Sleeping Beauties (Book Review)

Across the world, women are falling asleep. But this is no normal REM and reawaken. As soon as their eyelids are closed, the women’s bodies are spun with cobweb-like cocoons from which they won’t wake. Two things about this strange virus are quickly made clear: there’s no cure, and if anyone dares rip the cocoon from the carcass, they will be met with the terrible and violent wrath of the woman within. For some reason, this sleeping sickness appears to have begun in the small and insignificant town of Dooling around the same time that a strange woman named Eve appears. Even stranger is that Eve appears to be the only woman, perhaps in the entire world, who can sleep and wake without harm.

This sci-fi/fantasy novel is a partnership between Stephen King and his son, Owen King, and reads like a mix between Under the Dome, Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, and a biblical retelling. Sounds like a pretty interesting story, right? Unfortunately, Sleeping Beauties falls a little short when compared to the many great works of King, which readers, especially long-time fans, won’t be able to avoid comparing to.

Like many of King’s other novels, Sleeping Beauties has an expansive cast of characters, but dare I say this is one of the largest. These people are all introduced in a list at the front of the book, with a small snippet of information and a name. In theory, this should help us keep track of who’s who, but with a whopping seventy-one names (and one fox), plus all the minor characters that come into play later but are not initially listed, there’s really no way to keep them all straight. Such a huge cast of characters may have been fine, however, if not for the fact that the novel often takes detours to elaborate on each person’s backstory, some of which are relevant and become major players in the overall plot but many of which become background characters whose backstories only serve to detract from the more important details and people and add unnecessary length to this already hefty novel. This, and the ever-changing perspectives muddle up who we’re supposed to be keeping tabs on until at least a quarter of the way into the book, and even then it’s hard to really become attached to any particular person, as we hop around from section to section. With so many characters, many ended up falling into stereotypes and archetypes, which is understandable, but it lessens their value and interest for the reader even further.

The length of this book seems to mostly come from these sections dedicated to the backstory, whereas in other King novels the length is used to build suspense. Where there could have been a lot of tension, it seemed that the Kings actually revealed too much too early and that opportunities for creating more of a driving force toward the end were skipped over to give more time to characters, which were inevitably difficult to follow, less interesting, and less important. This lack of suspense often made the novel drag, making it feel even longer and too drawn out.

The ending of the novel was also a bit disappointing. Without going into spoilers, the decisions that the characters come to at the end of the novel don’t seem to be fully explained, and I questioned whether the people would actually make those choices based on what we know about them. Plus, it seems that with such a premise, the novel is trying to make some point about gender and the relationships between men and women. But if there was some takeaway about this, other than perhaps the obvious that men and women are different, I didn’t clearly see it.

It’s also hard to stomach a message about gender when most of the characters are fueled by heteronormative relationships (I think there are perhaps a total of five gay characters among the seventy, most of which are suggested to only be so because they are women in prison and have no other option), and there’s no mention of any people outside of the gender binary. I wouldn’t necessarily expect this from an old-school writer such as King, who, as far as I know, has always focused on more heteronormative characters and nuclear family dynamics. But it’s pretty disappointing if the novel is trying to have any type of feminist or radical messages (which it seems may have been the thinking behind the original premise even if it doesn’t show in the actual story). It doesn’t even try to tackle such issues, especially considering how many characters there are and the fact that the virus is supposed to be affecting the entire world. After all, wouldn’t people at least wonder whether a trans woman would be affected by the virus or not? 

“Men. There seemed to be no escape from them.”

It seems, in the end, that the story is basically pointing out that men can not live without women taking care of them and that women are better off without men but return to them anyways even when they have been completely awful, even abusive, to them. That women are fueled by their desire to create and nurture families and that men are inherently violent and not very good at taking care of things without women around, also seem to be apparent takeaways. Cue the dramatic eye roll.

That being said, I’m not sure if Stephen King’s books are ever really meant to have a specific meaning but are rather meant for entertainment, a good scare, and/or to unsettle the reader. But I think it’s important to realize what a novel says to readers, even if the intent was not to say anything in particular. What this story said was unsettling but in more than King’s usual way. Otherwise, I didn’t find it particularly frightening, which is why most people turn to King’s books in the first place…isn’t it?

But. Let me point out something positive. Sleeping Beauties incorporates two writers into one writing style very well. I’ll admit that I’ve never read any of Owen King’s work, so it’s difficult to tell where his voice and style come into Beauties, but the novel reads cleanly, and without knowing, it would be impossible to tell that it had two authors instead of one. Overall, it does follow the usual style of Stephen King’s other books, in my opinion.

This all being said, the novel is still well written, the characters are interesting albeit pretty stereotypical, and the premise is actually quite fascinating. I would recommend the book to any die-hard Stephen King fan or someone in the mood for a long and complex story. I would warn readers that this novel isn’t the usual King thriller or horror story, isn’t particularly scary,  and that to go into the story looking for some kind of moral or message would be to find yourself disappointed. Overall, I rated this novel 2.5 out of 5 stars, because although it is a well-written work, it falls short in terms of its cast of characters and the resolution, which doesn’t seem to suffice in comparison to the scope of the conflict.