Worst of Stephen King - Worst books or stories

[Major Filth]

The Wind Through the Keyhole...turned out better than at least two of the actual Dark Tower books.

In a vacuum, I'd agree with this 100%, but just as 5 & 7 were "Oh hey - I finally got around to reading those Harry Potter books everybody keeps talking about," so TWTTK was "Oh hey - I finally got around to reading all those Song of Ice and Fire books everybody keeps talking about." King abruptly added plenty of "conventional" feudal elements to Gilead's story and it's kinda jarring until you realize just where he's getting it all from. So although the frame story within a frame story concept is neat and well-executed, the Cowboy Game of Thrones elements just kinda suck the life out of it for me. I considered it nice fluff and a welcome return to that universe, but not required reading for TDT overall.

 

[Mola Ram]

In a vacuum, I'd agree with this 100%, but just as 5 & 7 were "Oh hey - I finally got around to reading those Harry Potter books everybody keeps talking about," so TWTTK was "Oh hey - I finally got around to reading all those Song of Ice and Fire books everybody keeps talking about." King abruptly added plenty of "conventional" feudal elements to Gilead's story and it's kinda jarring until you realize just where he's getting it all from. So although the frame story within a frame story concept is neat and well-executed, the Cowboy Game of Thrones elements just kinda suck the life out of it for me. I considered it nice fluff and a welcome return to that universe, but not required reading for TDT overall.

Oh, I don't think it's required at all, and I don't think it's anything groundbreaking. Stephen King is clearly unsuited to write traditional fantasy -- The Eyes of the Dragon is highly entertaining and a fun read, but it's derivative to the point of cliche. I think that was sort of the point for that story, though. When he starts mucking with whatever's trendy these days he usually stumbles badly. (Also, at least his high fantasy is nowhere near as bad as his attempts at mafiosi, which are universally cringe-inducing).

What did you think was especially Game of Thrones about it? I've only made it halfway through the first book, though I did watch the whole show, much to my eventual regret.

 

[CowPox]

I like the one about the guy who drinks the infected beer and turns into a yeast golem.

I like the one about the buy who's kid sister jumps off a building after going from beautiful farm girl to big city escort.

I like the one about the naked guy who eats grass.

I like the one about the guy who digs the hole and kills his wife's murderer.

I like the one about the vampire that kills two pedos who kidnap his grandson.

I like the one about teenagers dying on the beach.

I like the one about the killer toys. (Even though it was stupid)

I like the one about the crazy waiter.

I like the one about the snake bite.

Etc.

And I like his early normie mainstream shit for the most part.

 

[Mola Ram]

I like the one about the guy who drinks the infected beer and turns into a yeast golem.

I like the one about the buy who's kid sister jumps off a building after going from beautiful farm girl to big city escort.

I like the one about the naked guy who eats grass.

I like the one about the guy who digs the hole and kills his wife's murderer.

I like the one about the vampire that kills two pedos who kidnap his grandson.

I like the one about teenagers dying on the beach.

I like the one about the killer toys. (Even though it was stupid)

I like the one about the crazy waiter.

I like the one about the snake bite.

Etc.

And I like his early normie mainstream shit for the most part.

Funniest part about this is that half of those are all from the same collection.

 

[Muttley]

I've only read like 6 or 7 King books, but the one that was the worst by far, was the Stand.
Maybe the regular cut was better but this 500 page extended one... it's 1700 pages and still too short.

It's just such a cocktease of a book.
You get ready for this big adventure across the country in one of the earlier post-apocalypse stories...
And it just skips all that shit, and next thing you know our protagonists are at Abagail's farm.

Then you're like, okay, we're at the farm, but now they're trying to take control of a city to prepare for the coming attack by Randall Flagg.
That should be cool, right? Nope, it also, mostly skips over that, and now they're mostly established and they're running the community they've created.

Great idea for a book, but King decided all the parts I wanted to read about, were filler.
Then again, adventures require showing, not telling, and King struggles with that.

 

[Constellationzero]

Oh, I don't think it's required at all, and I don't think it's anything groundbreaking. Stephen King is clearly unsuited to write traditional fantasy -- The Eyes of the Dragon is highly entertaining and a fun read, but it's derivative to the point of cliche. I think that was sort of the point for that story, though. When he starts mucking with whatever's trendy these days he usually stumbles badly. (Also, at least his high fantasy is nowhere near as bad as his attempts at mafiosi, which are universally cringe-inducing).

What did you think was especially Game of Thrones about it? I've only made it halfway through the first book, though I did watch the whole show, much to my eventual regret.

I think, where King shines most, is when his storyteller/protagonist is either an upper middle aged or old man.

Gray Matter
One For the Road
Sometimes They Come Back (could be a younger man though)
Misery

Are examples of this. He's, to me, at his most natural--and openly racist as opposed to woke--and most gripping. He comes off as more authentic and sometimes genuinely funny.
Like a racist Paul Harvey.


Isn't Night Surf supposed to be loosely connected to The Stand?

