The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King is a compilation of short horror stories.
The Cover: There are a couple of different covers for this book; a black one with a hollow face and a white one with an array of colour. I have a copy of the white cover version, and while I do like this cover, it is not a good fit for the genre. It is a crisp well-presented cover, but this is a book of horror stories! The bright, cheery image does little to convey that. The font works for me, but the impact is totally diminished by the kaleidoscope of colour behind it. I feel the other version of the cover is a far superior one for this genre.
The Good Stuff: I’m probably going to upset a few Stephen King fans here, but I didn’t find much to talk about here. It is a professionally presented book, but for me, the stories are slow, they are not very interesting, and the ones that did tweak my interest fell short of the mark at the end.
The Bad Stuff: I have tried to read King before, and never been able to get into his stories. I do enjoy the movie adaptations of his books, yet I’m not a big fan of his writing style. But there are thousands who rave about his writing and hail him as the king of horror, so it would seem he just doesn’t work for me. I wasn’t hooked into any the stories I read in this book. I must admit that this one is going onto my DNF list (only the second book to land on this list to date). I got to page 189 and that is enough for me. That covers 8 of the 21 short stories within the book, and only 2 of those I read caught my interest, yet turned out to be disappointing in the end for me.
Overall, I found it a labour to read as much of this book as I managed to get through. I kept going for as long as I did in the hope that I would connect with one of the stories and really start to enjoy it. But this just wasn’t meant to be. I’m comparing this to an old horror movie where the ghosts are just actors wearing sheets with eye holes cut out, this one gets an unexciting, fright-fizzling 1 out of 5 golden bookmarks from me.
Allan Walsh writes Fantasy and Horror. If you’re looking for something new to read in these genres, why not check out his books here. You can also find his titles available in libraries.
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