Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

Stephen King could write a cookbook, and I would at least check it out of the library to see if it was worth reading. I didn’t realize that Stephen King’s latest book was a collaboration with one of his sons, Owen King, who is famous for…….(checks Wikipedia) a book of short stories and one novel, which I have not read (or heard of before this moment).
I read a lot of anthologies, especially if they are vaguely apocalyptic or related to vampires, zombies or other notable horror species. I never crossed paths with Owen’s work, which means nothing, but I did keep encountering Joe Hill. I loved every one of Hill’s short stories so I started to see if he wrote more. He not only has written best-selling novels, which I put in my queue immediately, but at least one, Horns, has been adapted and made into a movie, which I saw and liked. The only reason that I have not read any of his books yet is because I drive to work and no longer take public transportation, so my reading rate has gone downhill precipitously. It was only after I began to research Hill that I found out he was also Stephen King’s son, which sheds a whole new light on the father figures in his stories.
Owen King gets to jump to acclaim and fame using his dad’s well-earned credibility. A part of me is giving him a slow 80s clap of appreciation and saying, “Don’t hate the player. Hate the game,” but another part thinks it is crap and giving side-eye. Fair or not, but early in Sleeping Beauties: A Novel, if I had to reread a passage because the message was convoluted, and the image was not clearly conveyed, I attributed it to Owen. The old man may not be as sharp as he once was pre-near fatal injury, but he is clear, and he can paint a picture with words.
Sleeping Beauties: A Novel is 700 pages, and it gives me something that I never considered before: apocalypse by gender. What is the world without one gender? I appreciate the fact that as early as possible, the Kings (it is probably Stephen) take a swipe at Presidon’t, and they wear their politics on their sleeve. The fairy tale meets real world nature of the apocalypse as well as the women’s prison setting capitalizes on premises that were recently popular on TV, but beginning to wane. The Kings are embracing their John Irving side and are expressing their contrition as men for fracking the world up. While I generally agree, never forget the 53%, and that women use shame to get guys into physical confrontations. We may not land the blow, but we can encourage it. For 700 pages, some of the characters are under-developed or interchangeable, and resolutions can feel pat or anti-climatic. The extrajudicial execution felt wedged in there and frankly did not work because most of these executors express no contrition. Also some characteristics seemed tacked on after the fact. Whenever I discovered that a character was actually black or gay, it felt like an afterthought and not something that I discovered organically as I was reading the story.
If they ever adapt Sleeping Beauties: A Novel, I want these actors cast as these characters: Elizabeth Marvel as Liza, Michelle Rodriguez as Angel, Michelle Forbes as the warden, Eva Green as Evie, but not using her accent.