So I just finished Night Shift, and as the first horror novel I have ever read, it was pretty great. I still enjoyed the book very much, but some of the stories, in my opinion, were not that great. Some of them were just plain ridiculous and some were boring. But I could call a quite handful of stories ones that I liked. Among these stories are "Jerusalem's Lot", "Strawberry Spring", and "Quitters, Inc.". I did dislike a few of them though, stories such as, "The Lawnmower Man", "Night Surf", and "Gray Matter".
With the flaws, this book did some great things. For instance, in "Strawberry Spring" I talked about how it had great foreshadowing elements in a previous blog post. In "Battleground" it was able to turn a bizarre plot into an enjoyable story. This book had very great writing in it, and so I made a list of things that it did right.
Pros:
-handful of actual scary stories
-writing incorporates imagery very often
-characters had distinct personality in each story, some likable, others not so much
-some plots are very interesting and, at times, very frightening (Stephen King has a devious mind)
Like I said in the beginning of this post, there were some parts of the book I didn't like. Because of this I made a list of the things I disliked about the book.
Cons:
-extremely bizarre plots are found often (ranging from possessed cars to exploding eyes of death)
-some stories are just plain boring ("Woman in the Room" I'm looking at you)
Overall, I would rate this book an 8/10. The stories were very well written and most of them were fun to read. There were devious plot lines and bizarre, laughable ones all of which I enjoyed. There were plots that I just couldn't take seriously, and that is what hinders the rating.
With the flaws, this book did some great things. For instance, in "Strawberry Spring" I talked about how it had great foreshadowing elements in a previous blog post. In "Battleground" it was able to turn a bizarre plot into an enjoyable story. This book had very great writing in it, and so I made a list of things that it did right.
Pros:
-handful of actual scary stories
-writing incorporates imagery very often
-characters had distinct personality in each story, some likable, others not so much
-some plots are very interesting and, at times, very frightening (Stephen King has a devious mind)
Like I said in the beginning of this post, there were some parts of the book I didn't like. Because of this I made a list of the things I disliked about the book.
Cons:
-extremely bizarre plots are found often (ranging from possessed cars to exploding eyes of death)
-some stories are just plain boring ("Woman in the Room" I'm looking at you)
Overall, I would rate this book an 8/10. The stories were very well written and most of them were fun to read. There were devious plot lines and bizarre, laughable ones all of which I enjoyed. There were plots that I just couldn't take seriously, and that is what hinders the rating.
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| Stephen King, the author of Night Shift. |
If you stuck through my entire six weeks of Night Shift, then maybe you'd like to check out Stephen King's other books.
I have actually never read a horror novel. I liked how you showed both the pros and the cons of the book and stories in it. I liked analyzed the book and talked about what parts of the book you found interesting. The pros seem to outweigh the cons so I might give this book a try.
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