Book of the day: Stephen King Full dark, No stars

Ah, Stephen King, horror author who (said it) settled down in his old age and tried to be a bit more "real" writers do not need monsters and ghosts, to tell a story. And yes, of the four short novels / long stories in his latest book is actually the only one in which the supernatural plays a major role (even if the narrators of the others might not agree). But that does not mean that this is the good-natured bearded King, who writes about baseball; Full Dark, No Stars pours him at full speed, just that the focus this time is almost entirely on human evil - or rather lack of goodness, which may well pop the same level. Evil triumphs where good men do nothing, and so on.
It is a violent, dark collection of stories he got out of here. It is only in the story based on supernatural themes - "Fair Extension", a really accurate satire on the old sell-your-soul-to-devil-act - as he unleashes the humor, and even then it is to serve a rather bitter moral, what is the devil in human souls when man-made religious fanaticism, war as entertainment and celebrity worship on your own? Hornper just want the cash now. The rest is (with varying degrees of success) even depressing, realistic, assault, rape, murder.
King writing as Richard Bachman is not here, violence is not just brutality for brutality's sake. He has a point to make, as he attacks from across all four stories, and he does it about as sensitively as King can do, how violence is allowed to govern because we choose to look away, spreading like ripples on the water until it infects everything. The problem is not that man has no soul, that we are evil, it's just that the more we choose not to see, the more we help to talk away, the harder it is to put our foot down and say no. If we do, we ought to acknowledge our own guilt in what happened. It is perhaps the greatest horror item that remains in the community: that just that conscience which is expected to do us good perhaps making it easier to ignore problems once we started.
The results vary, as I said. King is inspired, and then it will never completely unsuccessful, and after giant discharge Under The Dome feels as if he enjoys writing short, hard-hitting stories again. "1922" is perhaps the most successful story here, with a blend of Steinbeck and Poe, who did not seem less relevant now in the era of new poverty. "Big Driver", on the other hand, trying to pick apart the classic rape-revenge story and manages to really just be another one I Spit On Your Grave-variant with glued on 2000-century morality, as if the King thinks it's a homework about attitudes to rape.But on the whole it is an absolutely acceptable day at work for old Stevie.