My Review:

Stephen King Revial AudiobookI am a card-carrying Stephen King fan boy.. make no mistake. However, after finishing Revival I have to chuckle at some of the rave reviews that it is receiving. Due to the prominent role that lightning plays in this book you will inevitably find an extremely high concentration of the following words throughout the reviews: shocking, electrifying, jolting, etc.

While these words do fit nicely with the theme of Revival, they don’t actually describe the book itself. At no time did I really feel shocked or electrified by Revival.

Not that this is a bad book.. don’t get me wrong. It is extremely well written in King’s characteristic style. I would estimate that about 99% of this book is King at his best. It is the 1% that kind of ruined this book for me. Unfortunately this 1% is part of the “big reveal” and the last thing that I want to do is to ruin the “shock” (see I did it too) by explaining exactly why I didn’t care for the direction that King decided to take his readers. All that I will say about it is that when the time for the big reveal finally came I was left shaking my head and thinking “What the hell?”  This questionable 1% wasn’t real horror.. it was more like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. All of the suspense that had been charging up throughout the novel just kind of fizzled out for me.

Fortunately the book doesn’t end on this sour note. King wraps everything up nicely with hints of the horror that he is famous for delivering.

Narration: I was extremely impressed with David Morse’s performance in Revival. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when I pushed play and heard who was narrating this book.  (Stephen King is one of the VERY few authors that I don’t always “vet” the narrator before making a purchase.) I didn’t recognize the name so I spent a few tense moments wondering if the narration was going to be terrible and ruin the experience for me. The COMPLETE opposite was true. David Morse blew me away.

Overall: While I had some issues with parts of the story I did still enjoy this book. Yes, it could have been better but seriously… this is still Stephen King we are talking about. Yeah it might not be his best but you can still bet that it is better than most other books on the shelf. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.