The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Title: The eyes of the dragon
Author: Stephen King
First published 1987

About the book: A kingdom is in turmoil as the old king dies and his successor must do battle for the throne. Pitted against an evil wizard and a would-be rival, Prince Peter makes a daring escape and rallies the forces of Good to fight for what is rightfully his. This is a masterpiece of classic dragons-and-magic fantasy that only Stephen King could have written!

Someone, no actually many people had told me that Stephen king is the Master of Horror. So last to last weekend when I went to the book fare again; I thought I could try one of them. So I bought ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’. And out of all the horror books that he has written, I picked a fantasy book by mistake. Now what is the probability of that happening?

Did I like the book? Yes.
It’s fantasy and it reads like a fairy tale. There’s very little chance of me not liking it.

So what’s it about?
The king of Delain, Roland, has 2 sons, Peter and Thomas. While Peter is smart, intelligent and handsome, Thomas is exactly like his father, short, bow-legged, dumb and confused. The closest advisor to the King is a magician called Flagg, whose real age is not known to anybody. He is rumored to have lived for ages, yet he looks only 50.

When the King is poisoned by Flagg and Peter send to a dungeon for murdering him, Thomas takes the throne. And that’s exactly what Flagg wants, to have a weak boy as a King so that he can control the entire Kingdom and eventually destroy it.

The end is pretty obvious when you are half way through the book. I felt it was more like a Children’s book, I found the language too simplistic and way too many explanations of why a certain character was behaving in a particular way.
Take for e.g.
Why was he so excited simply to be looking at an old man picking halfheartedly at a piece of cake? Well, first you must remember that the old man wasn’t just any old man. He was Thomas’s father. And spying, sad to say, has its own attraction. When you can see people doing something and they don’t see you, even the most trivial actions seem important.

But otherwise, such lovely characters. I especially liked Thomas, the younger son. He strived to get attention from a father he loved; he was confused and knew he wasn’t as intelligent and smart as his elder brother. Finally the guilt of what he had done broke him. Flagg was the typical cruel, dark magician we have come to love in fairy tales.

So overall, I would say that although I liked it, I wouldn’t highly recommend it.

Wikipedia tells me that Flagg and the kingdom of Delain are directly related to The Dark Tower series and Flagg also appeared in The Stand. Also, that one of the possible titles for this book was The Napkins.

Rating: 3 out of 5