Stephen King’s Novel Proceeding the Events in “The Shining” Will Have a New Movie

By: Mark Deutsch

The book cover for the “Doctor Sleep” novel written by Stephen King. Credit: amazon.com

Time to sleep with the advent of the coming “Doctor Sleep” movie; a review of Stephen King’s book is warranted. The story picks up soon after Dan and his mother escape the destruction of the hellish Overlook safely. 

But that’s not the end of the problems for Dan, since he has to fight new enemies later. 

Following the events of “The Shining”, Dan was followed by some ghosts, the strongest from the Overlook. After he had sealed and locked away the cage, he has to deal with genetic alcoholism. Despite this problem he still had some of the “shining” left. 

The older a person gets, the more their shining diminishes, but with Dan’s strong shine, he retained more. He does have soparatic visions of things that may happen in the future, but they don’t always come to pass. Still he tries to counteract what’s he’s going through, essentially becoming an alcoholic.  Because of his shine’s power that contracted a few of the hotel’s revenants, this sparked his drinking career. However, early when the hauntings began, he locked those revenants away.

 Despite suppressing his talent for many years, he regained them, utilizing his shine in a hospice. Dan’s shine enables him to assuage the elderly people when they die and essentially prepare them for a painless death. 

As a result, he’s been given the nickname “Doctor Sleep,” a talent that will save Abra Stone.

This girl is the main focus of the book, the innocent child that has powers beyond imagination. She also has the power of the shining, but her power greatly overpowers Dan’s own talent. 

As a result she’s being hunted down by the True Knot, a wandering band of monsters led by Rose the Hat. 

These monsters survive on the painful experiences of people with the shining and they call this energy “Steam.” The True Knot have to travel constantly to sustain themselves, especially since their food source is scarce. 

With the trade off to becoming immortal plus powers, the cost is to constantly feed or die. 

This is the basic plot for the paperback edition of “Doctor Sleep.” Judging by how good the book is, the movie will be a success. 

But with any good novel to movie adaptation, there are some glaring issues about the movie. Going over the finer details in the book can show something quite odd. 

As mentioned in “The Shining” and “Doctor Sleep” books, the Overlook Hotel was completely destroyed. Granted the final ending of the book takes place in the area of the Overlook, something milder was rebuilt instead. 

Going back to the characters in the story, there are some themes built in. 

In some of his novels, Stephen King often writes about a child who possesses immense powers, which is seen in “Firestarter” or “Salem’s Lot”. The child is also in danger of either being controlled, being eaten, or killed to further an evil plan. 

The other theme would be his close relationship to vampires, although with a good twist. 

In popular fiction, vampires have to subsist on blood, and it varies between human and animal blood. The True Knot members don’t have the same weakness as regular vampires, although they feed on spirits not blood. 

Surprisingly enough otherwise despite their powers, the members of True Knot can contract diseases. 

If the movie follows the book closely enough, then some surprising scenes will shock viewers. Excluding the fact that the Overlook shouldn’t be standing, that scene does look awesome. Hopefully the movie will be just as good as the novel, we will have to wait and see.