There’s plenty of fresh invention in Fairy Tale, but much of what Charlie encounters reminds him of something else he’s seen or read ... King’s portals — like his novels — have always been leaky apertures, prone to cultural exchange and playful cross-contamination ... Fairy Tale is a multiverse-traversing, genre-hopping intertextual mash-up, with plenty of Easter eggs for regular King devotees. Thankfully, it’s also a solid episodic adventure, a page-turner driven by memorably strange encounters and well-rendered, often thrilling action ... Despite the plot’s twists and turns, the biggest surprise Fairy Tale has to offer King’s so-called Constant Readers might be the book’s promise of a happy ending ... I’ll bet many readers hungry for a genuinely feel-good adventure won’t care what tactics King uses to deliver the goods: These days, some of us will take all the happy endings we can get, however unlikely they seem.
A good old-fashioned Stephen King fantasy-horror epic ... You’ll inhale Fairy Tale in big 100-page swathes without the slightest effort or strain, and you’ll be grateful that there are 600-plus pages of it to remind you several times over how much fun that kind of reading experience is ... The book’s alternate world combines Grimmian fairy-tale elements with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but it takes a while to get there. The more of them I read, the more I appreciate King’s set-ups ... Injecting the uncanny into the everyday is a Stephen King trademark ... Fairy Tale supplies both fleshly human frailty and a fully functional heart ... Fairy Tale is both sweeping and self-contained, comic and scary, touching and bleak.
... an epic quest novel with a golden-haired hero and his beloved pooch who save a cursed people from an even more cursed villain. Surprisingly unscary, the book offers a journey through an enchanted world ... It’s a whopping read, just shy of 600 pages, and there are times the reader wonders if it really needed to be that long. There is some repetition...and a lot of signposting and foreshadowing that’s anything but subtle. But if you’re a fan of King, then you’ll be delighted to disappear into this charming coming-of-age tale and cheer for Charlie as he frees an oppressed people from a tyrannical ruler ... It’s a tale as old as time.
... vintage, timeless King, a transporting, terrifying treat born from multiple lockdowns which, in true King style, puts its finger right on that tender point which is the threshold between childhood and growing up.
King takes his time getting to the 'real' fairy tale, though you won’t mind. He crafts an enjoyable trio with Charlie and his two new best friends over the first third of the novel, gradually doling out Bowditch’s mysterious backstory until the man dies ... a genre full of poison apples and big bad wolves, and King thankfully doesn’t skimp on the horror here ... The book bursts with creativity, and King weaves in bits of our world as Charlie ventures deeper into this new realm. Yet it’s a narrative that remains down to earth rather than going off on flights of fancy. The threats Charlie and his allies face feel scarily real, the dangers visceral ... an escape that feels needed especially for modern eyes, a profound story of good vs. evil that’s timeless and timely ... the life-affirming saga of young Charlie Reade sticks with you more than most. After turning that last page, you’ll feel a little stronger in spirit, yearn for another story and, dare we say, maybe even live happily ever after.
... an enthralling, adventurous read that will, like any genuine fairy tale, scare you half to death and lift up your heart ... That takes a while, but Charlie immediately falls in love with that German shepherd, whose name is Radar. King paints her with a dog lover’s affection — she’s loving, funny, loyal and uncomplaining about the indignities of old age. He also paints that aging process with painful accuracy; anyone who has loved and lost a pet will know the heartbreak Charlie is in for ... a splendid work of world-building, rich with detail and crafted to be similar enough to our own world that the strange elements feel truly strange ... King reminds us that before they were Disneyfied, the traditional fairy tales were often brutal and tragic, cautionary tales that helped people cope with a world full of woe.
Whether Stephen King is writing horror or fantasy, novels or short stories, one thing remains constant: expert world-building that places readers firmly in the time and place in which his works are set ... Mr. King has always excelled at sketching in the little details that bring settings to life. In his latest, Fairy Tale, the author continues to display his talent for transporting readers to places both known and unknown, creating an immersive tale with an optimistic heart ... Charlie is a charming protagonist, and his encounters with the extraordinary are brought to life by Mr. King’s ability to marry the strange with the mundane, depicted through the eyes of a teenager who is just as confounded by the strangeness of his story as the reader is ... will feel familiar to fans of the author’s Dark Tower universe: much like some of the beloved characters from that series, Charlie is a stranger in a stranger land. The first-person narration, however, makes Fairy Tale a much warmer book, as Charlie wrestles with the unbelievable while also figuring out what it means to be brave, even in the face of terror. Of course, there are some of Mr. King’s trademark touches of the macabre, and the more horrifying villains are depicted so vividly that it’s easy to forget that those same horrors aren’t his inventions at all, but rather those of the Brothers Grimm ... This isn’t to say that the novel is perfect; as ever, it could use some editing—the story doesn’t really start chugging along until about 200 pages in, which will be kryptonite to anyone who wants to get straight to the action. For anyone willing to make the journey, however, once the second act kicks in, it doesn’t slow down until the somewhat inevitable, yet heart-warming ending ... Coupled with some of the best monsters Mr. King has detailed in years and the vivid evocation of a wondrous world, it’s a pleasant way to spend some time away from a world that can often feel determined to crush even the sunniest of outlooks.
