BOOK REVIEW: The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

BOOK REVIEW: The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Hachette Australia
November 2015
Paperback,  $32.99
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

Short Stories / Speculative

7/10

Mega-selling author Stephen King is mostly known for his work in the horror genre, but in this collection of twenty short stories and novellas, he branches out into the quirky, the macabre and the whimsical.

Rest assured though, even his stories most grounded in reality rather than the supernatural all have a twist, often chilling.

There’s the guy who can kill by writing obituaries; the baseball star who’s not quite right; the car that isn’t a car… and eats people; the neighbours who get into a firework competition with explosive consequences, and plenty more.

You’d be ill-advised to think of these stories as cast-offs, though: they all bristle with King’s exciting prose and provide plenty of shocks through these nearly-500-pages. If anything, they’re orphans without a home up until now, and King’s collecting them for his vast readership – including a fascinating essay and personal introductions and dedications to each individual story – is framed as his gift to them.

Even more of a gift is King’s musings upon the human condition: that these are fictions at all is perhaps the biggest surprise here, such is his talent for weaving his tales.

Category: Book Reviews