I read this book as a teenager, as a young adult, and now as a woman in her 30s. This story truly withstands the test of time. I vividly remember the first time I read "The Mist" (in the Skeleton Crew collection). I was completely astounded by how masterfully King captured the way human beings turn on each other during a crisis. This entire book is essentially an adult version of "Lord of the Flies."

Told from the first-person perspective, David Drayton narrates how the mist descended upon their small corner of the world. After a massive summer thunderstorm leaves them without power and in need of repairs, David, his son Billy, and their neighbor Brenton Norman leave David's wife Steffy at home and head to the local store. While there, all the shoppers realize that a strange mist is rapidly approaching, and it seems that something sinister lurks within it.

The way the story is structured, with all its elements carefully set up (the headers provide some hints about what is about to happen), is extremely well done. I remember being completely taken aback by the ending as a child because I was anticipating some sort of apocalyptic conclusion.

David becomes one of the de facto leaders in this story, while the other townspeople are drawn to Mrs. Carmody.

Mrs. Carmody is definitely the kind of person who would blame a woman being out at night for her own attack. I recall despising her as a child, and my dislike for her resurfaced with a vengeance when I reread and finished this book. I think it's because as an adult, I have unfortunately encountered this type of character in real life more times than I care to admit to myself.

I also thought about how effectively King portrayed how many people, in an attempt to protect their own sanity, refuse to believe what has happened and instead blame those around them (like Brenton).

The writing is classic King, and to me, that's not a criticism. The man has a remarkable way with words. The flow from start to finish is flawless. What I particularly liked was that King simply gives a gentle nudge here and there regarding the nature of the mist and what emerges from it, without overexplaining. He understands that the reader is more interested in the characters and their fates, rather than the mechanics of how this situation came to be. This is one of the reasons why I adore his earlier short story works.

The setting of "The Mist" is predominantly the store. Some of the action does eventually shift, but for the majority of the book, this is where everyone is confined.

The ending leaves things somewhat hopeful, yet still tinged with sadness. I believe the movie "The Mist" actually had a more powerful ending, mainly due to the shock value and the horror of the poor choices made by the character of David.

This is probably my third horror book, with the first one being The Shining. I have a penchant for horror movies that involve the supernatural, like ghosts. However, if it's something blatantly out of this world such as giant insects or aliens, I simply won't watch it. It's just not my cup of tea and doesn't scare me in the slightest.

The book started off well. The characters were likable enough, and there was an eerie atmosphere from the beginning. I knew nothing about it except that the mist was bad news. The chilly vibes persisted until I discovered what was actually in the mist, and then my enthusiasm slowly began to wane. It was kind of underwhelming.

Since I'm new to this genre and for some reason never read horror books before, I didn't know what to expect. Now, I'm going to pass on a fair number of Stephen King books because they're simply not for me. I liked The Shining and Mr. Mercedes, and loved The Green Mile. I'll stick to books similar to those.

Nevertheless, I didn't rate this book 2 stars just because of that. No, I had more serious issues with this novella. If you're expecting a resolution, well, you'll be disappointed. You think this is a spoiler? In my opinion, if a book doesn't have an ending that answers the important questions, then it's not worth it. I'm not reading for school where I have to imagine my own ending. I'd rather not read this book at all as I feel it's a waste of time.

On the other hand, the story as a whole was never worth 5 stars to me, so the rating should've been 3/5.

Then there are the characters. I liked Ollie; he was my favorite. David wasn't bad, but he had many questionable moments. For example, he thought to himself if he was "the proprietor" of those green eyes (of a pretty woman). He even cheated on his wife, not knowing if she was alive or not. There was a high possibility that she had already died in the last 16 hours or so, but instead of doing anything else, he slept with another woman. Steffy deserved better!

Overall, it was a quick read, and I wasn't bored. However, the book had some issues that I couldn't ignore. I now have a better idea of how to pick my Stephen King books - and horror books in general. Yeah, I'm never going to read IT.

