Doctor Sleep
a chilling classic from the No. 1 bestseller
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4.5 • 411 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Doctor Sleep is King's 'powerful sequel to The Shining' (Observer) - an instant international No. 1 bestseller.
Following a childhood haunted by terrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance has been drifting for decades. Finally, he settles into a job at a nursing home where he draws on his remnant 'shining' power to provide crucial comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes 'Doctor Sleep'.
Then he meets Abra Stone, a girl with 'the brightest shining' ever seen. But her gift is attracting the beautiful yet merciless Rose the Hat and her followers The True Knot. They may look harmless, the sort of people who are devoted to their campers and RVs, but they live off the 'steam' that children like Abra produce.
Now Dan must call upon his powers once more as he battles for Abra's soul and survival - facing his fears and reawakening ghosts from his past.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
You don’t have to be a fan of horror to appreciate Stephen King’s masterful Dr. Sleep. This novel is exceptionally scary, but it’s also a brilliantly paced and moving redemption story. Billed as the sequel to The Shining, the book hones in on Danny Torrance, once a little boy who discovered the Overlook Hotel’s demonic secrets. Dan’s now an adult, a recovering alcoholic who—after hitting rock bottom—becomes a self-contained hospice orderly known as Dr. Sleep. But when Dan befriends a young girl who shares his psychic abilities, that so-called “shining”, he’s pulled into an epic battle between good and evil. King has perfected his gift for taking the sordid, nightmarish realities of American life—seedy roadside bars, desolate trailer parks, front-page child abduction stories—and infusing them with supernatural elements to make them truly horrific. But what makes Dr. Sleep shine is its fully realised heroes, whose inherent decency makes you believe there’s hope for the good guys after all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Iconic horror author King (Joyland) picks up the narrative threads of The Shining many years on. Young psychic Danny Torrance has become a middle-aged alcoholic (he now goes by "Dan"), bearing his powers and his guilt as equal burdens. A lucky break gets him a job in a hospice in a small New England town. Using his abilities to ease the passing of the terminally ill, he remains blissfully unaware of the actions of the True Knot, a caravan of human parasites crisscrossing the map in their RVs as they search for children with "the shining" (psychic abilities of the kind that Dan possesses), upon whom they feed. When a girl named Abra Stone is born with powers that dwarf Dan's, she attracts the attention of the True Knot's leader the predatory Rose the Hat. Dan is forced to help Abra confront the Knot, and face his own lingering demons. Less terrifying than its famous predecessor, perhaps because of the author's obvious affection for even the most repellant characters, King's latest is still a gripping, taut read that provides a satisfying conclusion to Danny Torrance's story.
Customer Reviews
Better than the film
Title says it all
Watched the film years ago then read the book
Books better, enough said
Buy it and read it
An excellent sequel
An excellent sequel to a one of the best king books of all time. The book follows dan Torence many years later after his ordeal at the overlook hotel and his struggles in life with substance abuse as a result. Having seen the film first and liking it quite a bit I can safely say I definitely prefer the book to the film, the relationship between Danny and abra is so much better in the book and I think the ending in the book (which had me shedding a tear or two) is vastly superior than that off the film, which left me scratching my head as to why they didn’t follow the book more closely in that regard. I can’t imagine many writers out there would dare attempt a sequel to a book that is as highly regarded as the shining but stephen king not only did it but hit it out off the park.
Brilliant
This book is simply amazing, expanding on the ideas set up in the shining whilst having such amazing detail and relatability to all of its characters.
It’s fitting for anytime who grew up reading the Shining. It feels more mature and grounded but very original
I loved it