Lately, Stephen King hasn't been the same. He had not written a short story collection since Nightmares & Dreamscapes, where he proved what a great imagination he has. But Everything's Eventual doesn't make the same effort. His stories are less original than before, not necessarily lees vigorous. His style has improved all right. Stories like "The Little Sisters Of Eluria" show some of his well-known creations, but King made more exercises than short stories. By example, we should take "Autopsy Room Number Four." He himself says that this piece is his version of an older story, one of those that become almost urban myths. But, of course, he shapes it masterly with his own wretched vision (the reader will see the undeniable fact that indeed is wretched the topic and the conclusion.) He has made this before. Dreamcatcher did the trick too, using the terror that invade the tabloids every time a "UFO" is seen. It just happens that also King does his trick. Masterly. But Everything's Eventual sometimes fall in the cliché. Some stories are all too urban, too well known, and sadly, predictable. There are a few that are very disappointing (as an example, I should say that "1408" was a promising story, but resulted not as tasty as the intro announced) But most of the while, King doesn't let down. "Riding The Bullet" "Luckey Quarter" among others give a new twist to exasperatingly predictable stories. And although it's not the surprise you feel when you read the end of a Jeffery Deaver novel, the surprise comes anyway. 'Cause King made present that kind of urban resentment, a wow-let's-see-how-shittier-our-already-miserable-lives-can-get feeling. His characters always make that kind of instrospection, where the light shed over a past is just a shadow in the present, within our actions. So the surprise is not produced inside the plot, but inside the character's feelings.

 

   Some stories are very well written, but some fail somewhat. The clearest example I found was the tale about Roland in the town of Eluria. I know The Dark Tower series touches a romantic string inside the writer's mind, but I found the end very corny and foreseeable.

 

   King doesn't write with the idea of literature in mind. As the truth, he doesn't polish his style in order to write like Faulkner, he simply wants to write stories about fear. And he, in this book and almost every other, except maybe Carrie and Christine, succeds. Because King is an intelligent man who grasps the ilogical quality of the horror story already written. He some times stops to teach us where the fear resides. He, like Peter Straub, that other great magician, has developed a gift to tell that reality doesn't stand above good or evil, but above a nightmare that doesn't make sense.