Dumas Key by Stephen King

The Skinny:

Score: 92%
King turns out his best book in years, fueled by a new Floridian setting, an artful story, and a lead character who is suffering from some truly interesting ailments.


The Meat:

Early Stephen King books were genre-defining, relatively simple gorefests that bridged the gap between horror junkies and the general reading public.

Somewhere in there, King started flexing his literary aspirations, and the last twenty years have been inconsistent. King's voice is always very evident and well-developed, but he's struggled to find that perfect balance between experimentation, ambition and pulse-pounding entertainment.

Books like Blaze have shown that King can boil pots with the best of them, while more complicated outings like Bag of Bones have shown a tremendous capacity for literary writing, but at the expense of a forward-moving plot.

I would call Dumas Key the first perfect blend of the old King with the new. The story is complex, multi-layered, and epic, as with most of his more cerebral works. And yet? It's fast-paced, emotionally stirring, and damned interesting to boot.

The story takes place in the titular Dumas Key, a tiny island off the Florida coast, where Narrator Edgar Freemantle rents a vacation home while convalescing from injuries sustained in a horrific accident. While there, he takes up painting, but finds that his injuries, his newfound painting abilities, and the island's dark history are all connected.

Freemantle is sympathetic without being a goody two shoes. The finale is bittersweet and unpredictable. And, like most of King's best work, the characters exercise a level of ingenuity that doesn't leave the reader rolling his eyes and asking "Why doesn't he just _____?"

If you don't like horror, or have already decided that you don't like King, this might be the book that changes your mind.

Hopefully, King will continue to write books of this quality, and Dumas Key signifies the beginning of a new golden age in his enormously prolific writing career.

The Fat:

The new hardcover is about 20 bucks, but the used ones are already down to $4.62 and counting.

Buy it from Amazon here