Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King

I love Stephen King and have read every single one of his books. I think somewhere, beneath the Trump bashing (which I'm OK with) and gun-owner hate (which I'm NOT OK with), there is a good story here.  But I'm too turned off to actually search for it.

One day all the women of the world fail to wake from their sleep.  They become enshrouded in a web-like material the instant they fall asleep.  Many women try to stay awake as long as possible, but very few will be able to stay awake through the ordeal.

The setting is a rural town where everybody knows everybody else.  A woman's prison lies on the outskirts and is the employer for many of the characters (most others being inmates or local police).  It seems there is a wide range of economic status in the town, from homelessness to affluence.  A woman arrives to town just as the sleeping sickness, dubbed Aurora after Disney's Sleeping Beauty, arrives.  She calls herself Evie and immediately murders two meth dealers. 

Taken to the women's prison, she never forms a cocoon when she falls asleep.  She also seems to have other superpowers, including being able to talk to the prison rats.  Not long after all the other women of the world are asleep, two factions form.  Those who would start burning women in their sleep and seizing Evie and those who will protect both.

Meanwhile the sleeping women are transported to another world, similar to their old one in setting, though nature has retaken much of it.  There are no men, except the male babies who are being born.

Spoiler Alert: in the end, the women must decide whether to stay in Utopia or go back to a world of (Trump loving, gun toting, violent, etc.) men.

I'd like to state, for the record, that all men are not bad.  I'm married to a good one.  And not all of us gun owners are bad.  I promise you that. 

If this was the first book I'd ever read by King, I'd never read another.

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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of Mrs. W.