\\n  

As a species, we are fundamentally insane. When more than two of us are placed in a room, we choose sides and begin imagining reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

\\n

"The Mist" is a terrifying novella primarily centered around survival. How can one combat something as menacing as the mist and the creatures it brings?

David and his young son Billy are among the few survivors taking refuge in a supermarket with over 80 other people. For the sake of his son, David must decide whether to remain inside (where resources and companions are abundant) or venture outside (where the risk of death is high) in search of a way to seek help. However, inside the supermarket, people are starting to lose their sanity. They are choosing sides, gathering together - their survival instincts transforming them into desperate and ferocious beings.

"The Mist" served as a powerful reminder for me. We now walk the earth with a sense of superiority, armed with our civilized minds and manners - at the top of the food chain. But when stripped of all senses of safety, our primal sides emerge like a clawing animal.

In this relatively short review, this story deeply shook me. It made me question all kinds of "What if's" - questions that I had never bothered to ask myself before.

The story ended hopefully - whether David, his son, and the others survive to see another day is entirely up to the readers to decide.

In the small town, winter has arrived unexpectedly, and suddenly the place has been hit by a violent storm. Is it just nature's play or something else?

People in the shopping mall noticed that a thick fog-like substance was approaching from all directions. Nothing could be seen clearly. What is the reason for this sudden fog?

Suddenly, the fog burst and many strange and huge creatures emerged, including abnormally sized spiders and worms in the dung. They surrounded the entire shopping mall. People were trapped. Will they be trapped like this forever, or can they escape and return home safely?

Where did these huge creatures come from? Is the army's secret project 'Arrowhead' behind all this?

Stephen King's popular novel 'The Mist' is based on a small town. The story unfolds through showing the disrupted lives of the people during the storm. Then, the story gradually enters. Indeed, it took King the first fifty pages to build the story and characters. After that, the real story begins in the supermarket. In many interviews, King has revealed that he was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The influence of the setting in this novel can be clearly felt. It is said that 'The Mist' is Stephen King's Lovecraftian horror novel. He has described the huge creatures very beautifully and shown the panicked people trapped in the shopping mall under their attack. The charm of Stephen King's writing style is such that you will feel as if you are also trapped in that shopping mall, gasping for breath and fighting to escape. The book is also called a suspense horror. Although the first fifty pages are a bit slow-paced, you will easily get into the story later. There is no way to put it down. In the middle, there is also King's unique sense of humor.

Stephen King's first-person stories always attract me. This one is also a story written in the form of a first-person diary.

King's collection of stories is quite curious.

The first and longest story that gives the book its name, "The Mist", has seemed wonderful to me.
It lays the foundation for what is coming, achieving a very good and successful setting. It fulfills what it promises, keeps you on edge, and although without major surprises, it manages to make you live in that supermarket. It manages to get you into the skin of the anguish and fear that the characters feel.
That present mist, lurking, dark, dense.
It has an open ending that I really liked a lot, leaving the door open to a second part that I don't know if it has and if not... (King, if you read me, make a second part)

My 100th read book this year. And it's an absolute gem. King truly has the talent to create characters that you initially despise, and yet, in the end, you find yourself feeling a strange sense of satisfaction.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I must admit one thing. Having seen the movie prior to reading the book, I have to say that while the ending of the book was interesting, the movie's ending was executed far better, leaving me completely speechless.

However, that aside, I couldn't rate this book any lower than 5 stars. I firmly believe it merits every single one. From the very first page, it captured my attention and held it captive until I turned the final page. King is the undisputed king (pun intended!) when it comes to writing stories that are impossible to put down. With each book of his that I read, my respect for the man grows exponentially.

His ability to craft engaging narratives and develop complex characters is truly remarkable. This book is a prime example of his genius, and I'm already looking forward to reading more of his works.

Another great book by King.

