A dark fantasy novel written by Stephen King.
In 2013, teenager Charlie Reade comes across an old man one day who's fallen off a ladder and broken his leg. Charlie helps the old man, Howard Bowditch, through the recovery process, earning his friendship and trust in the process. It's during this time that Charlie learns that Mr. Bowditch has a secret: he's over 150 years old, and he has a portal to a fantasy world in his backyard.
He gives Charlie a mission to complete: the fantasy world contains a magic device that, if used correctly, can make any living creature young again. To save Mr. Bowditch's beloved yet ailing dog, Radar, Charlie must take a journey through a magical yet incredibly dangerous world.
Tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The book was published in 2022, but is set 9 years earlier in 2013.
- Alcoholic Parent: Charlie's father George become one following his wife's death, to the point it cost him his insurance job. Thankfully, he was able to recover, get his job back, and later open his own agency.
- Androcles' Lion: On his way to Lilimar Charlie rescues a red grasshopper from an evil dwarf. Said grasshopper turns out to be a royal among his species and is essential to helping Charlie and the other prisoners escape the dungeon.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: A running theme throughout the book. Charlie feels obligated to help a stranger in need because he knows what it's like to feel helpless in a bad situation. The good deeds he does throughout the book (even the ones that get him in trouble) always gain him either favors or allies.
- Beware the Silly Ones: When Charlie first sees Hana the giantess, she's singing a fairly raunchy song, then gets up and lets out a very loud fart. Charlie has to keep himself from laughing out loud. This same giantess was sitting on a throne of children's skulls, and eats human meat as casually as most people eat bread.
- Big Brother Bully: The older Gallien children were this to their two youngest siblings, especially the prince. It led to Leah and her brother being very close.
- A Boy and His X: Charlie and Radar the German Shepherd.
- Celebrity Paradox: Cujo, written by Stephen King, exists in the world of Fairy Tale, written by Stephen King. This isn't the first time King has put his own fiction into a different work of fiction.
- Disappeared Mom: Charlie's mother Janey died in a car accident when he was 7.
- Dysfunctional Family: What the Gallien family was before Flight Killer murdered most of them in a coup. Apparently, the youngest prince and princess were mercilessly bullied by their older siblings, and none of the adults did anything to stop it. The remaining members seem to have accepted that they played a part in their own downfall, and all seem to regret their actions.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- Despite eating literal children, Hana cares deeply about her daughter, Red Molly. When she dies, Hana howls in grief and swears to kill Charlie.
- The Flight Killer aka the former prince, still loves his sister Leah dearly, as she was the only member of their family who ever treated him with kindness. She's the only one who's able to reach him before he brings Gogmagog into Empis.
- Evil Is Petty:
- The prince became Flight Killer because the abuse from his family left him susceptible to Gogmagog's manipulations, and he agreed to become his host in exchange for the death of the Gallien family.
- The dwarf that Charlie keeps from killing the red grasshopper starts following him around and trying to put him in danger. Among other things, he causes Charlie to get lost in Lilimar by removing Mr. Bowditch's markings, resulting in Charlie getting captured, and later, during Charlie's escape, he alerts the skeleton guards and Red Mollie to Charlie's position. It gets him killed when Red Mollie runs him over.
- Fisher Kingdom: Charlie is a brown-haired, brown-eyed individual. But, the longer he stays in Empis, the more his eyes turn blue and his hair blonde. Once Gogmagog and the Flight Killer are defeated, his hair and eyes return to their normal color.
- Fountain of Youth: The sundial in the city of Lilimar can restore the youth of anyone by sitting or lying on top of the dial and then spin it. Mr. Bowditch used this on himself once, hence why he is older than he looks, and Charlie mainly travels to Lilimar to rejuvinate Radar.
- Genre Savvy: Charlie starts becoming this for fairy tales after he learns about Empis from Mr. Bowditch. Learning about them actually helps him multiple times.
- Giant Equals Invincible; Averted; both Hana and Red Molly are taken out by the guns Charlie brought with him from his world.
- Good Is Not Soft: Charlie has to get tougher as the story goes on; he ends up having to kill a man in a gladiator ring just so he can survive (although that was technically self-defense), then Red Molly, then Hana. By the time he and Leah kill Petra, he's become more-or-less desensitized to killing.
- Great Escape: Charlie and the other gladiators all manage to pull this off when Charlie learns what the guards' weakness is (see below).
- Heroes Love Dogs: Charlie bonds with the elderly Radar almost immediately when caring for her after Mr. Bowditch's injury. The reason Charlie ends up going to Empis is find a magical device to make her young again.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Hana the giant eats human flesh. She is unique in this regard however, and Charlie even theorizes she was banished by the other giants because of it.
- Loved by All: Radar is loved by everyone who meets her. As is Leah.
- Make Some Noise: During one of Bowditch's visits to Lilimar, he provided Claudia with something to keep monsters away at night. It turns out to be a car alarm attached to a series of bullhorns around Claudia's home, which, when activated, sounds like thirty car alarms all going off at once. Because she's deaf, it doesn't hurt her.
- My Grandson, Myself: Mr. Bowditch admits to Charlie that after he rejuvenated himself with the sundial in Lilimar, he covered it up by pretending to be his own son and that the old Mr. Bowditch had apparently died during a trip.
- Nice Guy: The story kicks off because Charlie decided to be a Good Samaritan and help Mr. Bowditch. He remains a genuinely nice person throughout the story (although he has to change a little in order to survive the story)
- No Indoor Voice: Claudia, due to being rendered deaf by the curse, speaks in a booming yet monotone voice.
- The Old Convict: Charlie is imprisoned by the villains as part of their plan to gather thirty-two presumed descendants of the royal family and make them fight to the death. There are thirty prisoners in the dungeon when he arrives, causing Charlie to spend a lot of time with those people as their captors hunt for a thirty-second prisoner, with several of his fellow prisoners sharing the old convict role.
- Charlie's cellmate Hamey gives Charlie some good advice about how to survive, while also helping to educate him about the history of the kingdom (although most of the others help with that as well), and recalls how there were only five prisoners (some of whom have since died) when he was brought to the dungeon.
- Jackah was brought to the dungeon at the same time as Hamey and is constantly challenging other prisoners to solve riddles.
- Bult has been locked up the longest out of those who survive to meet Charlie (although the two of them rarely interact directly) and says that when he first arrived the Big Bad was hoping to get sixty-four prisoners for the games so there would be more rounds of the death matches (a notion he abandoned due to how long it took to catch people). He isn't a mean person, but is noticeably harder than Hamey or Jackah.
- Bernd is the only explicitly elderly prisoner in the dungeon, but he's far from the longest-serving one and rarely speaks up.
- Precious Puppy: Radar is this for pretty much everyone.
- Say My Name: This is how Charlie drives Gogmagog back to his own world and saves Empis.
- Tears of Joy: Upon Charlie's reunion with his father after returning to the real world.
- Trapped in Another World: Charlie is from Earth, but is stuck in Empis until he completes his mission.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Charlie, upon realizing that the skeleton guards have been reanimated with a type of electricity, figures out their one weakness: the blow up when exposed to water.
