Fairy Tale, by Stephen King

Fairy Tale is one of the most satisfying books Stephen King has written in ages. If you haven’t read him in a long time, or ever, you probably think of him as a horror writer. That is accurate but incomplete. The man’s been writing professionally for over fifty years. He’s written fantasy, science fiction, Westerns, thrillers, literary fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, and probably some other fiction genres I’m forgetting, to say nothing of his nonfiction cultural criticism. Or On Writing, which endures as one of the best books for writers and would-be writers.

Fairy Tale presents us with Charlie, a boy whose mother dies young and whose father responds by diving into a bottle. Despite growing up under these difficult circumstances, by the time he’s a teenager, Charlie is a decent kid—the sort of kid who stops to help when he discovers an old man in distress, even if that old man has a reputation for being an asshole, even if his dog is rumored to be vicious.

I don’t want to spoil the plot, but this is an adventure story with a magical realm and a princess and a great evil that Charlie must defeat. And I am only slightly ashamed to say I cheated and looked to the last few pages to find out if the dog survived.