DISCLAIMER: I did not complete the book and have stopped at the 60% mark.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King is his latest dark fantasy novel. I was not able to stomach the rest of the 40% to mark this novel under my completed list. I just couldn’t do it. To surprise myself, I did not read the excerpt of this novel prior to beginning. Although the book cover gave some of it away, I remained confident that the master storyteller himself would shock me into something that I wouldn’t have expected. Unfortunately, Fairy Tale is just so dull that I can hardly imagine how the last 40% would make up for the damage done in the first 60%. At almost halfway through this large novel, I can say I gave it a good shot.

It took around the 28% mark of the book before things got a little interesting. Prior to this, the story revolved literally around Charlie taking care of an old man and his dog in a house. The story finally evolves from this mundane setting to the magical place and the second half of the story begins. At around the 50% mark, I was still into it but things actually went downhill and I just got disinterested really quick afterward because I didn’t care anymore. Page after page after page only to see that the progress of the book moved a meager 1-2%. I finally called it quits at around 60%.

I felt this would have been a lot better if the novel had been condensed to 250-300 pages or heck, even as a novella. Stephen King has really lost his touch. In fact, I’m sad to say that this will likely be my last novel by this author. I’ve read “If it Bleeds” and “Later” and came away disappointed as well although I’ve managed to actually finish those novels. The last good story I remember from Stephen King is “Under the Dome”. Where he really shines is when he switches character POVs with each character having different motives and prose, unlike here in Fairy Tale. When Stephen King retires, I’ll likely read his last novel just out of respect for all the work he’s done throughout his long career but other than that, I’m staying away going forward.