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Fairy Tale

Fairy Tale

FantasyFairy Tales
Pages
624
Published
2022
Language
English

Synopsis

Charlie Reade is seventeen, an ordinary high-schooler carrying the private weight of a mother killed years earlier and a father he pulled back from the edge of grief and drink. When he helps his reclusive neighbor Howard Bowditch after a bad fall, Charlie inherits the old man's aging German shepherd, Radar — and the secret of the locked shed behind his house.

Inside the shed is a passage to Empis, another world of wonder and terror where a great city has fallen silent under a curse and a monstrous tyrant threatens everything. Drawn there first by the hope of saving Radar, Charlie becomes bound up in Empis's fate, cast as an unlikely hero in a struggle that echoes the fairy tales he grew up on — darker, stranger, and far more dangerous than any of them.

Fairy Tale is Stephen King's love letter to the stories that shaped him: a coming-of-age portal fantasy that moves from small-town realism into pure, shadowed enchantment.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

AdventurousDarkNostalgic
Portal FantasyComing of Age

Genres

Fantasy Fairy Tales Dark Fantasy Horror

About the author

S
Stephen King

Stephen King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author whose work has defined popular horror fiction for more than half a century. Born in Portland, Maine, he grew up in poverty after his father abandoned the family, and credits his mother's resilience and a voracious reading habit as the foundations of his imagination. He began selling short stories to men's magazines while working as a high school English teacher, and published his first novel, Carrie, in 1974—his wife Tabitha retrieved...

Characters

Charlie ReadeProtagonist

A teenager drawn into another world through a locked shed, bound up in its fate.

RadarSupporting

Howard Bowditch's aging German shepherd, whom Charlie loves.

Howard BowditchSupporting

The reclusive neighbor who guards the passage to Empis.

All characters in Fairy Tale

Frequently asked questions

  • What is Fairy Tale about?

    Published in 2022, Fairy Tale follows Charlie Reade, a seventeen-year-old who befriends an elderly recluse named Howard Bowditch and, after Bowditch's death, inherits both his dog and a shed that contains a staircase leading to another world. The world below—Empis—is a degraded fairy-tale kingdom under the rule of a tyrant. Charlie must decide whether to use the power he is told he carries to save a world that is not his own.

  • What fairy tales and fantasy traditions does Fairy Tale draw from?

    King has said Fairy Tale is his most deliberate engagement with the tradition of fairy tales—he re-read the Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang's fairy books, and George MacDonald before writing it. The world of Empis borrows the structure of a degraded kingdom awaiting a hero, the magic of transformation, and the moral economy of folk tales in which the virtuous are rewarded and the cruel punished. He has also cited Peter Straub's influence.

  • How does Fairy Tale relate to the Dark Tower universe?

    King has said Fairy Tale is not a Dark Tower novel, but the book's concerns—a portal to another world, a young man with a special destiny, a degraded kingdom in need of saving—clearly rhyme with the Dark Tower mythology. He has neither confirmed nor denied a connection. The ending leaves the relationship deliberately open.

  • Is Fairy Tale King's longest recent novel?

    At 608 pages, it is among his most substantial works of the 2020s. King has said he wrote it during the COVID-19 pandemic partly as an escape—he wanted to write a book that was fun to write and that operated on the register of the fairy tales he loved as a child. He has described it as the most deliberately constructed fantasy world he has ever built.

  • Who is Radar and what role does she play?

    Radar is Bowditch's dog—an old German Shepherd who serves as Charlie's primary companion throughout the novel. She is far more than a pet: the world below has the ability to restore youth, and Charlie's attempt to heal Radar is one of his primary motivations for descending. King has said Radar is one of his favorite characters he has ever written.

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