A Happy Ending!

A few days ago, I started The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Stephen King's pseudonym). I was quickly sucked into the story and read it all in about three days. I even had trouble putting it down when it was time to go to bed. It's every bit as good as his work from the 80s and 90s. I haven't been much of a fan of Mr. King's work in the past ten to fifteen years (though I must say I haven't yet tried The Dark Tower series), but I was completely sucked in by this book. It's deliciously creepy without an excess of gore, though there is plenty of that too. The plot is just twisted enough that I didn't quite get it figured out until most of the way through the book and by that point I was completely hooked. There were, perhaps, just a few too many characters and I had some trouble keeping them straight, but they started dying at a fairly quick rate, so that wasn't a problem for too long. Perhaps because this is one of Richard Bachman's books, rather than one of Mr. King's books, it's actually set in Ohio, not Maine. I even had some mildly disturbing dreams since I started reading it and ordinarily I don't have any dreams at all as far as I know. And I only slept with the light on for part of just one night. That's way better than when I first read The Shining.

I was rather surprised to discover that The Regulators has a happy ending. I can't say that I recall ever reading a happy ending in a Stephen King book before, but it was a fitting ending and a good one. There was an earlier place in the book where an ending could have been made that would have been more typical of Mr. King's work, but this ending better suited the characters involved.