Reviews
Not that it’s a high bar but this might be the scariest book I’ve ready yet
The movie adaptation of this story is one of my favourite horror movies of all time for its bleak ending, so on my journey to read through Stephen King’s stories, I knew I wanted to read the original source material. The protagonist and narrator David Drayton, who has taken refuge with his young son in a supermarket, tries to survive against not only the creatures of the mist, but also fanatical aggression from other survivors. This story was definitely different from the movie and television adaptations, but I was able to experience this story as its own entity while still comparing the differences. One thing that I’ve noticed about King’s human characters, they mostly feel like American caricatures in horror stories aimed at my father’s generation. There’s nothing wrong with focusing your story on an adult audience, I’ve just felt like Stephen King’s particular brand of storytelling is more appealing to older straight and white audiences. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just have trouble connecting with the writing sometimes and it does feel like the writing won’t hold up in the future and readers will be able to clock this story as being retro rather than classic. Though, this is mere speculation and I do think King’s works will always be remembered and looked upon fondly for generations to come. It was interesting seeing the same characters as the ones from the movie adaptation being depicted here and how their portrayals differed from the movie. I feel like some of the characters weren’t as deep or real as they were in the movie. I wasn’t attached to the protagonist here as I was in the movie, but I was thankful that King didn’t stretch out the introductions and backstories for the characters the way I’ve noticed he did in his previous novels. I loved this story and I loved the depiction of the mist and the creatures, especially with the knowledge of how it all relates to the greater Stephen King multiverse. I may have my problems with King’s style, but I appreciate the interconnectedness of his stories and how his multiverse can be started and read from any point while converging at his The Dark Tower series. I may criticize King and even call him overrated in some ways, but I do recognize his skill for storytelling and how he was an innovator in the genre and respects to connected universal storytelling. This story made me appreciate the film and how it successfully adapted the source material to film. I love how the director of the movie adaptation knew the best parts of the story to keep and what to change for the better of the story. The original ending wasn’t as impactful as the movie’s ending. After experiencing the source material, the movie adaptation, and the television adaptation, I can easily say that the movie adaptation is the best version of this story. While I do prefer the film, I do appreciate this story for what it was and how it led to one of my favourite horror movies.
I’m so used to reading 400+ pages of King, so being able to read such a well-executed piece of horror in under 170 pages was refreshing. This is classic King. It’s one of the ones where the type of horror is really about how often you think about what you would do had you been put into a similar situation. The ending is satisfying enough to close the story but ambiguous enough to invite theories. It also lends itself to a potential sequel or follow up should King feel like the timing is right.
One of my favorite horror/mystery books, and even though I liked the ending better on the movie version (thank Gods for that) because the book's ending was not a good-written one. And even then, I still love this story!
Incredible. I like both movie and novel. In this case, I feel that you need to know both of them to have a better experience with this story.
For a story with such an interesting premise, the writing felt dull and lackluster for the most part. I think of 165 pages, ten really felt riveting? To me it lacked a compelling momentum that kept me wanting to read. I worry that with King I had such an unpleasant two occasions trying to read 11/22/63 I don't expect much of a good time.
wish it had the movie ending tho
After I watched the series The Mist on Netflix (not really recommended unless you like gory and dark and hopeless stories about horrible people), I was curious about what was in the original story. I've seen most of the earlier movie. It's more like the earlier movie than the series. Big surprise, eh? And it's fairly hopeless and dark too. I haven't read a lot of Stephen King's earlier short works. This one wasn't too bad.
okay this was really short so i listened to it in a day but i think i really need to be picky about audiobooks because i was zoned out for so much of this and i’m not the biggest fan of his writing so i didn’t like it all that much. the concept is really cool and maybe i would be saying something else if i had stuck with reading the physical version. the narrator stressed me out, he had three different voices for the same character and one of them sounded like trump and i can’t stop thinking ab that so that’s fun.
4 I despised the cheating arc (it was unnecessary - did absolutely nothing for the story at all!) otherwise it would have been a full five. As is classic Stephen King, we're left off with a bittersweet conclusion. This one had a lot of waiting around, with nothing happening, and I kept hoping that there would be more. Maybe, seeing the movie first spoiled it for me, because I knew what was coming and so was too impatient to see the buildup for what it should have been. Can't wait for my next King read.
3 stars It was ok, nothing special. A good audiobook to pass time
This was part of a short story collection. I purchased the book specifically after I'd seen the film so I did have some preconceptions, but overall I enjoyed it. I liked the characters and I think King flourishes in 'end of the world' situations, especially when it comes to human behaviour. My only complaint was the end of the book. King is famous for leaving his stories with no definite ending which can be quite frustating when you've spent a lot of time on a book.