 

[Mola Ram]

I think, where King shines most, is when his storyteller/protagonist is either an upper middle aged or old man.

It's an interesting take. On the other hand, Insomnia, which features a protagonist who's in his 70s, is just a disaster. Plot threads that get forgotten, strawman politics, quoting Lord of the Rings solely to the effect that it'll make you wish you were reading that instead. But Insomnia is also a doorstopper, and everything you mentioned is a short story or very short novel. (Misery is barely past novella length.) Sometimes King's long stuff is fantastic -- The Stand comes to mind -- but when he's allowed to sprawl the chances of something dreadful popping up increases. It is one of his very longest, and maybe if it had been trimmed a little there would have been no preteen sewer orgy.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Isn't Night Surf supposed to be loosely connected to The Stand?

There’s threads that connect it to The Stand (the virus killing everyone being called Captain Tripps, it’s extremely high mortality rate etc) but that’s really the only thing. IIRC Night Surf was written when he was in college, well before The Stand was published. Pretty sure it was just meant as a one-off story he went back to years later and developed The Stand out of, rather than having it deliberately be connected.

 

[P. Barnes’ THOT 2.0]

I've only read like 6 or 7 King books, but the one that was the worst by far, was the Stand.
Maybe the regular cut was better but this 500 page extended one... it's 1700 pages and still too short.

It's just such a cocktease of a book.
You get ready for this big adventure across the country in one of the earlier post-apocalypse stories...
And it just skips all that shit, and next thing you know our protagonists are at Abagail's farm.

Then you're like, okay, we're at the farm, but now they're trying to take control of a city to prepare for the coming attack by Randall Flagg.
That should be cool, right? Nope, it also, mostly skips over that, and now they're mostly established and they're running the community they've created.

Great idea for a book, but King decided all the parts I wanted to read about, were filler.
Then again, adventures require showing, not telling, and King struggles with that.

Agreed. The few times throughout the years I’ve re read the stand, I actually only enjoy the first…3rd, I guess? The beginning when things are falling apart and all these random stories. I’d have loved to see more prep before the Flagg business. It could have been epic, but it falls so flat

 

[Mola Ram]

Agreed. The few times throughout the years I’ve re read the stand, I actually only enjoy the first…3rd, I guess? The beginning when things are falling apart and all these random stories. I’d have loved to see more prep before the Flagg business. It could have been epic, but it falls so flat

King is on the record as having recognized that the whole middle section around Boulder was beginning to get bogged down in community meetings and rap sessions and all kinds of other hippie-dippie bullshit detailing an idyllic postapocalypse community, and this is why

Spoiler: Spoiler for a book published before most of you were born

Harold and Nadine bomb the board meeting and take out half the leadership. Nick Andros was not supposed to die; King originally envisioned him being one of the big heroes of the whole story. But he understood the narrative had stalled and he wanted to kick it back into high gear, and the bombing was the best way he could think of to do that.

He's not even really wrong, and I do think that incident shakes the story up nicely. The question is why, once he'd gotten things moving again, he didn't go back during revisions and cut some of the fat from the Boulder sections, considering how ridiculously long the book was to begin with.

 

[Constellationzero]

Okay, started Salem's Lot last night. Prologue and first chapter.

Only thing I can say so far is that, yeah, it seems like this will be different from Jerusalem's Lot and One For the Road. Having said that, I noticed something else though:

Marsten House
Jointner Avenue

So far, these are common threads in the short stories. And I feel like if any of us decided to write three stories with such close common threads, an English prof. would mark it all up in red ink before tossing it. Same with any publisher--especially if the common threads are annoying ones like physical landmarks and town name along with some of the lore (The Lot going bad and people disappearing) are the SAME!

But there is one difference: Momson.
So I'm going to expect no mention of Preacher's Corners.
But he's already mentioned the skittering sounds of "mice" in the walls of the Marsten House. I don't expect Marcella or her father in the basement, but, yeah, if any of us tried writing and submitting this, we'd be told that we can't do that. We'd be told we HAVE to make direct connection/tie-ins to either Jerusalem's Lot or One For the Road.

Oh well...

 

[McMitch]

Okay, started Salem's Lot last night. Prologue and first chapter.

Only thing I can say so far is that, yeah, it seems like this will be different from Jerusalem's Lot and One For the Road. Having said that, I noticed something else though:

Marsten House
Jointner Avenue

So far, these are common threads in the short stories. And I feel like if any of us decided to write three stories with such close common threads, an English prof. would mark it all up in red ink before tossing it. Same with any publisher--especially if the common threads are annoying ones like physical landmarks and town name along with some of the lore (The Lot going bad and people disappearing) are the SAME!

But there is one difference: Momson.
So I'm going to expect no mention of Preacher's Corners.
But he's already mentioned the skittering sounds of "mice" in the walls of the Marsten House. I don't expect Marcella or her father in the basement, but, yeah, if any of us tried writing and submitting this, we'd be told that we can't do that. We'd be told we HAVE to make direct connection/tie-ins to either Jerusalem's Lot or One For the Road.

Oh well...

