This was a really short one-shot so it didn’t have a lot of space to stretch out and build any sort of ambiance (not that ambiance is Stine‘s strength), but it did do something I liked:⁠
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A girl is at camp and she feels like she’s had enough vague threats and weird occurrences and she calls her parents to come pick her up.⁠
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And they COME!⁠
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I mean, she let everyone know that they were coming so the bad guy had to move up the timetable, but I like the effort anyway. Any other Stine book and they would have said “weird how people keep dying and I’m being chased by something I don’t know, but mom would be so disappointed in me if I came home early from camp...“

This was a fun one. Fun and fast.

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Okay, elephant in the room: this is nothing like the (80s) movie.

It’s significantly darker and deals WAY more with classism and mob mentality. Ben’s not running in an ARENA, he’s got the entire US to run in!

And the ending… Jeez Louise. Talk about a finality to it.

I hear they’re remaking the movie to be more faithful to the book and I really wonder if they’re going to keep the same ending. It’s, uh, something else.

I suppose the core is the same: a man runs from hunters. But that’s about where the similarity stops. Book Ben is doing it for money that he needs where movie Ben was a framed prisoner.

Book Ben is also a lot less interesting than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Sorry, Mr. King.

I thought the book ran a little long and the critiques on classism was enough without a subplot about how the air in the future is becoming poisonous and the poor are dying because they can’t afford fancy nose filters.

Kinda slowed the book down and, where a lot of King’s slower parts are there deliberately to show you the passing of time, this is a CHASE book. If there was ever a “go, go, go,” kind of book, this is it.

Also, this is the only time (so far) I’ve thought this, but The Running Man feels like it was a BIG inspiration to Chuck Palahniuk. A lot of it felt like he could have written it.

Pretty interesting.

Is it worth reading? Yeah. A lot of Bachman books are, but you have to go in knowing they’re a little more hit-or-miss and always darker.

Well. Usually darker. The Regulators felt more like a King book than a Bachman book.

This book is a lot of fun, regardless. I wouldn’t have any problems re-reading it during my next King re-read.

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I hate to say it, but this book was just okay. There wasn’t really anything special about it one way or another. I actually read it, then read another Fear Street, and completely forgot the title of this one.⁠
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I did remember that the cover is pretty bitchin’.⁠
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You know, I will say that I thought I had it figured out. One of the characters is into film and it’s a running theme throughout the book. He’s making a movie about a prom queen that gets killed while the prom queen gets killed in real life.⁠
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Or DOES she?⁠
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She doesn’t. ⁠
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Anyway, I thought that the twist reveal would be that the whole book was the movie and the guy was so into movies that he went full meta and made a movie about making a movie about a prom queen dying when she actually dies.⁠
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But instead, the twist is that the boyfriend’s side piece was being manipulated for a humiliating video.⁠ There are clues that SOMETHING untoward is happening but this still felt pretty gross when the reveal happens. Let me tell you: it doesn’t endear characters to have them be the “victim,” when they’re taping a girl while they mess with her emotions just for a laugh.
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It felt cheap AND sleazy.⁠
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Definitely not my favorite Fear Street and it feels like I’ve been on a tear of subpar-to-mediocre Fear Streets, but that’s what happens when you have SO many entries into a series and you’re RL Stine - a guy who has no qualms about saying he’s in it for the money. I mean, he shifted to horror away from comedy SPECIFICALLY for the money.

And, once you know he came from comedy, so much of his writing structure makes more sense. He definitely uses the same setup/punchline approach to his books but these jokes? These jokes are gross.

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It’s got to be unfair that I expect Stine books centered around aesthetically scary stuff to be scary, right?

Alas, I do. Any author should know books centered around Halloween are supposed to be scary. Period. But I have yet to read a single Stine book that takes place around Halloween that’s scary. He has more scary CHRISTMAS books than Halloween ones.

Ugh.

Look, I’ll be honest here: this is a teenage drama and that’s about it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he’s demonstrated the ability to write fast, exciting books in the past and this one takes a few more breathers.

I want to read a fever dream of horror from him.

Is it good? Kind of. I don’t like that kids portrayed in divorces are always on the border of losing their minds. It’s a lame trope. I know when my parents were splitting up, it was nothing short of relief to me because they were obviously not making each other happy.

Now, all truth be told, without my mom to keep my dad grounded with supervision, he did become emotional, petty, and constantly swinging between threatening suicide because I would one day leave him all alone and being abusively neglectful to me for days or weeks on end and there were issues because of that, but those were his issues, not the divorce’s and look at me: I’m fine.

Mostly.

Anyway, had this book been centered on the drama outside of Halloween, maybe I would have liked it more, but I expected too much and was let down.

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Okay, bargain shoppers: in this book you get not one but TWO twists and they’re both pretty good.

Honestly, me being an adult was what messed up my ability to figure out one of the twists. One of the characters has a condition where they bruise easily and my adult brain is thinking something that’s real.

Turns out no. I was wrong.

But that’s fine.

Now I have to find the last one to figure out if Callie can ever break the hold 99 Fear Street has on her!

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Hot take from Sue Klebold that flies in the face of most of this book (which consists mostly of why forgiving is less letting someone off the hook and more about giving yourself permission to get over it): Forgiveness is elitist or, at the bare minimum, not egalitarian.

That’s the kind of statement that makes you hold up a finger like “wait just a second here!”

… But then the finger slowly drops.

Yes, by forgiving someone - by telling them you forgive them - you are automatically putting yourself in a superior position to BESTOW forgiveness.

