Stephen King

Years after a charismatic minister is banished in the wake of a faith-shattering tragedy, a heroin-addicted rock-and-roll guitarist from the same hometown reconnects with the man and forges a terrible pact.

A Novel

Revival

So good! I was a little unsure on how good the ending was gonna be but so pleasantly surprised! I love how even when you think you know what is gonna happen you're always slightly off. Always a good a read from Stephen King!

Soph

Eva Ströberg

Stephen King - Revival 
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⭐️⭐️⭐️
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I’m not impressed with this book as I was with other books. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it thoroughly as Mr. King is capable of making the most mediocre story enjoyable thanks to his excellent talent of story telling. However, this book feels like it lacks the usual kicks that makes a book great and memorable. The book still dances around the supernatural subject as King usually writes about, but it feels too abstract, and less “scary” even though scary is probably not the right word for this
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7-year old Jamie Morton met Pastor Charlie Jacobs for the first time back in the 60s. Aside from preaching from the Bible, Jacobs had a side hobby of dabbing with electricity, making small things that impressed the young ones as he called them “little miracles” until one dark day when he lost his loves and his faith. Jamie and Jacobs’ path kept meeting throughout the years, with more darkened plots along the way, revolving on electricity, faith and God.
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Revival is probably not a book a believer would enjoy, due to the blasphemous content, but who is King if he didn’t write such thing? 😅
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Patrick Book

Definitely a 3.5. Very different territory for King in some ways, but I found his vision of the afterlife lacking. It seemed almost entirely unnecessary to even include one, frankly.

Mat Connor

As much flack as Stephen King gets for his endings, the ending to this novel is so terrifying that I randomly think of it every once in a while and shudder. 

Pet Sematary is a popular pick for King's scariest novel. My vote goes to Revival.

Ulises123*

I am disappointed. I am a big fan of Stephen King but after reading this book, I know why I stopped reading his stories. THE ENDING IS NOT SCARY!! The book is boring! I wanted to stop reading it before, but I was really excited to know "the scariest ending S.K. has written in his career." Meh! No more Stephen King for a while!

Not a typical King horror fiction as such. It's drawing on many classic references of cults, monsters and other worlds, I found the human aspect of the book more horrific than the implied "horror" element. 

Lara Engle

The parts I loved in this book have nothing to do with horror or the creepiness we associate with King. For me, the biography of Jamie Morton was the best part, which is good, because his life story is the bulk of this book. The horror finale in this book could have been made more horrible and more relevant if it had remained more in the human realm. I think the human horror of what Charles Daniel Jacobs does is enough. We don't really need the supernatural in the end. Its inclusion waters down the message.

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Revival is Stephen King at his best. A large helping of Lovecraftian horror with a bit of Frankenstein and coming-of-age tale reminiscent of King's own Stand by Me. A great read for the long and dark nights of December.

Sebastian Bejarano

I really loved this story. I could say that Jamie Morton is someone real. The madness of Jacobs is wonderful. Every page prepares you for the incredible ende.

Ashley Janssen

I am usually a big fan but this one just didn't work for me.

James Eaton

I love a good contained story. I’m in the middle of so many series (which I love), so it’s nice to jump into a book and then have it reach a conclusion by the end. 

I’ve read several King books this year and this is pretty high on the list. Great story with all kinds of twists and turns.

Scott Wilson

There is a secret power contained in every object. This electricity is hidden but to release it may have unforeseen consequences.

This is one of Stephen King better books. It combines religion, family secrets, and drug abuse - all elements requiring strength and perseverance to overcome something through only blind faith.

Yulande Lindsay

Nobody builds tension like Stephen King and nobody breaks your heart like him either.

Kelsi Proulx

3.5 stars overall. 

I feel rather disappointed with this one. This is my first time reading what you might call "modern Stephen King" and it feels like it is lacking something his earlier books had. Maybe a spark (no lightning pun intended...) but I can't really put my finger on what it is. This book started off promising and the ending was exciting (like all of King's books it was a slow burner) but the middle almost felt like it dragged, which is unusual. I gave it 3.5 stars for the few high points.

Richard Binder

Been a while since I read King. This was surprisingly satisfying. Mike Flanagan's gonna do a great job with the movie.

Patti Reinheimer

A little slow in parts, not gonna lie, but the ending was so horrific that it stayed with me for days. Seriously disturbing in the best way.

b.andherbooks

Definitely not one of my favorite Stephen King novels. I was built up for a super horrific and terrifying novel, but found this to be more nostalgic and reminiscent. Action was mostly limited to recollection of events instead of being in the moment, and due to the memoir writing style you didn't feel a sense of danger with the main character. Action was rampant at the end, which was super depressing to me instead of horrifying.

I was expecting more of a bang (hello cover) but the storm didn't quite hit me the way I hoped. I may have been a victim of hype, so I will probably try this one again in a few years.

Galaxia

something happened. this book is so so so unsettling. not scary, like can't fall asleep there are monsters in my room unsettling, but like can't fall asleep i can't stop thinking about this book unsettling. the descriptions were gruesome as in any stephen king novel, and while some of the characters might have been missing a little substance, they were interesting enough to at least add to the story. the fact that it traversed so many years sort of put me off, and dream scenes aren't really my scene, but this might be my favourite stephen king book anyway.

Jessica Nottingham

Just a quick review on this one, since I've been trying to knock it off of my TBR for a good long while.

The ending of this book, actually probably the entire last quarter of this book, was utterly terrifying. It had me riveted, in normal King fashion. If only the whole first portion of this book hadn't felt like I was stuck in a giant pile of book quicksand, I would have absolutely loved Revival. Perhaps it was the audio book that I was listening to, but this felt like it had no traction for a good long while. It felt like, as Jamie kept saying, "Something Happened" but then it was lost beneath too much narrative. It just didn't work all that well for me.

