The Cycle of the Werewolf is actually the first ever writing
I have read by Stephen King. As far as an introduction to the author goes, Stephen
King to me is alright. I wouldn’t put him up there with J.K. Rowling for popular
authors, because I don’t think he deserves all the hype and fame he has.
However, his writing is at least clean and entertaining when the plot isn’t
dragging.
Now, I have some experience with King, just not in text
form. I know the movie The Shining, and I know the play Carrie. Both of these I
found interesting. The Cycle of the Werewolf, being the first novel I’ve read
of his, did not hold up to those standards. It wasn’t terrible, but I had high
expectations going in, and those expectations were not met. I was let down.
The book fell into two categories for me:
Good chapters- Jan, Mar, Apr, June, Aug, Oct, Nov, Dec
Bad chapters- Feb, May, July, Sept
We just discussed a chapter in Writer’s Workshop of Horrors (WWoH)
on tone and writing style. I can’t say one way or another if this is normal for
King’s tone, but I feel like the fact that the chapters jump between good and
bad makes me feel like the writing style is very inconsistent. In some chapters
there are beautiful phrases, rhetorical elements, and interesting plot twists.
In others, the scenes drag on, the word choices are cliché, and the prose is
too repetitive. The chapters are all over the place.
Now, some of the clichés work for me, such as the end of the
very first chapter of the book. “—it is all black winter and dark ice. The
cycle of the Werewolf has begun,” may be a bit cheesy, but it’s also a nice way
to incorporate the title of the book into the story. However, other examples
don’t work for me at all, such as, “Love, Stella Randolph thinks, lying in her
narrow virgin's bed…” or the repetitive, “’You always get what you want! Just
because you're a cripple!’"
The story really picks up after the first survival of a victim
(during July). Even though I thought the chapter July drug on too long before
getting to evening, it did a good job of setting up the story for the later recurrence
of those characters. I understand the importance of having the previous murders
by the werewolf mentioned for build-up, but this book should have started in
June. That’s the chapter when a victim first sees the person change under the
moonlight, and then the chapter after that is when we get the ‘main’ character
of Marty introduced and survives. All the earlier chapters are either irrelevant
information to build up to a murder, or boring dialog of townsfolk talking
about the werewolf. IT IS BORING.
That would be my summary of the book too. Even the end of the
book, where I enjoyed the chapters, still drug on too long. I felt like there
was too much unnecessary exposition and descriptions. I didn’t, but I wanted to
skim.
Verdict: Skip the first 30% of the book. Or else, the pacing
is better for a movie script instead.
You may be interested to know that King wrote a fantasy story for his daughter quite some time ago. It's called The Eyes of the Dragon. I read it back in the late 80's/early 90's. I remember liking it when I read it, but that's been so long ago, I can't tell you much about it. The villain was well done. There was a king with two sons... one good, one bad. I recommend it based on knowing that I liked it then. I may have to make a point to re-read it again.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed the Darak Tower series (7 books), though book two was painful to read through. Book 4 made it completely worth it though, and overall, I did enjoy that series. Its only a little bit horror... really more fantasy, though this world has guns. The main character is like a knight with revolvers. I recommend that series too, though the ending to the series was lame. But still worth the read.
I'll definitely pick them up and give them a read, thank you for the recommendations!
DeleteThat's a really good point about the pacing being better for a movie script. I could see Jan-June being included as a montage in the first few minutes to set the scene, with July-Dec taking up the majority of the rest of the action. On the one hand, I like the idea of dividing the chapters by month, but I think it also created a sort of artificial pacing that forced every month to seem like it should have equal weight, when some of them really should have been much longer than the others. A lot of us have made comments about the "in-between-ness" of some of the other stories when it came to science (ie. needing a lot more or a lot less explanation), and I think a similar claim could be made about this story in terms of length. It either could have been a lot shorter, just focusing on Marty as a stand-alone short story, or a lot longer, with enough subplot material to flesh out the first half so that it felt like important stuff was happening in those chapters, too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I do recommend The Shining and Carrie in their novel forms. I remember really loving them both. The movies tend to up the gore-factor by a lot, but the books are much more deeply psychological. Carrie, for example, is so much less about what happened at prom, and so much more about the terrifying abuse she experienced that pushed her over the edge. And in the novel form of the Shining, you get so much deeper inside Jack's head as he's unraveling—and the ending is infinitely better, in my opinion. I won't spoil it, in case you ever want to read it!
I now definitely need to read the novel version of The Shining!
DeleteI also noticed the repetitiveness in certain chapters/months, especially with the virgin bed girl and with Marty's mother being brusque. In laziness, I don't want to go searching for the exact phrasing, but it was one of those verbs used to describe everything she did each time she was mentioned. It felt like he just learned the word and was excited to use it.
ReplyDelete