Collaborative novels can be tricky propositions, even for writers as accomplished as the father-son duo of Stephen and Owen King. Each author's stylistic and thematic concerns can stick out in jarring ways, creating a mashup far less seamless than either author perhaps would like. Sleeping Beauties is not one of those novels. In the grand tradition of team-ups like Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens and Stephen King's own The Talisman (with Peter Straub), it is a triumph of two voices blending wonderfully to take us into a dark and all-too-real dream.

All the women in the Appalachian town of Dooling (and around the world) are falling asleep and refusing to wake up. Once sleep takes them, their bodies are covered by a mysterious, fluffy coating, and if they are disturbed, they awaken as homicidal maniacs. This development naturally sows chaos, inciting riots across the nation and sending men into a frenzy. In Dooling, though, there's something different: Evie, an enigmatic woman with strange abilities, seems unaffected by the sleeping sickness. Some men think she's a monster, others a savior, but whatever side they take in a world without women, Dooling is transformed into a powder keg.

Sleeping Beauties traffics in some very potent themes, from the obvious question of what an all-male society would devolve into to less obvious concerns like the politics of a women's prison and the evolution of sexuality during the aging process. None of these issues, though, are dealt with cheaply or crudely. The book wields the best attributes of each author—Stephen's ability to ratchet up tension, Owen's wit and their joint gifts for character detail—with a deftness that makes it feel like the work of a single hybrid imagination. In the authors' hands, the themes and characters of Sleeping Beauties become powerful fictional case studies, holding the mirror up to our own powder keg of a society in unforgettable and often unnerving ways.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Women worldwide are falling prey to an unusual sleeping sickness that shrouds them in a white cocoon. Anyone who tries to interrupt their otherworldly slumber are killed, as the somnambulic women turn murderous. In a small, economically depressed Appalachian town, Evie emerges half-naked from a trailer park to smite an abusive drug dealer before she's arrested and put in the local women's prison just as the outbreak reaches a fever pitch. While the males ponder a world without women, the enigmatic Evie remains unaffected. Meanwhile, the sleeping women are in an alternate dimension, a near-postapocalyptic version of their hometown. Following the renewed interest in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and an increasing climate of wolf-whistle politics, this examination of gender stereotypes, systems of oppression, and pervasive misogyny within American culture feels especially timely, though the exploration is centered in a cisgender, fairly heteronormative experience. VERDICT Violent, subversive, and compulsively readable, this latest novel from King (Mr. Mercedes), collaborating here with son Owen (Double Feature), derives more horror from its realistic depiction of violence against women than from the supernatural elements.—Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal and Library Journal

This delicious first collaboration between Stephen King (Doctor Sleep) and his son Owen (Intro to Alien Invasion) is a horror-tinged realistic fantasy that imagines what could happen if most of the women of the world fall asleep, leaving men on their own. No one in Dooling County figures the sickness will affect their rural Appalachian life, but TV images of women asleep and unable to be woken, with white membranous stuff wrapped around their heads, makes residents undeniably distraught. Dr. Clinton Norcross of the Dooling Women's Correctional Facility finds himself unexpectedly in charge of 114 female prisoners when an unhappy guard slips a bunch of Xanax into the coffee of warden Janice Coates, causing her to fall asleep and succumb to the sickness. Clinton's wife, county sheriff Lila Norcross, is called to the scene of a double murder and explosion; en route, she nearly runs down a half-naked woman standing in the middle of the highway. That woman, Evie, seems to have some connection to the peculiar goings-on, though no one knows what it might be. The authors' writing is seamless and naturally flowing. The book gets off to a slow start because of the amount of setup needed, but once the action begins, it barrels along like a freight train. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary; Amy Williams, Williams Company. (Sept.)