Cushla

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in Stephen's canon.

Your opinion of Doctor Sleep will depend on your expectations – come to it looking for the set pieces of pure horror that made The Shining one of the most powerful, frightening novels ever written you will be disappointed.

It is not without its horrors but nothing that will keep you awake at night...Doctor Sleep, like Danny Torrance, is all grown up.

Doctor Sleep is a beautiful, hopeful story of life, aging and death - subtle but sly, more wily than scary.

A kinder, warmer book than its predecessor with an intergenerational redemption theme at its heart.

"In fact, the ending almost brings a tear to your eye. Which is no small thing in a book that posits 9/11 as a giant ashes-huffing party for vampires, and a scene of high tension featuring our heroes riding into danger on a teeny tiny choo-choo train." http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/10/book-review-doctor-sleep-stephen-king

Margaret Atwood’s review http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/books/review/stephen-kings-shining-sequel-doctor-sleep.html?pagewanted=1