Later

What an unexpected finale! I won’t spoil the excitement and amazement, but you can say this book ends with a bang! As the author often reminds us, this is a horror story. Horrible things happen, extracorporeal beings lurk around. But the greatest horrors come from the living beings, as a result of their selfishness and ambition. Mr. King again has outdone himself.

This is a horror story.

Is it though? Who am I to say what is and isn't horror? There was a recent kerfuffle, yeah I said kerfuffle, where it was said that there cannot be horror in space so what do I know about what defines something as being horror?

So, is this a horror story?

After thinking about it, yeah Uncle Stevie, or in this case our protagonist Jamie Conklin is right, there are some pretty horrific things that happen in LATER by Stephen King. Now don't get me wrong, it's not on the same level of horror as IT or PET SEMATARY or ‘SALEM’S LOT but that doesn't mean it's not horror, right? Horror can be found at any place and any time, in any shape and any size. Just because something isn't horrifying to one person doesn't mean it won't scare the bejesus out of someone else. So what have we learned after this long tangent?

This is a horror story.

With that out of the way let's actually talk about the book some shall we? Jamie Conklin is just a kid and he sees dead people. Now that's not a spoiler as you find that out very early on in the book. Think about that for a second. Seeing dead people. That sounds pretty horrific to me, especially as a kid. And I don't mean Jamie sees ghosts. No, he sees full on dead people exactly how they looked the moment they died. So if someone is killed by getting their head smashed in Jamie sees that in all it’s brain leaking gory goodness. It is this secret, this gift (curse?) that Jamie must come to terms with and make a decision on if he will use his ability for right or wrong, for good or evil. Someone once said “With great power comes great responsibility,” wait, that’s a different universe but you catch my meaning.

I'm a Stephen King fan so am I a bit biased? Maybe. Probably. But even trying to set that aside this was a good book. A fast paced coming of age crime thriller with great characters and of course bits of the supernatural as the cherry on top. Yeah, this is a Hard Case Crime novel, but it’s also from the mind of King so having supernatural elements is something that we should come to expect by now. I really enjoyed the gritty crime aspects of LATER and the hard connection to one of King’s most popular works. I am a sucker for connected universes and this was a fun tie in that I think raised way more questions for me than it provided answers.

Some may complain that King is just rehashing material from his older books, and I can see that viewpoint, but for me this was new and original enough that I didn’t mind if bits felt as if they had been borrowed and incorporated into this story. Something I did feel indifferent about was a revelation that we get about Jamie right at the end of the book. I didn’t hate it, but I also felt that it was introduced so late in the game that it didn’t have any real impact on the story one way or another.

I don’t have a fancy blurb to write here at the end of the review like I usually try to do, I mean it is Stephen King for goodness sakes. If the day comes when King needs me to blurb his book I will be living the high life. Just know that I had a lot of fun with LATER and thoroughly enjoyed this quick and grimey ride into the Kingverse. Reading King for me feels like coming home, and yeah I know that sounds cheesy but that’s the best way I can describe it whenever I crack open a book by him that I have yet to read. And once again for all those in the back who may not have heard and missed it...

This is a horror story.

Moderately scary story. More of one of King’s coming of age stories with a bit of a horror backdrop.

Reminded me of Joyland in this regard. Good storytelling and dialogue. Not too many characters.

Pretty quick-reading. One quickly gets involved in Jamie’s life and challenges. I like this type of story.

Glad King doesn’t feel like he has to always put out a 500 pp book to develop an intriguing story.

Take this plot and character: a young man who sees dead people. Of course, there’s Shyamalan’s 1999 movie “The Sixth Sense.” King gives a nod to that movie in the book. Fair is fair. If we flesh it out with a first-person young male protagonist/narrator and give him a quirky, bouncy personality who also sees dead people we have Dean Kootnz’s 2007 book “Odd Thomas.” The beginning of a series, in fact. Stephen King in 2021 publishes “Later” also using a first-person young/male narrator/protagonist with a quirky, bouncy personality who sees dead people. Ummm? But King wouldn't steal the plot and character from another published author, would he? It has to be a coincidence, right? Or an unconscious act. Let’s look at a few clues.

Exhibit A: King’s protagonist Jamie (or sometimes James) says that his mother had a suspicion that there was something “fey” about him at an early age. Okay, what does “fey” mean? “Otherworldly,” which you might also interpret as “odd.” You could call him “Odd Jamie.”

Exhibit B: As if “fey” weren’t clue enough: notice the character Regis “Thomas” who hovers in the background. Thomas is a kind of quirky, odd guy and is special because his novels which are over-the-top-bad but are nevertheless best sellers, keep the publishing house of the protagonist’s mother afloat. It seems clear to me that this is a reference that this odd Thomas is King himself. King is telling you not only his role in the book, but in real world publishing. We already knew that actually.

A+B = Odd Thomas

Too much of a coincidence for me. It’s not like Stephen King is unaware of Dean Koontz or Odd Thomas. So what do you want to call this: inspiration from another writer? Riffing on another writer’s ideas? Theft of intellectual property or plagiarism? At what point do writers’ ideas become community property? When their copyrights expire? Whether legal or not, it’s bad form. Bad manners. Bad juju all around.

This isn't the first time King has done this. In 2007 King released the book “Under The Dome” about a small town trapped beneath a dome created by aliens. Forty-two years earlier in 1965 C. D. Simak published a book “All Flesh is Grass” about a small town trapped beneath a dome created by aliens. If you think I'm making a connection between these two books that doesn't exist, read both books. It’s pretty obvious.

King is not stupid and is dazzlingly well read. Maybe he’s thinking “I can take this idea and do a better version than the original.” But in effect what King is saying by his actions is “I am just like Regis Thomas in ‘Later.’ I keep the publishing industry afloat with the books I churn out. I dare anyone to sue me. They’d be cutting their own throats. I could get mad and stop publishing. What would happen then?”

I am troubled when writers’ intellectual properties become the candy store for a popular writer. Somewhere I read about members of the English Royal family who hid certain possessions when the Queen came visiting because she might like them enough to ask for them to be gifted to her. As it is for the Queen, it is so with this King.

I'm really surprised that readers have been so casual about this. Somebody needs to call him on it. Publishers sure won't.