It’s important to remember that your fandom shouldn’t become blind adoration. For as frustrated as I get with the incredibly vocal detractors who, for some reason, keep buying Stephen King’s books knowing that they won’t like them, it’s just as wrong minded on the other end of the spectrum. When you act like every word dripped onto the page is like spun gold. I love Stephen King‘s writing and I’m sure that some would be tempted to hurl social media group speak at me like, “fan boy.” But I’m also willing to admit that there are books in his catalog that I just don’t like and probably won’t ever try to read again. 

 

Fairy Tale is a book that just didn’t work out for me.

 

And I don’t think the book is a complete lost cause. There are aspects that I liked a lot but ultimately the fantasy aspects of the book fall short and I think this would be stronger as a focused short story or novella.

 

But let’s start with the positive, shall we?

 

The story is told from the perspective of Charlie and is told in his voice. First person POV is something that King doesn’t generally do and this has been an issue for some. Be prepared for a break from the more standard King tone of voice. For me, the inherent disadvantage I have seen in first person is the fact that as we know the narrator is speaking from the start, we know that the story is going to turn out all right for them. For a Stephen King book this can be more of a diminishing factor than with others in terms of the power of the story. Of course, the book is called “fairy tale.” That probably should have already been a tip off that this is maybe not going to be as dark as other books he has written. 

 

The story that Charlie tells is about meeting Mr. Howard Bowdich, a nearby resident who has become somewhat of a shut-in. His reputation is a local crank and eccentric. Seeing Charlie break through that exterior is actually very sweet. And the relationship that develops subsequently with Bowdich’s dog Radar is also touching and fun to read. For as much as I think the characterizations break down later in the book (spoiler alert) - for these early stages this aspect is King doing what he does best. 

 

I’ve seen some people compare Charlie and Mr. Bowdich’s relationship to what we saw in “Mr. Harrington’s Phone” and I think the comparison is a good one. It also took me back to the relationship between Ted and Bobby in “Low Men In Yellow Coats.” I think that King has an aptitude for depicting mentor-type relationships and Fairy Tale was a good example of this. Both characters feel well-rounded and complex to me. 

 

I have seen some criticism of the way Charlie is written. And I will concede that it’s a bit of a stretch for him to make so many references to popular culture that’s way before his time. He is supposed to be a contemporary teenager but doesn’t seem to talk or have a perspective that feels familiar to actual teens of this generation. Frankly, though, this particular issue should come as no surprise with an author in his seventies writing in a young person’s voice. And if you are going to suggest that King shouldn’t write from the perspective of a younger character, I suppose you have every right to that opinion. However, I suspect that there are just as many young authors who craft characters of an older age so how about we just call this a wash? Just because a character doesn’t ring completely true to how people act in real life doesn’t diminish its value as a character in a fictional story.

 

Personally, I don’t have any basis for arguing for or against this point. If this was something that bothered you, I have to respect that. My take on this type of issue has always been that I look at how interesting or engaging the character is, as opposed to how accurately the character reflects people in whatever time I’m reading it. I’m not reading fiction for sociological accuracy and there are times when I do think people are more highly tuned for things to get upset about. I get that it makes the character harder to connect with for younger readers but I also doubt that King wanted the book to feel like a mirror for contemporary teenagers.

 

Also, the noise made about how a “real” teenager wouldn’t be making the kind of references that Charlie does feels especially off-point when you consider one of the larger aspects of the story.  Following the tragic death of his mother, Charlie needs to connect with his father and his extensive knowledge of older popular culture is a sign of how deep that relationship has become.

 

Put simply, Charlie and the rest of the town were quick to judge Mr. Bowdich without getting to know him and I think more readers could be guilty of doing the same with Charlie.

 

There was great potential for a touching story in these early chapters and if I could choose, I would have liked to have seen King stay on that. Granted, there isn’t as much room for the supernatural elements here but I think that King demonstrated with his recent novella, Elevation that he’s fully capable of cranking out some effective literary fiction. You don’t -need- to have scary elements for the story to work well. 

 

And I’m not going to say that the fantasy elements of this book are a total failure because that isn’t the case. When King introduces the notion of an alternate universe that Charlie travels to, it is well done and reminiscent of his other multi-verse type stories like The Talisman and the Dark Tower series. 

 

But here’s the thing. 