How interesting is that?

And from Sue Klebold who really, REALLY wants people to stop telling her they forgive her for raising half of the duo that shot up Columbine High School and essentially changed American culture overnight.

You can’t really blame these people, though. The shooter is dead and they’ve worked through whatever emotional baggage they have and want to grant forgiveness, if not to the guilty party, the closest thing possible.

Makes me want to read Sue Klebold’s book!

The rest of this book is too fluffy for me. You read that forgiveness lets YOU off the hook, not the person being forgiven one time and then you read that story over and over and over.

But the Klebold chapter? That was a surprise that makes you reevaluate a lot of things in your life.

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I liked Book 2 of the #stephenking Dark Tower series because it was a crazy story with VERY different characters, all in an uncomfortable relationship.

This one… a lot of those differences have been sanded down and I feel like some identity was lost.

That said, this book is a wild ride and I liked bringing Jake back into the fold. I liked Oy as well, even if he seems REALLY convenient at points.

It’s a really good book.

I didn’t like the ending at all, though. It’s super frustrating when books end on cliffhangers (book 2 of Hunger Games or Girl With the Dragon Tattoo immediately jump to mind). It’s pretty frustrating as a reader.

What’s more frustrating is that I know Wizard & Glass is next and, as frustrating as books ending on cliffhangers are, whole damn books about the past that interrupt the story are even worse.

Side note: I tracked down the original cover art sans titles because just LOOK AT IT. That has got to be the most beautiful, creepy piece ever used on a book. Really puts today’s covers to shame because, for me, unless it’s romance, I want REAL artwork on my covers. Right? Who’s with me

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A couple things:

1) I would LOVE to know what the ladies think about the female representation in this book. I was always told girls are SUPER catty and shitty to each other, but I’m a dude so what do I know?

2) A letter from Macon, GA is how this novel closes out. As interesting as that is, it’s RIDDLED with spelling errors and that’s way more interesting. Slightly offensive. Really funny.

3) I remember hearing something about a play in football where everyone knows what’s going to happen but it works anyway.

That’s this book.

There’s no mystery here, but it doesn’t matter. He says Carrie is telekinetic in no time flat. He’ll tell you someone is going to die and at no point do you say “ugh! Spoilers!” Instead, you continue to read because now you need to know HOW it happens.

This occurs over and over again and it never goes poorly. I love it.

4) It’s implied that Sue Snell is pregnant before she hooks up with Carrie who initially thinks Snell was part of this. Then they have a moment where Carrie goes through Snell’s brain to see if she had any role in what happened at prom.

She didn’t, and, as Carrie died (spoiler alert), Sue starts her (late) period.

It seems to ME that this was a last-minute gift of sorts because Snell wasn’t really prepared for motherhood.

I know, I know. Some people wouldn’t consider abortions gifts, but you never know what people want and gifts are all about what THEY want, not about what YOU want to give, you know what I mean?

But I’m curious what you guys think.

On one hand, I could see it as bookends for the story - it starts and ends with periods - but I could see it as an act of mercy from Carrie as well. Maybe because Carrie wasn’t super stoked on her own existence at that point?

Let me know what you think.

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When people talk about literary principles, it’s a great idea to have a solid example where it’s done well enough to be effective, but clearly enough - exaggerated enough - for the person learning the principle to see it easily.

Here is your “unreliable narrator.”

I’ve heard some people say Harry Potter was an unreliable narrator and that checks. He was manipulated into everything he did by people smarter than him and was led to believe and dedicate himself to said powers so of COURSE his take on things is going to be biased.

But it’s still tough to read it and see without someone bringing it up.

With this, though, at the end of it you get it. It’s plain as day but still super effective.

Oh man, I liked this a lot. It’s short but it packs a strong punch.

If you wanted, you could compare it to Breaking Bad where you watch someone fall down rung after rung into something bad.

In this case it’s madness at the hands of the patriarchy.

Fun fact: the author was put in the treatment prescribed in this book in real life similar to how the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance spent time in asylum before writing her book and she did it as a bald critique of that treatment as the bullshit it was.

It’s great. Well worth reading and the closing line is creepy as hell.

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Let’s talk about the #kindle for a minute.

When the Kindle first came out, I fell in love. I’m a huge book guy, but books are expensive, big, and heavy. For a guy that moves a lot, they could be a problem.

But here, I saw the solution. The prices could be way lower. Scarcity wouldn’t be a thing anymore. Textbooks could be cheaper and easier to navigate. You could keep a whole library on one device!

But it took until the Kindle3G for me to be able to afford one of these guys. Now I have a Paperwhite but, honestly, miss the 3G for the ability to shop anywhere and PHYSICAL BUTTONS!

The real disappointment was that the cost of books wasn’t that much lower and scarcity was still a thing. Old Marvel prose novels never (or at least hadn’t for years and I’ve given up on the idea) made it to the device.

Which is RIDICULOUS. If I were a publishing house, every single thing I published would be available. They left money on the table.

Anyway… King also seemed like a huge Kindle fan as his was one of the biggest voices used to push it and it seemed inevitable to me that he would write a story involving one.

It also deals with the Dark Tower.

The story is fine. It’s more a fun story about a Kindle and a chance for him to talk about authors - something he loves to do.

It’s fine. It’s an interesting story.

I wonder if King’s changed his mind on the Kindle. Besides bringing mine on flights and to donate plasma, I know I’ve gone back to physical books.

What are your thoughts on the Kindle?

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