A whopping thirty-six years after first releasing The Shining (from 1977 to 2013), Stephen King finally gets around to giving us a sequel, Doctor Sleep. That almost makes the wait for Winds of Winter reasonable!
Of course, The Shining was in no need of a sequel. There were no loose plot threads to tie up nor areas of the map to explore. Still, the demand to know what happened to Danny Torrance after the traumatizing events in the Overlook Hotel—where his father and a host of ghosts attempted to murder him and his mother—continued to hound the author at every convention. Like any writer worth his paycheck (how few remain!) King stuck to his guns for three decades, not wanting to publish anything for a quick cash-in or to satisfy reader demand. Fortunately for us, The Shining sequel proved its tremendous storytelling potential by exploring Danny’s life, who grows up much like his father, Jack, an alcoholic prone to bouts of violence. King also appears to have found genuine inspiration with this one. Doctor Sleep is an engaging yarn, even without its more famous predecessor.
Doctor Sleep is a tense thriller involving child-killing psychic vampires, an ex-alcoholic protagonist, and a thirteen-year-old girl, Abra, who shines like Danny never could. While it may yet be another example of power creep in fiction, King expands the scope from the last book and raises the stakes while giving us relatable, vulnerable heroes to cheer for.
The Art of Storytelling 
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