Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales book reviews by Whizzle

Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King


I will use the first post here to give a grade, and update it after I read each story, then make later posts on each story, give details. Pipe in with your own thoughts if ye wish. *** means "not read yet". And there will be spoilers in my posts, so watch out!

Autopsy Room Four F-

The Man in the Black Suit C+

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away D

The Death of Jack Hamilton ***

In the Deathroom B

The Little Sisters of Eluria A+

Everything's Eventual B

L.T.'s Theory of Pets ***

The Road Virus Heads North ***

Lunch at the Gotham Cafe C+

That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French B

1408 C+

Riding the Bullet D-

Luckey Quarter ***

Autopsy Room Four

My grade: F minus.

Wow, it sucked big time. Not that the writing was bad. King is an excellent writer. It just didn't gell with me. Told in the first person, about a guy that gets given an autopsy even though he isn't dead. The tired old crap about something bit him and he is not really dead yet, but can see and hear what is happening.

They do some pretty gross stuff to him, then figure it out at the end.

The Man in the Black Suit

My Grade: C+


Very well written. I wouldn't mind reading it again someday. King did a good job of making me feel like I was back at the turn of the century. He also made the storyline believable.

The story is about an old man writing a first person account of how he met the devil in the woods as a small child.

The devil as described by King, sounded a hell of a lot like the Dark Man from the Stand and the Dark Tower series. Had the same nose, the same tittering laugh, the same weird sense of humor.

The thing that ruined it for me was the devils only real goal seemed to be to want to eat the little boy. And he got thown off course by a fish. Ate the fish instead, then chased the boy. The boy outruns him and escapes.

First off, the devil wanting to eat some boy for dinner didn't fly with me, and a boy actually outrunning the prince of darkness don't fly either. That's why I gave it a lower grade.

The story itself was interesting though, and well written. I would have given it a much higher grade, had there been some motivation on the devils part, other than just wanting to scope some lunch. Seems like he could do better.

The Little Sisters of Eluria


My Grade: A+



Awesome beyond words. The reason I bought this book in the first place. This is a short sequel about Roland from the Dark Tower series, early in his quest for the Dark Tower.

Roland rolls up on a deserted wild west town, that has some zombies in it, which are slow mutants, and a stray dog with a cross on it's chest. (Markings, not a real cross)

He is wounded, and winds up being treated in a giant airy tent by nurses. The little sisters.

These girls turn out to be vampires that cure him with strange beetle like bugs, that crawl all over him and heal, kind of creepy. They heal folks I guess, then the vampires drink dey blood.

Roland befriends one of the sisters, who aint totally evil, she helps him escape, the dog shows up towards the end, and takes out some vampires, and Roland escapes. His girlfriend dont' make it, as she don't take the sunrise too well.

My review may make it sound silly, but it's well written, and a lot more detailed than what I'm saying of course.


The bugs make an cameo in Dark Tower seven, in the Dixie Pig when Jake and Father Callahan from Salems Lot storm the place. They seem to be the vampires pets.

Also, the tent and the description of it, make it sound like the same tent Jack's mother was in, in the Talisman.

Everything's Eventual

My Grade: B


This one is about a dude that has powers to kill folks from afar with mental powers. The story held my interest and had a good flow to it.

The government recruits him, puts him in a house, give him what he wants, and has him kill people mentally.

At first, the guy is all cool with it, and he is a late teen, not a dude really, still a kid. But he then figures out that he is being made to kill only liberals who are anti goverment, and the kid being a liberal himself, gets all pissed and kills his government handler.

I would have give it a higher grade, but the kid, whose name is Dinky, is kind of a jerk, and not really my personality type. Almost an ***hole. So, I didn't really indentify with him that well. So I gave it a solid B.


Dinky shows up in Dark Tower 7 in the town of Blue Heaven, as a breaker. He helps Ted Brautigan from Hearts in Atlantis to set up some weapons and stuff for Roland and crew to take out the town.

(The town is in the middle of a desert made by chemical warfare, and it houses hundreds of breakers who damage the beams from the Dark Tower, in the attempt to destroy all the universes)

Dinky was kinder and gentler in Dark Tower seven than in Everythings Eventual. Dinky seemed to have the same mental powers as the father of the little girl in Firestarter.

And as Ted, who had a "mind spear" that would kill folks dead. But Dinky could kill from the other side of the world, as long as he had some sort of personal information on his victim.

Lunch at the Gotham Cafe

My Grade: C+


Eh, didn't do much for me. I didn't hate it, but after if was over, it felt like it did nothing for me to read it.

A guy who is getting a divorce meets the lawyer of his wife, and the wife at a cafe to settle some stuff. The waiter/matridee is crazy, screaming about some dog, and radios and a bunch of other non sensical ****.

