King’s usual gang are all present in the story: when a monster visits a small town, it’s chased by both begrudging hero-cop Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) and the socially awkward but magically sensitive Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo). This dynamic is never more beautifully laid out than in HBO’s now-completed adaptation of King’s 2018 novel The Outsider. In King’s grand united universe, the battle isn’t so much about good vs. (See: The Institute, The Shining, Firestarter, Dreamcatcher, Carrie, The Green Mile, Doctor Sleep, The Dead Zone, It, etc.) And his connected-universe mythology, introduced in his Dark Tower series and explored at length elsewhere, explains the motives of these archetypal figures, and binds them inextricably to forces most of them can’t comprehend. King is a fan of writing about children or otherwise vulnerable people whose unnatural abilities set them apart from mainstream society, while making them attractive to malign forces. This man, sometimes accused of being King’s stand-in for himself, always rolls his eyes at his hero’s journey. He often focuses his stories on a beleaguered middle-aged man who’s sometimes a writer, and is always introspective. Yes, there’s usually a ghoul of some kind lurking in the shadows, but King’s monsters don’t pursue just any humans. The more of Stephen King’s 93 novels you read, the more quickly you can spot his favorite character types.
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