This one is divided into a short novel and two stories. The novel is "The Mist", which at times brought to my mind a somewhat Lovecraftian scenario, mainly because of what the mist encloses (which I won't mention out of respect for those who haven't read it yet). The truth is that of the three works, this was my favorite, although I'm not really a big fan of open endings in these cases, and the idea of not knowing exactly what happened drives me crazy. I would have really liked a more precise ending.

On the other hand, there was "The Monkey", a short story that, to be honest, I found a bit tedious at the beginning. It was very difficult for me to get into the atmosphere. Certainly, it's not my favorite story by King, but it still seemed good to me, with a fun ending.

And finally, "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut", another short story that I really liked. It's not exactly horror, it's more of a fantasy, something kind of incredible. But it was good, I enjoyed it, and I came to several conclusions, and I have some interpretations about the ending. In this case, allowing the reader to guess or deduce what it's all about seemed well applied to me.

In general terms, a good book that I had been longing to read for a long time and I had the pleasure of reading it.

21W.758 - based on the first 20 pages, if I didn't have to read this, I'd've already returned it to the freaking library.

Admittedly, I'm only 25% into it. So this is my first King novel. I've read one short story by him which I liked.

Does he always foreshadow with a sledgehammer? And is it him being all snark-snark-me-big-strong-man-protect-small-hot-wife, or is it the narrator? Because I can't tell, but I know I want to punch the narrator any time he says anything about his wife or any other women - it's all got this snobby air of protective superiority, and it's skeeving me out.

Also, five-year-olds do not talk like that. Seriously, they don't. Nor does everyone say each other's names in dialogue all the time - they sound like a crowd of news anchors. "I don't know, Norton, let's go to Steff with the weather." Blah.

The end. So lame. Cloud full of dinosaurs. So. Lame.

So I understand that King is all into the Everyman as Hero thing - characters are easy to relate to (or they're supposed to be; I found it hard to relate to sexist upper-middle-class-white-male artist), their thoughts are all narrated and up-front, narration itself is in plain English, nothing fancy. Except that makes it so boring - plain, bland sentence structure, littered with cliches, utterly toneless.

Another apparent trademark is the Juxtaposition of Everyday Details And Anecdotes In Midst Of Horrifying Experience thing - and he flubs it here. We'll be getting up to some monster attack and there is some semblance of tension and then it just flatlines as the narrator pauses to describe the action with some simile that takes three times as many words as it needs to. Or there'll be some emotionally-fraught scene of potential character growth and the narrator will be off and running with some story about his hot wife and the futility of art. And I DID NOT CARE.

That was the worst thing about this - King really wanted me to care about these characters, and he kept throwing in details to manipulate me into liking them, and it was so obvious. At the end I was left with Billy, and he was boring, too.

I viscerally hated the narrator by page 125 (emphasis mine): "If I were her husband and proprietor of those green eyes and that full figure, I might not travel so much."

Proprietor. Excuse my rage, but what. The fuck. Is that.

At that point, I was like, yeah, whatever, you could totally get eaten right now and I would not even care.

So yes: lame-ass plot (THE MIST WAS COMING) with half-assed non-explanation (ARROWHEAD PROJECT. MAYBE) and awful characters (I AM MAN, HEAR ME MAN) that tried to manipulate me into liking them (LOOK I'M HUMAN LOOK HOW HUMAN I AM HERE'S A STORY FROM MY HUMAN LIFE) couched in hideously boring prose.

Fail all around, basically. I'll enjoy having a rant about this.

The Mist by Stephen King is a short story that has long intrigued me. I've seen snippets of the movie adaptation but never watched it fully. However, I know many Constant Readers adore this story. Finally getting to read it, I'm extremely glad I did.

Before my review, I want to issue some trigger warnings. There are scenes involving a man hitting a woman and suicide. If these topics are triggering for you, it's best to skip this.

