But for all its lack of pretension, the emotional register of King's fiction swings wildly, and anyone narrating his longer books must be able to carry off snippets of popular songs, fragments of the characters' obsessive thoughts, the down-home repartee of working stiffs, interludes of ominous description or cosmic dread, and of course outright, extravagant horror. Not only that, but any King narrator will follow in the footsteps of some top-drawer talent: Sissy Spacek, Campbell Scott (a clammily claustrophobic reading of 'The Shining'), Raul Esparza and John Slatterly are just some of the actors who have recorded his books in the past.Īs far as I can tell, 'Doctor Sleep' - a just-published sequel to 'The Shining' - is the first King audiobook Will Patton has read.

This is a novel about inheritance, particularly that of Dan Torrance, the child character in 'The Shining.' The adult Dan must choose between the example set by his angry, self-deluding alcoholic father, Jack, and the alternate model offered by the Overlook chef, Dick Hallorann, young Danny's mentor in psychic abilities (and other life skills). Dick taught Danny, and now Dan in turn is called upon to guide Abra, a 13-year-old New Hampshire girl who is even more gifted in the Shining than Dan was as a boy. A pack of roving psychic vampires calling themselves the True Knot wants to drain the Shining out of her in the nastiest way imaginable.īut every bit as threatening as these fiends is the specter of alcoholism, the demon that Dan inherited from Jack and that will hound him for the rest of his life. For me, the most resonant elements in King's novels are the passages depicting the heroism of ordinary people simply carrying on, holding up their end or rising to the occasion and, alternately, the misery of their failures this novel contains one of the best descriptions of a hangover I've ever read.

Stephen king the shining audiobook free