He whips out a knife and starts killing people. He kills the lawyer brutally with the knife, and it's very gory, wasn't my style to read that grossness,

the protagonist, fights him off, escapes with his wife, who tells him she hates him, then it ends. The killer was yelling EEEEEE the whole time and at the end, the protagonist starts saying EEEEEEEE.

I don't know what it meant, that he captured some of the guys mental illness, or if he related to the killer, or what. I don't care really.

Didn't care for it that much. But like all King books, it was well written and carried itself along nicely.

In Dark Tower Seven, the Crimson King yells EEEEEEEE over and over while battling Roland from the Dark Tower balcony.
So, maybe, just maybe this killer dude was influenced somehow by the Crimson King. Or maybe not. Don't know.

That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French


My Grade: B


This one is hard for me. I like and I don't. It's about a women in hell, who is repeating the same thing over and over, and don't know it yet.

The reason I like it a lot, is that it's set on Sanibel Island, and has Fort Myers in it. They land at the airport there near Fort Myers, where I grew up. I was a bellman at the Sheridan, and drove the air crews to the airport as part of my bellman duties for two years.

Also been to Sanibel many times. So the story is set there, and I got into the landmarks of the deal. Most King books are Maine, so it was refreshing to read a story where they are somewhere else.

The ladies flight goes wrong and she dies, but you don't really find out till near the end. She keeps repeating getting off the plane, driving with her husband to Sanibel, having Deja Vu, seeing her husbands face melt.

She starts to notice what is happening and sees she is in hell for an abortion she had while young. There was some kind of point about Hell is or the afterlife is what we make it, not nessesarily that God put her in hell for the abortion, but that maybe she put herself there because of her own guilt over it. I don't know.

1408


My Grade: C+


Story about a haunted hotel room. It flowed good, I kind of enjoyed most of it, but the story felt old to me. Guy is warned not to go in room, goes in, sees some scary ****, escapes barely, and has a loser life afterwords.

There was a vampire in one of the paintings, which is part of the Dark Tower ethos. Also, moving paintings are part of the Dark Tower symbols, like in Rose Madder. Lot of desert light imagry, which led me to think that maybe the thing in the room was a demon elemental, maybe Tak from Desperation/The Regulators, who could morph reality into whatever he wanted. I don't know, might be reading too much into it.

I liked the story o.k., but there was no real punch line zinger to top it off. It was like it was cool through the whole deal, but you wanted some kind of cool ending to go with it, and you just get the standard useless dude is a loser now ending.

That's why I gave it a lower grade. It was very readable though, worth at least one go.

Riding the Bullet

My Grade: D-

Loser dude is on the way cross country to see his mom, who has had a stroke.

Loser dude gets a ride from death, or something like death.
Death, or just a dead guy himself, whatever he is, tells the dude that he must decide whether he lives or his mother lives. Dude chooses himself and is kicked out of the car.

His mom lives anyway, but dude must live with the decision that he chose himself over his mother in a moment of terror.

I found the whole thing time consuming and stupid. I found I was irratated a lot waiting for it to get better, which is rare with King books for me, even the ones I don't like are readable.

In the Deathroom


My Grade: B



I was happy with it. Pretty much expected the hero to get whacked, as it was the death room, and he was being tortured, not much hope there. And it's in a book full of bad endings, but Homer pulls off a fairly believable ass kicking, and overcomes his many tormentors.

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away


My Grade: D


It was just useless. Guy goes to hotel room to kill himself, but doesn't know what to do with his book of bathroom graffiti he has collected over the years. He thinks about it a long time, and goes out and stands outside the room, wondering what to do.

Ends like that, with no ending, not knowing whether he will kill himself or go on. Really a pointless waste of time.

Nymphadora wrote:

I liked Autopsy Room Four

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

haha
well i wouldn't say it's my favorite, but i wouldn't have given it a F-
c- to a c maybe. but it wasnt THAT terrible

I'm thinking of ripping it out of the book.

Send me the pages it sounds like a good story.

Dude gets probed up the butt with a giant rectal thermometer.

haha comedy

I was reading that part, and thought, dude, this book suxs.

Hahaha I remember you saying you didn't want to watch Prison Break for the same reason.

Everybody, I think we've just discovered Dave's biggest fear.

Giant rectal insertions? Yeah, that's up there on the list all right!

Yeah, it's not the kind of "worst fear" you can use against people, like snakes or bunnies or something, is it?

I dunno. Threaten someone with rectal penetration, and see how it goes. I'm thinking they will run for the hills.

Lets see, which one would you most likely run from:


1. Listen boy, I got a barrels of spiders and I'm going to let them loose on you if you don't run away.


2. Listen boy, I got some grass snakes, and I'm gonna let em loose on you if you don't run away.


3. Listen son, I'm gonna shove this rake here right up your ass if you don't get the hell out of here.





Me, I'm splitting after #3, as it sounds worse than some bugs and ****.

yeah what dave said.