 

There’s a reason why fantasy books are often eight hundred-page tomes of tiny font that take at least a trilogy to finish. World building is no small endeavor and to do it proper justice, you need a lot of narrative space to get things done.

 

Ultimately, I thought that Fairy Tale was just a bit overly-ambitious. Maybe the Stephen King of thirty years ago would have been more suited for this story. And what I mean by that is that he has gotten to the point in his life where he isn’t necessarily engaging with a project for five, six or seven years like he has with others. I wouldn’t say that I think he has been rushing his books as of late but to really do this one properly, I think you need to devote a lot of time and my impression of his process at this point of his life is that he just isn’t putting in that kind of time. 

 

If I closed my eyes and tried to react to this without knowing who wrote it, it feels like great ideas that needed to be further explored. Like something that only got a pass or two and wasn’t really ironed out. There is a ton of potential and if this was the first book leading into a larger narrative, I think I would be on board. But looking at the book in and of itself, I think it just falls short.

 

The other failing for me is in the characters, something I rarely say about a Stephen King book. But that was the position I found myself dealing with. After a superb job in the preliminary establishment of this universe, we are suddenly crashed into a huge population of characters. For much of the book the characters are primarily Charlie and Radar, with a few others orbiting around them. Then, in the span of a few pages this increases by ten-fold or more and all of a sudden it was a completely different book.

 

The story could have held up if there had been proper time and space.  But because it felt so rushed, I find myself with very little to say about any of the other characters brought into the story. And while I would have never expected this from Stephen King, really the only thing I can say about the characters is that they all have different names. Somehow, Charlie is set up as a sort of savior figure for this world and from there, things just happen too quickly. I didn’t feel invested in the story and I never really felt any substantial peril for Charlie. I never felt like there was much at stake.

 

Another aspect that didn’t work for me was the language spoken in the other world. Because it isn’t English, but Charlie is still able to piece together what people are saying. He isn’t totally fluent, but he is able to make it work. I didn’t feel like this added anything to the story and it could have been left out altogether. I have never been one to nit-pick over details like this, demanding to know why a culture in a different universe would still be speaking English. Certain things just have to happen in order for a narrative to function and if this universe just happened to speak English without any explanation as to why…I would have been fine with it. 

 

If anything, we could have gotten just a quick explanation in the story as to why Charlie understood the language and just moved on. We don’t need all the hand-wringing from him, ruminating on whether or not he understood what was being said. There are moments when Charlie breaks through the invisible wall and speaks to the audience because he isn’t confident on how he is translating. Charlie will turn to the reader and flatly ask, “Is that what he just said? I’m not sure.” I suppose the idea was to create a casual tone between Charlie and the reader and to demonstrate a challenge Charlie faced in acclimating to this different world but for me, on a practical level this often just proved more distracting than anything else. I have no idea if that’s what she really said Charlie, I didn’t hear it. 

 

The first time I read through this I actually had to stop and go back to the beginning because I felt like surely there was just something I was missing in the middle. And I will admit that as a reader with kids who works early morning shifts, my age and energy level is such that when fatigue sets in, I’m as prone as anyone else to skimming over sections of text until I’ve essentially stranded myself at sea without a strong sense of what is going on in the story. But as I made my way through the book a second time, I found my experience to be pretty much the same. I loved the start of the book but once we got past the quest of saving Radar, everything just kind of tumbled off the rails like Blaine the Mono at the end of a long night of feeling sorry for himself.  The story took on a strangely Hunger Games like quality to it and while it should have felt grim and dramatic, I just couldn’t get on board with the whole thing. The elements of that story were there, it just didn’t have enough meat to it. 

 

And in the end, I think that’s the best way I can sum up my feeling. It has all the mechanics and the pieces of a specific type of story but there was just too much left in the box. I find myself saying this more often but again, I really felt like the book needed to be either a lot longer or a lot shorter. I loved some of the imagery and the feeling of foreboding King evoked in the other world. It was just that the scope of the story needed to be tightened down. Maybe not so much the Tolkien-esque savior plot. The book started in a vulnerable, human place and it was when it departed from there that it stopped working as well for me.

 

Plenty of people will love this book and that’s obviously okay. The great thing about Stephen King is that there is something out there for everyone. Everyone’s favorite is someone else’s least favorite and of course, the opposite of that is true as well. So if you loved it, then a hearty high-five to you. Neither of us is right or wrong. But for me, the legacy of Fairy Tale will likely always be of the lost potential of what could have been really spectacular.