https://imgur.com/gallery/Ib8hfqv Rereading all these novels (actually listening to all the audiobooks) in preparations for Holly that comes out in September.
So these are all a related series of King books?
Yes. The first three starting with Mr Mercedes are considered the Bill Hodges trilogy. But Holly Gibney is in them as well. Then the second two are Holly Gibney stories and the third of that is coming out in September and it’s called Holly.
I’ve read all of these except “If it bleeds”, how was it? The outsider was my favourite of the rest so far.
Loved it found it better than The Outsider. Definitely give that book a read. It is a collection and the rest are just as good. The Life of Chuck they are making a movie of.
But If It Bleeds is the Holly story.
I feel like the Holly angle is somewhat unnecessary for these books. Like, with Dark Tower, the main characters were completely integral to the larger story. You can’t have any DT book without Roland, he is inherently part of the story, you couldn’t write DT3 and have it all of a sudden be about Frank or Bob instead of Roland. But in all of these, it’s much more like there’s the Monster of the Week™ and then there’s Holly (and the others) chugging along trying to find them. But I feel like they don’t need Holly specifically. He can still tell largely the same story with the same baddie but sub out Holly for $person and it would still work just fine.
I like them well enough for what they are, they’re fine books, I just don’t really get why he keeps coming back to this one character (or set of characters) all of a sudden.
Two reasons. One Stephen King is old (no longer on drugs) so his writing style changed quite a bit. Second because he likes these characters enough to want to reuse them.
Go back read any of his early work. I am been rereading a ton of King books some I haven’t read since I was a kid. You will notice that he brings up characters and shit from all his other novels. We all know about the Dark Tower and how he sprinkles it all over his books.
But he does this with all his stories. He brought up The Shining in Billy Summers. I am reading The TommyKnockers now and he brought up Cugo, IT. Hell he even brought himself into the story by having a character mention that horror writer up state.
Basically King as always if he can bring back characters our mentions them. Also why not dude a freaking writings machine and can write some of the most fucked up shit imaginable.
Funny thing King himself originally meant Holly to be a throw away character. She wasn’t meant to be but a side note. But as I writer I understand sometimes we don’t know ending we go with the flow.
So as he was writing she took control and in the end he feel in love with that character. I have to and I look forward to seeing were this goes. And I don’t believe any of the stories of this series be the same without her.
I also disagree that his stories are about the "badey or monster " no, they are about the people and without those characters the monster would be nothing. Like you said the Dark Tower would be nothing without Roland. Well Mr Mercedes, and the rest of the series would be the same without Holly.
Just my opinion as a Stephen King fan going back 35 years.
