On May 21, 2024, Stephen King released a new short story collection.
You Like It Darker contains twelve stories, including five novellas that have never been published.
Like the title suggests, everything about this collection is iconic Stephen King.
What’s on the cover?
The first thing you’ll notice is the cover. At first glance, the muted colors seem innocuous. They’re not the stunning blues you’d expect to see surrounding an island peninsula, but this is a King novel, so that makes sense.
The wisps of the clouds, both swooping up and swiping down, feel like a storm. But whether it’s setting in or dissipating, it’s hard to say. And then there’s something about the island itself. Something off. Something that’s not quite right.
Take a step back, open the full cover, and the wraparound graphic soon brings to life what your instincts hinted at. It’s an alligator, tail curled in the shallow water. The storm is building on the back, the black clouds harboring a single bolt of lightning.
This is the ominous dread we expect from King. The promise of darkness hiding in plain sight.
And that’s the first hint that darkness lurks inside these pages, just like he promised in the title.
Let's take a deeper look inside You Like It Darker by Stephen King.
You Like it Darker
What does the title mean?
In the afterword, King asks readers, “You like it darker? Fine, so do I.” But more than simply exploring the darker side of reality, the title is also a nod to the last album produced by Leonard Cohen before he died.
You Want It Darker is an album focused on life and death. King has always written within these mediums, though the boundaries of life and death often blur in his stories.
How far can darkness go, how much can you take? That seems to be the question King is most interested in exploring in this collection.
Is there a new Cujo story?
One of the five previously unpublished novellas that appear in this collection is a sequel of a sort of King’s 1981 novel Cujo.
The story follows a grieving Vic Trenton, years after the events of Cujo. He’s in Florida, riding out the pandemic in his friend’s island home.
But when he receives an odd inheritance, the conditions to claim it may be more than he can bear.
Are there any other King tie-ins?
It wouldn’t be a King collection without sneak appearances from his other works.
In “Rattlesnake”, we get a glimpse of the now submerged Duma Key.
In “Two Talented Bastids”, the cabin once owned by Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones was destroyed to build a new housing development.
And in a fun twist, Lloyd Sunderland and Laurie, two characters in the story, Laurie, also appear in “Rattlesnake” briefly at a funeral.
What else can readers expect in this collection?
On top of the title nod, King weaves in plenty of pop culture references and tributes to other famous works.
The most notable is “On Slide Inn Road”, a reimaging, or at least a nod to Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
In “Finn”, King mentions the 1985 single Madhouse by Anthrax, a mention that guitarist Scott Ian acknowledged on Instagram.
“Red Screen” was inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or at least, stories in that same vein. King paid tribute to Cormac McCarthy in both story and dedication in the novella Dreamers.
Not all the stories have tie-ins, tributes, or references woven inside them. At least, not notably enough to mention here.
But there are hints of what terrifies even King himself.
The story “The Turbulence Expert” seems to be an exploration of King’s own fear of flying.
And the final novella in the collection, The Answer Man, calls back to the rural gothic stories that have become quintessentially King.
What are readers saying?
The book released as an instant New York Times bestseller. Even more impressive, it garnered the number one spot.
The novel has remained on the list for the last eight weeks. In that time, it’s gained over twelve thousand reviews, holding firmly at a 4.3-star rating on Goodreads.
Even critically, not every story was a hit, but overall, reviewers all agree that the overall tone of the collection is one that inspires dread and fear through compelling narrative.
And for both fans and critics alike, it was the five unpublished novellas that were the consistent stars of the show, with each receiving rave reviews almost entirely across the board.
Featured image: Fabrizio Conti / Unsplash
