Book Reviews
Mr. King's earlier books were full of phantasms and demons, but he grows ever more adept at rooting his dark thoughts and toughest struggles in reality…He remains amazingly resourceful. He's so good at scaring that he can even raise goose bumps when he writes about the measles.
New York Times - Janet Maslin
King is a pro: by the end of this book your fingers will be mere stubs of their former selves, and you will be looking askance at the people in the supermarket line, because if they turn around they might have metallic eyes. King's inventiveness and skill show no signs of slacking: Doctor Sleep has all the virtues of his best work.
What are those virtues? First, King is a well-trusted guide to the underworld. His readers will follow him through any door marked "Danger: Keep Out"…[because they know] he will also get them out alive…Second, King is right at the center of an American literary taproot that goes all the way down: to the Puritans and their belief in witches, to Hawthorne, to Poe, to Melville, to the Henry James of The Turn of the Screw, and then to later exemplars like Ray Bradbury.
New York Times Book Review - Margaret Atwood
[P]icks up the narrative threads of The Shining many years on. Young psychic Danny Torrance has become a middle-aged alcoholic...[and] remains blissfully unaware of the actions of the True Knot, a caravan of human parasites...as they search for children with “the shining” (psychic abilities of the kind that Dan possesses), upon whom they feed.... Less terrifying than its famous predecessor...[it]is still a gripping, taut read.
Publishers Weekly
[A] return to form for the old master.... Danny (now Dan) Torrance...meets a young girl with a shining even stronger than his own. Together, he and young Abra Stone must take on a tribe of people called the True Knot.... Verdict: This is vintage King, a classic good-vs.-evil tale that will keep readers turning the pages late into the night. —Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins
Library Journal
(Starred review.) King clearly revels in his tale, and though it's quite a bit more understated than his earlier, booze-soaked work, it shows all his old gifts.... His cast of characters is as memorable as any King has produced.... Satisfying at every level. King even leaves room for a follow-up, should he choose to write one—and with luck, sooner than three decades hence.
Kirkus Reviews