Stephen King and Owen King Team up for Sleeping Beauties

The Exoteric Book Club selected for its monthly read the novel, Sleeping Beauties, by the father/son duo, Stephen King and Owen King. What a disappointment. The 700 pages of mostly character descriptions that led nowhere were so pervasive, they overwhelmed the plot and prevented any appreciation of what may have been an intriguing story.

The backdrop of the novel was a pandemic that put women to sleep as tendrils grew and cocooned them. What a fascinating concept, raising the universal question, how the loss of women would impact our society? The father/son duo presented a dismal attempt at realistically answering this question.

At the end of the novel, in the conversation with the author, Owen King revealed his desire for this duo literary venture to be a series of books, but later decided to combine it into one. He further admitted deploying tactics to prevent the readers from figuring out which author wrote the various parts. This may have been the reason the novel appeared to have no clear meaningful objective other than preventing the readers of this novel from discerning which author wrote what.