Four Past Midnight

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: James Woods, Ken Howard, Tim Sample, Willem Dafoe

At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when, between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world.

Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity....

©1990 Stephen King (P)1991 Penguin Highbridge Audio

Solid and definitely worthwhile, but not King's very best. Audio isn't great either.

I'll start by disclosing that I'm on of those King fans that, so far out of the +-40 or so books and collections of his I've read, I've yet to not enjoy one. I love King and can (so far) enjoy all his work. That said, I do have my favourites and lesser favourites. And opinions on King vary hugely, so if you like King, you'll like this, and should give it a try. All that said, it was kind of middling on my SK Pantheon so far. Not amazing, but not bad either. Worth the price of admission, and I'm glad to have read it. But having just come off the back of "You Like it Darker" and the Mercedes Trilogy, it was a step down. Also, the audio and narration on these aren't great. I enjoy Willem Defoe as an actor, but his narration of The Langoliers was appalling. For some reason, his British accent shifts from bad Cockney (which the character clearly isn't) to some kind of thick South African accent (I know that one anywhere, being South African myself) and back again. And he makes the young female teen character into Fran Drescher in The Nanny, which makes no sense and is painful indeed. It almost ruins the story completely. But not quite. It's a good one, story-wise. From there, the narrating/narrator improves with each tale. By "Sun Dog" it's very good, actually. Sun Dog is also connected to the novel "Needful Things", which is cool if you're a fan of that book. This is well worth a read, if you like King in general. Not where I'd recommend starting, though, if you're looking for his best audiobook experience.

Equal parts impressive and underwhelming

Great short stories for the most part however Sun Dog was a let down. Langoliers was a good exploration of the sci-fi genre with good elements of mystery but overall was not outstanding. Secret garden and the library police man were brilliantly crafted short stories.

a heading is required

was great being able to revisit this book in audio book format, I found The Langolias was a bit of a hard listen at times due to the narrator but still love the 4 stories in this series