Title: Night Shift
Author: Stephen King
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 490
Rating 3.25/5
Night Shift isn’t King’s best collection of stories and there were a few here that I actively disliked, but for the most part it was pretty much just okay. There were a few standouts, but there were also a few that just meandered and didn’t really feel as though they had much of a purpose.
With that said, there were also a few stories that I really liked, including Children of the Corn, which was excellent and which had just the right amount of creepiness to it. I also liked that there were a few tie-ins with ‘Salem’s Lot here, even if the stories themselves weren’t so good. And the good news here is that there are so many stories in the collection that most of them don’t last too long, so if you’re getting bored of one then you can bet that the next one will be a little better.
I think King is at his best when he’s writing longer works, and my favourite short stories of his tend to be ones like The Langoliers, which is actually novella length at the very least. At the same time, even King at his worst is better than most people are at their best, and he definitely left me with a few things to think about. Not quite as many as I was expecting, though.
That’s my main problem with this book, if I’m honest. I had high expectations going into it and I don’t think that it lived up to them. My expectations are usually pretty high going into Stephen King books and I knew that this was one of his early books, which are usually his best. At the same time, I saw someone give this a negative review and a 1.5/5 a few days before going into it, and so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised either.
1.5/5 is harsh for this, I feel, but I can also understand why she didn’t enjoy it, especially as her first Stephen King book. I feel like it’s more one for his hardcore fans, the constant readers. But I’m one of them and so I still enjoyed it, and I was also pretty happy because I have it in the Hodder edition, and I’ve decided to start collecting them. That was a nice little bonus.
I think it also helped that I read this over the span of 24 hours or so when I had to spend six hours or so travelling. I think it helps to be able to get your teeth stuck into this one, and if I’d lost momentum or slowed down with it, I can imagine that it would have started to drag. All in all though, I was happy enough with it I guess. That’s one more down.
