BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS

TITLE:  Bazaar of Bad Dreams

AUTHOR: Stephen King

BLURB: Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of Stephen’s finest gifts to the constant reader—“I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”

I’ve been one of King’s ‘constant readers’ ever since I came across a second-hand copy of his first short fiction collection Night Shift in the 70s. As with most writers with a canon of work as vast as his (and there aren’t that many), he has sagged a bit from time-to-time but in my opinion his short fiction collections never let you down.

This offering brings us the usual line-up of morality tales and stories that go bump in the night. There’s no new concepts or eyebrow-raising twists but that’s not to say this collection is disappointing in any way. Whether it’s a Faustian deal with the Devil (Morality), a look at the consequences of having a strange power (Obits) or the really excellent and menacing tale of a future predicting Kindle (Ur), it’s the author’s finely tuned ability to draw characters we can relate to and put them in situations we have never dreamed of that makes this collection of novellas an enjoyable investment.

The high standard we come to expect from a writer of King’s calibre.