The intro sets a nice tone, and it doesn't take long for King to unleash his horror magic. The situation with the mist is truly terrifying, and it hits even closer to home now because of the 2020 pandemic. I vividly recall the panic during the pandemic, the hoarding of food and supplies, and the paranoia that led people to turn on each other. "The Mist" captures all those feelings.

The creepy moments in the story are outstanding, especially the tension leading to the ending. I had no idea how it would conclude, and the buildup was simply amazing. I was completely hooked and couldn't put it down.

The ending is both exhilarating and unexpected. It makes you think, wonder, and sparks countless conversations. It reminds me of how King ended "The Colorado Kid." I give "The Mist" a perfect 5/5. It's a powerhouse of horror, with top-notch characters, story, twists, and terror. King's descriptions are so vivid that you can feel what the characters are going through. It's another mind-blowing and scary read that I highly recommend. Don't wait as long as I did to experience this masterpiece. Arrowhead Project was here.

“I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.”

This scathing comment comes from Harold Bloom, a pompous critic from Yale University. Bloom’s only real claim to fame is a piece of eminently forgettable literary compost titled, “The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages”. He’s just another jealous ponce. It seems many populist writers and film makers are often the targets of the pseudo intelligentsia. However, in reality, popular writers know their target audiences better than the literary critics know theirs. When King reads negative reviews like Bloom's, he must laugh out loud - all the way to the bank - that he owns.

I have no doubt that, for the most part, King’s stories are simplistic and a wee bit shallow. But you have to admit, they get the job done. I also firmly believe that should he ever decide to, King could write a best-seller in the classic style. He has that much talent.

The Mist follows King’s successful formula. It starts out with a family (or individual) having a Hallmark style of day, which quickly descends into a tension-filled “Oops!-I-soiled-myself” unrelenting thriller. His imagery is so vivid that you almost don’t need to see the movie that will inevitably follow. In this case, the antagonist is not a person at all, but a thick, white mist. I personally would have preferred the Mist to be black – because that’s the bad guy’s colour, isn’t it? But the Mist is more than just mist; it conceals darker, bloodthirsty evils. It's scary enough to make you pull up that blanket a bit tighter and think twice about getting out of bed to close the window you so carelessly left open. The REALLY entertaining part is the interplay between the characters trapped in the supermarket. You want to slap them, shoot them or hug them. This is always King's strength.

Look! If you want to have a good scare without having to over-think the storyline, then this is the book for you. It’s a short read, and I would allow a full afternoon to finish it, because you won’t want to put it down. (And have the chamber pot near at hand.)

BEWARE.

The creatures,

of,

THE MIST.

Anyway, we all know that this was originally a short story in Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. A story of men meddling with nature/forces beyond their knowledge, and essentially causing the world to descend into chaos. There is blood, gore, death, guts, entrails, and terror. Typical Mr. King entertainment.

However, the ending of the movie version actually works better for me in this instance. If you haven't seen it or read the book, do not click on the spoiler link.

I mean seriously, what the FUCK was that movie ending? It was epic, that's what it was.

Just for fun, if you're a Walking Dead addict, the movie version is like a family reunion.

The Mist is a perfect book to read for the spooky month of October. Pennywise agrees.

4 Ninja Bunnehs With Tentacles

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that The Mist is truly one of Stephen King's finest works.

The world that King has constructed within this story is nothing short of incredible. It is a vivid and detailed realm that draws the reader in and holds them captive.

The characters in The Mist are also extremely well-developed. They are strong and complex, with their own unique personalities and motives. The human interactions that take place throughout the story feel realistic, despite the fact that the time frame for these events might seem a little too short.

As always, I had an absolute blast reading The Mist. It was a thrilling and engaging experience from start to finish. This was my first time reading it in English, and it only added to the enjoyment.

I would highly recommend The Mist to anyone who is a fan of horror or science fiction. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to experience the masterful storytelling of Stephen King.