In the introduction, Stephen King tells us, his constant readers, how he came to write his Fairy Tale in the middle of the stultifying restrictions of the covid crisis. He says how, when he was trapped in his house, he imagined what would make him happy and the answer was a tunnel from a shed in his garden to another world.

To be honest, that would make me pretty happy too, covid or no covid.

Unfortunately, the story followed and that didn’t make this reader happy. For a start, the other world that we reach through that tunnel isn’t all that wondrous: a few fairy tale tropes – giants, mermaids, etc – but it’s done in the trademark Stephen King style where the fairy tale signatures include elements of 50s Americana such as tram cars and the Wizard of Oz.

The story itself is sadly predictable: our hero, a high-school lad called Charlie Reade who spends most of the story telling the reader that he’s really not as perfect as his actions suggest he is, follows the quest and succeeds in the quest, without too much trouble.

But really, where on earth did Stephen get the idea that a suitable name for the villain of the story, the man who is literally greying out a fairy tale world, should be ‘Flight Killer’? I mean, come on. If the villain was a striking air-traffic controller, maybe. Presumably that’s an allusion to how Flight Killer is busy killing butterflies but, frankly, even ‘Butterfly Killer’ would have been better than ‘Flight Killer’. It suggests someone who delays your holiday, not someone of unlimited depravity and evil, intent on destroying a world and everyone in it.

However, Charlie manages to dispose of ‘Flight Killer’ without too much difficulty – turns out his evil minions, who killed all the opposition previously, can be killed by chucking a bucket of water over them. Just as well they didn’t try to take over the world when it was raining.

I’m glad writing the book got King through the misery of lockdown. Unfortunately, it rather brought that misery back to this reader.