also Billy Summers has been brought up before, but I can confirm the people complaining about all the digs at Trump were not exaggerating. It's literally at least once per chapter.

Pretty sure it was old Stevie responsible for the feminist crap. He had a phase of that in the 90s (Rose Madder being especially insufferable)

 

[Mackerel Fish Stew]

Also @A-Stump:

Oh but the worst one of all is obvious to any who have read it

Black House. It's Black House and will always be. I know it was a collab with Straub again since it's Talisman's sequel but King's hand in it really shines through with the horrible shit. He threw away all pretenses and just went full-on sicko. Want to read 625 pages of graphic child rape, torture, and murder? No? King clearly wanted to write about it. The van that hit King two years before the release of the novel must have really knocked his marbles around because he thought describing some old dimension traveling Albert Fish knockoff sucking off a little boy and biting his dick off made for good reading material.

I loved The Talisman (aside from some of the weird shit with Wolf the furry boy) and have had Black House sitting on my backburner to read for a while now... is it really that bad!?

 

[The Taco Santo!]

I enjoyed it, but it was quite hard to take, in places.

 

[Empty Humidifier]

So I started reading Stephan King around 20 years ago. I liked all of his short stories I read, I liked "The Talisman", the first three "Dark Tower" books, though for the "Dark Tower" books I probably wouldn't like them today.

I tried to read "The Tommyknockers" cause the premise seemed interesting. While the side stories were great (the farmer guy growing 3 foot long carrots and then wanting to build a nuke to kill the gophers on his farm) the overall story was slow, dull, and full of asides to characters who only show up in the town to die immediately (lots of the early story is dedicated to the MC's sister, including a detailed segment of her masturbating with "a dildo the size of those carrots". She show up in town and dies like two paragraphs later.) The only part of the book that stuck with me was when they finally dig up the alien spaceship, one character says to another that the craft has been closed for long it has to air out, cause the air is poisonous after 15000 years or so. I never completely finished the book.

After that disappointment I tried to read "The Dark Half". Take a huge fucking guess what that book is about.

Its about a writer in the northeast that has some spoopy stuff happen to him.

Anyways, in the beginning of that book the writer (Stephan King insert) talks about an upcoming deadline he has with his publisher but the book he's working on isn't finished yet. Luckily he has some subpar manuscripts prepared for just the occasion and sends one of those out for publishing instead. After reading that part I put the book down and didn't pick up another Stephan King book until I had to.

And then I had too.

And I realized I was reading one of those books.

DUMA KEY

The worst book I have ever read. I had to spend a little time in jail (20 years ago, a litte town, possession of marijuana) and had nothing better to do than read this book and really consider every single passage that was written. I wont go into the plot or story because I'd actually like someone else to read it to see if they get the same reaction. Nothing in the books description manifests at all.

Since then I vowed to never read another Stephan King book.

 

[CowPox]

I'll touch on a few things here:

A lot of the time the sex stuff isn't even played up for shock value. He will literally bookend it randomly into stuff. There's likely way more examples than I could think of but he has a problem of just kind of, you know, putting it in there with no provocation to speak of.

As for his appearance in the Dark Tower, maybe you remember it differently than I do but he's so pompous he makes it a point to have his characters go 'Oh wow this King guy is so cool and special I sure am glad the Crimson King didn't ice him'. Or how about the ghosts of Stephen King Christmas Past, Present, and Future who show up and babble for awhile about reality.

His attempts at grounding himself as a self-insert was to basically call himself a big pussy but then turn around and say 'But yeah I'm a big deal'.

I recall reading needful things and there's a part where someone needs to go the the old farmhouse where Cujo took place and dig something up, its a coffee can and in it are pictures of some chick getting fucked by a large dog...

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

If we are on the point out weird sexual things in King books, I remember reading The Stand ages ago. Think it was on the first 10 pages where the character opens his fridge and sees some burnt sausages and thinks of them as "severed pygmy cocks".

I'm not appalled. Have read far worse but it's just fucking weird how sex obsessed he can be. Makes me think of all those early aught stories on fanfic where they would put in sex and rape. At least they had an excuse of being teens going through puberty and thinking it made their stories much more "mature". For King, it's just cringy.