Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story
by Stephen King

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Book Reviews of Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story

Book Review: Formidable and Terrifying ,yet Interesting...
Summary: 3 Stars

This serious and somber novel takes a good look inside the human nature, explores it thoroughly, and comes up with severe consequences.

After I'd read the book I realized it poisoned my soul .I didn't think that could happen because of a book, but it did. The horrifying things King had written about, the wickedness and horror influenced me consciously and unconsciously during the reading process.
It is important to me to let you know how I felt back then, because it was bizarre, unusual, and after all, fascinating.

Ignoring the supernatural in the novel, you're left with a lesson in decision-making when one is not utterly rational, the natural state of most of us. In here, as in "The Stand" everyone has to put himself in the place of the characters, decide what he would have done, which option he would have chosen and finally - take a stand.

This book stressed the fact that everyone has good and bad inside of him. Yes, it's connected to the desires, interests and needs we all share, but there's more to it. Inside every woman and man there is a silent struggle, between the two mentioned, from time to time.
It doesn't really ever end. There are intermissions, it could vanish for a long time, but its bases are there. This is the true nature of things as king see them.

King extends, speak of sheer evil. He speaks of taking truly wicked actions in order to achieve this that you want, to let go of any limits and concentrate on the things you've justified and decided to do. The frightening conclusion of them all is that anyone can get down and dirty, and King adds, that once evil has regulated your soul once, there is no way back. You have crossed the lines. There is a thin red line that once you've passed it the road back is almost impossible.
As usual in a King's book, he's referring to nothing short but a murder. After killing one man, willingly and intentionally, the barrier breaks. According to King, in that point, some would completely freak out and lose the good they did have before. They are now capable of doing anything you'd imagine.

The really interesting part is that sometime there is still good inside A man after doing the unthinkable. This side of him burdens him immensely, trying to pull him back to being rational. This is the barrier of sanity; it can be said that after crossing the lines for the first time, the man loses the very thing that stops him from damaging him and his surroundings. He becomes indifferent to it, and thinks only of himself - his interests and needs.

To be precise, in the book I read of so many people who were willing to do horrible deeds, only to satisfy their desires - the object of their affection.
It was horrifying to read about the demonical activity of the devil incarnate in the novel, that let hell break loose, and was responsible for everything. The thought that one person can do all that...It is believable...
And the way that people had changed in the face of the object they always craved for...Reading it, you have to witness all the filth and ugliness they had kept inside, then transformed it to brutal and gruesome acts. King calls it "Selling your soul". The idea that a person can lose control of his soul is unequaled in his books.

The sides story that stunned me completely was Brad Denfort's.
He is characterized as a peace and calm figure, of the ones that never vend anger on anyone, completely non violent, that suddenly, gets up one day, and in attack of sheer uncontrollable wrath bursts at the seams taking down a few others not to mention himself (and not without a reason).

This is a terror imposing kind of story, because you instantly reckon - "This could happen to me too !". You understand what he'd gone through, and why he did what he did, and that's the scariest of them all. Yet, you should remember King aims to cause this reaction, and he is successful...

In here ,we get to the bottom of it all. I found the "I want to scare the living daylight out of you" style very bad for me, though learned here a few formidable lessons. This is a real poisonous glass that harms...
In "The Stand" it was different. There weren't terrible murders and human outbreaks like in here, certainly not like in this form (I mention it because I'd read it prior to NF).

The satanic "Needful Things" is a monstrous, legendary horror, that some could relate to it as, `at its best', but not me. I would avoid such writings in the future to come.

Summary of Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story

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