You can find this review and more at Novel Notions. The Mist is another of King’s works that, like Carrie, has become such an integral part of society’s collective consciousness regarding fear that it’s become almost cliche. And, as with Carrie, my visit to the Mist completely altered my perception of a story I thought I knew. In my opinion, it went a long towards explaining why King chooses to end stories the way he does, which I’ll get into later. All that being said, The Mist is a quick little journey into the frightened mind, a dissection of mob mentality and the way fear plays itself out within a group of strangers who are thrown together by sudden and unexplained danger. It’s disturbing and thoughtful and does a fantastic job of putting readers in the shoes of its characters. One thing that King excels at in my opinion is developing believable characters who make believable if unfortunate decisions based on their fear. Our main protagonist and his son find themselves trapped in a supermarket with a bunch of other bystanders, ranging from strangers on holiday to year-round neighbors. In the aftermath of a terrible storm, a strange mist rolls into town. Unfortunately, the mist is much more than the dense fog it appears to be; hidden within the mist are horrid, unearthly creatures that want nothing more than to feed, and humans are evidently pleasing to their palates. Unable to leave the market for fear of being eaten, this motley crew of strangers and neighbors must decide what to do in order to survive. I found it absolutely fascinating to see how group dynamics were fostered and altered by such a large group being trapped together. Little tribes were formed, and leaders of those tribes battled for dominance and greater numbers. We witness a cult develop, led by one of the creepiest human antagonists I’ve witnessed thus far in King’s fiction. We see inhibitions lowered, animal instincts rear their ugly heads, and heroism revealed in the unlikeliest of candidates. We see bravery and cowardice, greed and selflessness, adaptation and blatant closed-mindedness, all writ small within a glass menagerie of a microcosm. I found seeing these big ideas played out on such a small stage incredibly telling of the mixed bag that is humanity. We are capable of such brilliant good, and such mind boggling evil. And all that separates one from the other is the path we choose to follow. Everything always comes back to free will with King’s stories, which rings very true for me. Something I really appreciate about King is his ability to convey belief in something as right and true even in the midst painting religion as horrid and garish. I’ve read around twenty King books, and probably at least a half-dozen of those have featured religious fervor in a negative light. And yet King does a brilliant job of not portraying religious belief itself as evil. Instead, he shows these villains to be fanatics who have twisted religion in some way to suit them. So far, this has always been some twisted form of Christianity, and yet I have never once felt that King was poking fun at Christians. He is instead showing the evil that can be wrought in the name of religion, and how Christianity can become a horribly twisted and dangerous entity when approached from a desire to judge and appear superior instead of a desire for forgiveness and acceptance and love. I have seen my faith twisted in such ways in real life, and it always both saddens and infuriates me. I sense a bit of that in King’s work and it really resonates with me. One thing I particularly appreciated about this book in particular was a nugget near the end of the story that in my opinion explained King’s approach to endings, regarding which he is kind of infamous as they are often ambiguous. “This is what happened. Or, nearly all-there is one final thing I’ll get to in a moment. But you mustn’t expect some neat conclusion…It is, I suppose, what my father always frowningly called “an Alfred Hitchcock ending,” by which he meant a conclusion in ambiguity that allowed the reader or viewer to make up his own mind about how things ended. My father had nothing but contempt for such stories, saying they were ‘cheap shots.’” I really believe this is both an apology and a defense, in a way. King gravitates towards ambiguous endings because they leave things in the hands of readers, but he realizes that this trend of his isn’t always popular. I honestly kind of like ambiguous endings for the very reason King gives us here from the lips of his protagonist. Without a blatant end, readers are free to imagine up their own conclusions, and such stories often live on in our mind longer than their neatly tied counterparts. This is why I think King excels at short stories, because ambiguous endings are for some reason more acceptable when delivered in that format. The Mist is, like most of the books I’ve read from King, not perfect. I can see the flaws, but I was in no way deterred by them. This novella as engrossing as a story set predominantly in a grocery store can hope to be. I just so happened to read the majority of this book on an unusually foggy day, which definitely added on odd ambiance to my reading experience. I also can’t help feeling that novels like Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer might never have been written if not for this little book. The Mist is definitely worth reading, and it a good way of dipping your proverbial toes into King’s scarier stuff.
This was the first book by Stephen King I've read, and I am rather disappointed. I didn't get along well with the writing style but that's just a personal opinion. The ending - WHAT was that? I won't write down any spoilers but it didn't satisfy my need for answers AT ALL. This book left a huge question mark inside of me, and that's the reason I can't give a higher rating than 2 stars. Usually I like endings like that but not in a horror book.
The Mist is really well written. I like how King really nailed the mob mentality here and the way that people act under pressure when it comes to things of horror. I found the mist very creepy, and to throw in large spiders and bugs made it even more creepy because I can't stand bugs. Being in that mist with all those nightmarish monsters would have been my own personal hell for sure. So, if you're looking for a short King story, this is the one to pick because it flies by pretty quickly and sticks to the point and sets the creepy ambience well. Although, I would have preferred a better ending, but you can't have everything.
a.k.a. "за супермаркетите и хората"
I told myself I wouldn’t DNF this one so it wouldn’t become the second King book I didn’t finish this year (the first one being “The Institute”) Plus this one was so short and I was listening to it on audiobook so I felt I could push through. I didn’t really care for it. The main character annoyed me from beginning to end... your facing an unknown dangerous end of the world scenario and all you can think about is sleeping with another woman trapped with you? While your wife is in who know’s what danger herself? Beyond that the writing style of this book is very detailed in what the character is thinking in every moment but also barely fleshed out in story. I think that’s supposed to add to the horror of it, and leave it up to your own imagination, but it’s just not my style. I do think the actual creatures were pretty neat and the action bits when they attacked were pretty nerve-wracking. During those times of the book I felt really invested but everything around it I had to fight with myself to listen and not zone out. I also didn’t mind the ambiguous ending honestly. This one just wasn’t for me... and it’s been a while since I read a book by King that I liked, and I can think of quite a few I have DNF’d over the years so it’s possible he’s just not for me... (is that a sin?)
reseña en el canal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zES3o...
My first King of the year, this wasn't my favorite of his works but I did enjoy it. I will say that I saw the movie years ago and I think I enjoyed it a bit more than this as I got more visuals for the creatures in the Mist. Overall, 3.5 stars. Not a bad King book to start with for this year's King tbr.
Horror in the truest sense of the word—a slowly approaching dread that turns into a full-blown massacre with seemingly no way out of the hopelessness. Religious mania intertwined with the Lovecraftain sense of primordial evil— it creates such an effect upon the mind both of the characters and the reader that you cannot but feel eerily disturbed. This is why I love Stephen King. He knows how to make my skin crawl and to get my little gray cells working.
