Stephen King's 2025 Book Should Copy a Huge Element from His Best Holly Gibney Story

Stephen King has a next book hitting shelves in 2025, Never waverand will hopefully embrace the balance he found in the best story that includes Holly Gibney. The author has had a busy few months. The King's New Book Never waver was announced in November, shortly after the anthology The end of the world as we know itset in the world of The position. Never waver is the next book after the excellent 2024 Do you like it darkera collection of short stories, showing King isn't slowing down anytime soon.

Several TV and film adaptations of King's projects are also in the works, including Mike Flanagan Chuck's life and your Dark Tower TV adaptation, Oz Perkins The Monkey, The Institute TV adaptation, by Francis Lawrence The long walkand Edgar Wright The running man. There's clearly no shortage of Stephen King content. Yet, Your books are where it all begins and endsand a lot is happening Never waver to continue the Holly Gibney universe on as strong a basis as possible.

Stephen King's Never Flinch Should Copy The Stranger's Balance of Mystery and Horror

It was a horror story wrapped in the trappings of a traditional procedural

Over the past decade, King has shifted his focus to a new genre: the crime thriller. He began his criminal era with 2014 Mr Mercedesthe first book in Bill Hodges' trilogy and, since then, his novels in this crime universe have all been well received. Still, many of his longtime constant readers were dissatisfied with this focus, preferring his old-fashioned horror writing. Although the human criminals and serial killers in his crime novels are monsters in their own right, most readers prefer their monsters supernatural to mundane ones. Even the human villains of Stephen King's past almost all had some kind of mysterious force that took them beyond mere human psychosis.

That's exactly why The stranger it was so good and the TV miniseries adaptation was so appreciated. He used the usual crime mystery structure but at its heart was a supernatural entity that changed shape and killed children. The eponymous Outsider, also known as El Cuco, is derived from the El Cucuy/Coco myth of Spain and Mexico, which serves as the equivalent of the culture's bogeyman, a malevolent entity that kidnaps and eats children. The stranger did a great job starting out as a traditional detective procedural but slowly turning into horror as the protagonists realized they were dealing with something inhuman. It was a good return to form for King, and Never waver We hope to maintain the balance of crime of supernatural origin.

Never Could Flinch Overcome The Weird If It Fully Embraced Stephen King's Horror Roots

There's a lot of potential in Never Flinch

Not much is known yet about Never waver. What is known is that Holly Gibney will return, and it will combine two different stories and present some different perspectives. The villains are being framed as assassins on a revenge mission and vigilantes obsessed with a notable female celebrity. This is all that is known about the antagonists – who may actually be the same person, in the end; it is not clear. It is also unclear whether the antagonists are driven by pure psychosis and human violence, as Misery's Annie Wilkes, or by a supernatural force that possesses them or drives them mad, such as The position's Trashcan Man, or Ed Deepneau in Insomnia.

That said, many Stephen King readers are hoping for the latter and a return to the author's horror roots. If Never waver adopts the same structure The strangerby infusing the story with elements of pure horror within the trappings of a procedural, it could be excellent. That doesn't mean it's a bad offer if it doesn't: Stephen King can still write an amazing story even if there are no supernatural entities involved. And it's understandable that King is more interested in human evil in our current times than in the inhuman. Still, no one does horror like Stephen Kingand if Never waver remember that it will be a welcome full-circle moment for the first and best of its kind.