Enjoyably unironic ... If some of the world-building comes across a little still-under-construction, Fairy Tale remains an enjoyable journey into the kind of realm King seemed to have abandoned some time ago. Certainly fans of the author's previous fantasy work can look forward to living happily, if not ever after, then at least until they finish the book.
One of the most purely enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had reading was in 2006, when over the course of a few breathless months I read all seven books in Stephen King’s 'Dark Tower' series. I was swept away by King’s thrillingly rendered fantastic worlds, full of creatures both terrifying and delightful, bursts of violence, humor and melodrama in equal measure, and an epic battle between good and evil that never seemed foregone as to the winner. I got that same feeling reading King’s latest novel, Fairy Tale ... A sweeping yet intimate story ... There are a few brief passages that draw attention away from the otherwise mesmerizing plot ... But those things are quickly forgotten as the scope of the story comes into focus ... I was left deeply satisfied by the entire book from start to finish.
It’s a fairly flimsy pretext for a quest — however much effort King puts into establishing Radar as a loveable character, she is, all said and done, just a dog — but once that plotline has been resolved, the stakes are raised ... The parallels are relentless and, at times, strained ... There are some lovely touches ... That said, by plunging his bucket into the well of folklore so bullishly King has managed to disturb the sediment at the bottom, and the water he has drawn up may seem, even to his legion of thirsty fans, disappointingly muddy.
... has no sheen of fairy dust, but it does inspire both wonder and fear. It meshes the grammar of the fairy tale with that of small-town Americana and portal fantasies, adding in body horror and alien weirdness, under a monumental imaginative architecture. Like many fairy tales it critiques tyranny and homogeneity, and emphasizes the wit and intelligence of the weak against the strong. It is also a deeply literary novel, with a keen awareness both of itself and of its predecessors ... Stephen King’s thesis is plainly made: stories are constructed, section by section, from other stories; and that renders them all the more powerful.
A grand, and naturally strange, entertainment from the ever prolific King ... King delivers a more or less traditional fable that includes a knowing nod ... A tale that’s at once familiar and full of odd and unexpected twists—vintage King, in other words.
King underwhelms in an overlong fantasy most likely to appeal to his YA fans ... The plot becomes derivative, retreading standard portal fantasy tropes and the familiar struggle between good and evil. Illustrations at the start of each chapter, headed with descriptions of what they include, further convey a juvenile feel. This attempt at creating a sense of wonder and magic falls short.
It takes King a long time to actually get to the meat of the story. Two hundred pages with the relative mundanity of Sentry, Ill. leaves you only 400 or so pages to spend in the land of Empis, the alternate world that lies at the bottom of a winding set of stone steps inside that weird shed in Mr. Bowditch’s yard. As soon as we enter Empis with Charlie, you can’t help but wonder why on Earth (get it?) we spent so much time in Illinois when there was a world with giants, talking crickets, curses, reanimated skeletons, two moons and magical butterflies lurking just beneath our feet ... King, as usual, succeeds in creating a sense of wonder and curiosity in his readers. His creations of both people and places have an internal logic in which even magic makes sense. As a storyteller, we never doubt him for a moment. The characters of Fairy Tale both satisfy and surprise us with their wholeness; Empis feels just as real as Illinois ... Even looking past the somewhat awkward pacing of how long it takes for Charlie to switch worlds, King, unfortunately, seems to fall back on a trope that is all too common in horror — equating facial disfigurement or limb differences with being scary and/or pitiful ... Yes, the disability-as-horror trope did color my opinion of Fairy Tale. If you’ve never read Stephen King, this wouldn’t be my first recommendation...But for those who enjoy King’s quick-witted prose, fast-paced action and mind-bending ideations, Fairy Tale. won’t disappoint.
While King is a master of spine-tingling supernatural scares, and there’s plenty here, he knows that human beings can be as bad, if not worse, than ‘monsters’ ... There are plenty of knowing winks to the reader and he even throws in a reference to his own creation, the deranged dog Cujo. King is at his very best writing dogs and Radar, Charlie’s companion as he battles evil, is exceptionally well portrayed ... King’s fans will love this unquestioningly and I’d happily recommend it to anyone who likes a good read ... The middle section is slightly long but overall, it’s still a page-turner. Ultimately Fairy Tale is an allegory about modern America and the death of the Dream, and therein lies real terror and the uncertainty of a ‘happily ever after’.