Rachel

Something happened...in the last 20 or so pages in the book and everything before it is a painfully slow build up to the final pages. Something mediocre happened at the end that left me feeling disappointed in Revival.

Bryan Alexander

I read this one as part of my ongoing quest for the best 21st-century horror novel. Naturally I had to turn to Stephen King. Several of his recent titles have received attention for that crown, including Dr. Sleep and Under the Dome. I picked Revival because I knew less about it (no miniseries, not a sequel to a classic) and because what I had heard had hinted Lovecraft.

Overall, a decent novel, with a middle sag compensated for by a fine ending.

Revival is a biographical novel about one person and his odd relationship with another. The central character and narrator, Jamie Morton, is a musician. The other, his friend, mentor, and nemesis, Charles Jacobs, starts off as his minister and friend, then becomes his employer in several senses of the word. I wrote "biographical" because the novel simply follows Morton's life, starting with his earliest childhood memories, following him through the decades of adulthood and ending as he approaches death. Revival is about Morton, living in his head.

Morton connects with Jacobs as a child, coming to admire and love the older man as community priest, emotional supporter, and all around neat person. Jacobs leaves town after a disaster, but Morton finds him again, years later, when the younger man has ruined his music and life with heroin and the former reverend has become a carnival act. Jacobs' early fascination with electricity has become a job and obsession. The ex-rev frees Morton from his addiction using his mysterious electrical powers, and then.... then we get into spoilers. Suffice to say that things get good and bad. Very bad.

The middle third of Revival sagged for me. We spend some time in the carnival world, which is oddly flat. Then Morton moves into the music recording business, and King lavishes details there. Once again, this didn't do much for me. We get hints of horror, but they are only grace notes. The major religious issues of the first third, well evoked by Jacobs' family disaster, evaporate. And then the final third of the book kicks things up a few notches. 

Yes, time to active the spoiler shields: (view spoiler)[Jacobs has been pushing the frontiers of his mad science, at first to generate vast, Tesla-ambitious amounts of power. Then we learn it's really about reaching the afterlife. Some of the people Jacobs has cured have had visions of a next world, and he wants to penetrate it, along with finding his dead wife and son. Morton turns out to be a kind of modem in this operation. Things turns out very, cosmically bad. (hide spoiler)] Here the novel finds its emotional strength and narrative drive. No, it doesn't really make up for the middle, which isn't scaffolding so much as a pause, but it's a solid conclusion.

Ah, but this is a Stephen King novel. It's tricky to review a work by someone who isn't just the most famous and influential living horror writer, but a cultural icon and powerhouse. Readers have to see each title in that context, which requires a lot of work, since King emits a novel roughly every three weeks, it seems. We're also reading in the light of the classics, like Salem's Lot and Carrie which can throw a harsh light on the other books. Well, in that context Revival is pretty good. The character of Jacobs and mythos around him are interesting and new, a kind of Lovecraftian horror via Tesla and the carnie circuit. But we also get a heap of King obsessions, which fail to do anything for me now: rural Maine, dangerous drunks, people misled by religion, 1960s rock, etc. I found myself skimming those, as they weren't new, and felt like padding.

It's an interesting entry into the Lovecraftian fiction canon, which King has contributed to previously (cf the classic story "Jerusalem's Lot", for instance) . As per King, we don't get a Lovecraftian hero (scholar, eccentric, artist, madman) but an ordinary guy. We get the expected references to Very Evil Books, with a fun little dodge: the Necronomicon is fiction, made up by ol' HPL, unlike the very real De Vermis Mysteriis. The emphasis on Jacobs' electrical mysteries suggested Lovecraft's "From Beyond", with its Tillinghast 
machine. That suggested to me that Jacobs was reaching beyond this world, which turned out to be correct. Nicely signaled, Mr. King.

I filed this novel under my "Baby Boomer" shelf. As a generation Xer (born 1967) boomers are our perpetual crosses to bear. We've grown up with a culture swarming with Boomer self-obsession, crawling with the Me Generation's endless appetite for self-scrutiny. I know that boomer nostalgia texts appeal to that demographic, and might intrigue younger folks with familial or historical curiosity. But they don't work for me, usually. I'm bored with them, and Revival fails to bring the period and people to life. As Morton ages the world thins out, details dropping away as the 50s and 60s recede. 

It's a cliche to observe that boomers are aging (aren't we all? haven't they always been doing so?), but that saw actually applies here. Revival is definitely an old man's book. It's full of medical problems, with keen observations on the effects of aging. The world doesn't pass Morton by - one classic Boomer trope is not paying attention to much after 1975 - so much as exist mainly as a host for artifacts of the past, plus health care. And yet I don't want to be too cruel, since the book is ultimately very much about the fear of death, which is, after all, a universal theme. The Lovecraftian twist at the end gives this dread an extra bite.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the staggering Mr. King. Revival carried me along during its first third, which has good observations about childhood, another of King's traditional foci. And when the conclusion heats up, we get some passionate writing:Goat Mountain Resort hove into view - even bigger than The Latches, but ugly and full of modern angles; Frank Lloyd Wright gone bad. Probably it had looked modern, even futuristic, to the wealthy people who had come her to play in the sixties. Now it looked like a cubist dinosaur with glass eyes. (307)

Overall? Recommended for horror and thriller readers, if you treat the middle third like a flip book. Mandatory if you're a King fan. Useful if you're interested in modern horror.

Revival A Novel

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