Direct references to those short stories don’t exist because Salems Lot was written first. The other two stories exist almost entirely as a reward/self reference for reading Salems Lot.

 

[Constellationzero]

Direct references to those short stories don’t exist because Salems Lot was written first. The other two stories exist almost entirely as a reward/self reference for reading Salems Lot.

I had to take a little bit to think on what I wanted to say about this.

Whether Salem's Lot was written first or not is not really the point I was making. There are three stories: 1 novel and 2 short stories, all themed around Jerusalem's Lot. Two have direct mentions of Jointner Avenue and two also make direct mention of the Marsten House. Salem's Lot also references a "hanged ghost" in the Marsten House. Which sounds like Marcella's father in Jerusalem's Lot.

What I was trying to say earlier was that it's irritating because if anyone else (non established, or not widely published author, or fan fiction writer, or hobbyist) does something similar...
It gets immediately trashed, dunked on, and the writer lectured that they've "established canon" in a piece written earlier--be that a short story, or a novel/novella.
I've dead ass seen this very thing happen when I was in college and grad school. Person I had a few core classes in common with had this done to him in Creative Writing.

Personally I don't care. Like I said, I absolutely LOVE Jerusalem's Lot and One For the Road. So far I'm really enjoying Salem's Lot even though Ben Mears is a writer (and King's books about writers are almost always bad and cringe and I never finish them).
It just bugs me that he gets to do this somehow because... reasons? But others have no chance or hope of breaking into writing if they do the same thing.

Reminds me of every fucking time Simon Cowell used to tell people their singing was "derivative" or "unoriginal." Like, bitch, so is Lady Gaga. So is Maraiah Carey, Ozzy Osbourne, and a whole fucking conga line of other boring and derivative retards who slobbed the correct knobs (really--that's all it is, and you know it) and got famous.

I'm saying that Stephen King HIMSELF would likely dunk on one of his own students in college if they pulled a Salem's Lot/Jerusalem's Lot/One For the Road. I'd bet he'd even tell them that they've established cannon with the first work and there has to be some continuity.

But he gets to do it.

Also reminds me of something similar: Maximum Overdrive. Yeah, he was blackout crunk. But HE DIRECTED his OWN WORK. And he completely broke canon and continuity.
Because... Stephen King? If so, that's really fucking arrogant.

 

[Constellationzero]

Okay, read some more. Can't edit my last comment, so I had to double post.

It goes into the story of the Marsten House in chapter 2. Again, I understand Jerusalem's Lot and One For the Road are written after Salem's Lot.
So... why even write Jerusalem's Lot then? Why not title it differently and give the town a different name and leave Marsten out of this?
It's a very irritating continuity and canon issue that, I'm pretty sure, Stephen King himself would've trashed if one of his own students attempted anything like this.

Jerusalem's Lot is fantastic. And it still would be if he just changed the town name and Marsten. Salem's Lot seems to jibe a bit better with One For the Road, but the short story left ENOUGH vagueries that the reader can draw their own conclusions.

Not trying to sound nitpicky. I don't really care if a writer does this. I care and get annoyed when any aspiring writers or hobbyists try doing this and get trashed to hell and back but allow a published author to do whatever because...reasons.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

We do not have other King threads, no? Cause I'd post it elsewhere otherwise.
There is a Soviet cartoon based on that short story of his about guy fighting toys

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=05sH9ShfPwuua2Du&v=I5DofuztDUg

 

[Constellationzero]

We do not have other King threads, no? Cause I'd post it elsewhere otherwise.
There is a Soviet cartoon based on that short story of his about guy fighting toys

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=05sH9ShfPwuua2Du&v=I5DofuztDUg

That story was where I learned that toys can bivouac

 

[WhiskeyJack]

We do not have other King threads, no? Cause I'd post it elsewhere otherwise.
There is a Soviet cartoon based on that short story of his about guy fighting toys

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=05sH9ShfPwuua2Du&v=I5DofuztDUg

Pretty good adaptation, really. Soviet art can be interestingly different. This story works particularly well too, since it doesn't need dialogue.

Though I think I still prefer the 2006 version (easily the best of the anthology):

 

[Mr Processor]

Pretty good adaptation, really. Soviet art can be interestingly different. This story works particularly well too, since it doesn't need dialogue.

Though I think I still prefer the 2006 version (easily the best of the anthology):

I see he has the Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror among his souvenirs.

Of course, I think that's a Matheson story rather than a King story.

 

[The Taco Santo!]

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".

That would be The Stand, and the character was infected with the Superbug and running a high fever.

 

[Mezger7]

"Sleeping Beauties" was cringe. It even doesn;t work as a feminist propaganda. Nature of the women's trance is such that they will tear to shred men who are sincerely trying to help them, but are totally defenceless against men who actually want to hurt them. And there is theme "one woman should not decide for all women"... but at the finale, bunch of women from small American town decides for all (King, as many wokes, is ridiculously americanocentric). King was one of my favourite writers, but most of his new books I read was quite shitty... Last one I truly enjoyed was "Revival", because of Lovecraftian themes I like.