8 Most Disappointing Stephen King Books, Ranked

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Desperation - book cover - Stephen King - 1996

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The way some people talk about Stephen King, you'd think he might well be one of the most disappointing writers of all time. Well, that’s more specifically because of the way people talk about Stephen King’s endings, which can be divisive, even at the best of times (some people don’t like the endings of The Stand, the final Dark Tower book, or even parts of the conclusion to It, which are all otherwise largely well-liked novels).

But if something’s great, and the ending is only pretty decent, then overall, the novel shouldn’t be too disappointing. The following books go beyond King books that have somewhat disappointing endings, because they tend to fall apart a bit sooner, or otherwise only keep momentum going for about half their duration, or less. Also, those books of his that are outright bad or never very good aren’t here. “Disappointing” is more something that goes from good to not-so-good, and you're left feeling a bit sad, most of the time, rather than outright angry that all your time spent with a book has gone to waste.

8 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' (1999)

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999 - Stephen King - book cover

Since it’s pretty slight, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon can’t be considered up there with the most disappointing of all the disappointing Stephen King novels, since it’s generally worse when one starts well and lets you down closer to the end. But this one feels like a bit of a bummer to read because it really should’ve been a novella, and it feels kind of stretched out just enough to novel-length (at about 220-ish pages, which is shorter than, say, some formatted versions of The Langoliers).

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is effectively tense and atmospheric for a while, but then you realize there are only a couple of ways it could end, and then you'll probably realize which one of those ways it'll be before too long.

As for the plot, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is about a young girl getting lost in the woods, separated from her family, and she kind of just has to survive and figure out a way to get back to civilization. It’s effectively tense and atmospheric for a while, but then you realize there are only a couple of ways it could end, and then you'll probably realize which one of those ways it'll be, and then it feels a lot like just waiting around for that point to eventually be reached. It is still a mostly decent read, in the end… just not a great one.

7 'End of Watch' (2016)

The Bill Hodges trilogy starts very well, with Mr. Mercedes, which is up there among the better Stephen King books of the 2010s, and also one of his best non-horror works. It’s a crime/thriller book, principally, but it and its sequel, Finders Keepers, tease some mild supernatural stuff, and then that supernatural horror side of things becomes more prominent in the third book of the trilogy: End of Watch.

And End of Watch is still fairly good, as a thriller. It does just feel like a bit of a shame that King feels a need to return to the horror well, after Mr. Mercedes had already proved very compelling as a comparatively more grounded thriller. It feels like Kind had to make things a bit more horror-focused, for the purposes of wrapping everything up and getting the villain of the first book to come back in a big way, and it does deflate the overall story being told throughout the trilogy, to some extent, unfortunately.

6 'The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass' (1997)

The Dark Tower IV_ Wizard and Glass - book cover - 1997

It’s always scary going after a book in The Dark Tower series, because it’s the longest and most ambitious story Stephen King’s told to date, with the seven main books in the series totaling more than 4000 pages, with all being published over 20+ years. Of the main seven, The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass is probably the most divisive, though it has some competition from the odd and singular first book (The Gunslinger) and the aforementioned seventh and final book.

Essentially, The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass is largely a series of flashbacks for Roland, with him outlining events from his past to a ka-tet. So, the overall journey toward the Dark Tower slows right down, and also, the events from the past don’t build to as immense a conclusion as you might be anticipating/expecting. Basically, Roland talks about his past for hours upon hours, but there are still hours’ worth of stories he didn’t tell, and that ends up being weirdly frustrating. It takes so long, and yet it’s almost not enough; not fully comprehensive.

5 'Fairy Tale' (2022)

Fairy Tale drags, at a point, but that point does take a little while to come around, for what that’s worth. It’s a book about a young man who finds that a neighbor of his has a door to another world located in his shed (just go with it), and it’s a fantastical one that holds various secrets and unusual characters the boy eventually gets to discover.

That whole adventuring side of things, and going through another strange realm that’s very different from our current/known one? King had already done something similar with The Talisman, co-written with Peter Straub, and that novel was considerably better overall. Fairy Tale does it again, and some of the magic (ha) is gone this time around, even if the lead-up to the more fantasy/adventure side of the story is strangely compelling. The thought about what could be ends up being more enticing and engaging than finding out what does lie in store for you, and as a result… yeah, disappointment.

4 'Sleeping Beauties' (2017)

The central premise of Sleeping Beauties is a strong one, and there’s a sprawling nature to the story early on, with the introduction of so many characters, that scratches a somewhat similar itch to The Stand and Under the Dome. It’s a lesser-known Stephen King book, and one co-written with his son, Owen King, and that aforementioned interesting premise involves women everywhere suddenly and mysteriously falling into a deep sleep.

When the men left standing try to wake the women up, horrible things happen, and so a good chunk of Sleeping Beauties involves those left awake trying to figure out how to do things, and also figure out what’s going on. It does lose track of itself, at a point, making it not too surprising why something so long and unwieldy has not yet been adapted into a film, but at least some of Sleeping Beauties is interesting, and it’s also a bit better than truly bottom-tier King, too.

3 'Dreamcatcher' (2001)

For a little while, Dreamcatcher is a fascinating kind of messy, but at a point, it turns into a frustrating sort of messy. And then once it’s crossed over into frustrating territory, it just keeps going on and on and on, being up there among the longest Stephen King books, and of the particularly long ones, having the least justification for being hundreds upon hundreds of pages in length.

The premise here boils down to some friends making contact with extra-terrestrial life forms, and then things get surreal, and also, the military gets involved with the whole thing. Everything devolves, fluctuates, and implodes. Maybe some of that chaos and messiness is intentional, yet even then, it’s still a bit much. Dreamcatcher is hard work to get through, and even harder work to properly comprehend, but it’s technically better than the somewhat similar The Tommyknockers.

2 'Desperation' (1996)

There’s a twin book to Desperation called The Regulators, and that one is genuinely pretty bad. Desperation, on the other hand, is good for half its length, and then not so great for the rest. It kicks off with a bizarre and compelling villainous character capturing various people for reasons unknown, and holding them in the police station of a very small town, with the reason why they’ve been captured/imprisoned only becoming clear later.

It's not necessarily that the revelations are bad, but more that once people are caught up on what’s going on, the inevitable final showdown – no matter how death-filled – still feels a bit like going through the motions. Desperation is possibly the quintessential “Stephen King probably started this without knowing how he was going to finish it” kind of book, and the divide between the stuff that’s great, vintage King, and then the stuff reminiscent of King at his most frustrating? It’s immense.

Desperation

Release Date May 23, 2006

Runtime 131 minutes

Director Mick Garris

1 'The Colorado Kid' (2005)

And with The Colorado Kid, Stephen King wrote disappointment and a lack of answers into the story itself, all very intentionally, but does that make it okay? Maybe. But this is the one that is the most direct about being disappointing and not knowing. Other Stephen King books are accidentally or even tragically unfulfilling in their closing chapters, while The Colorado Kid says, “Yeah, this whole mystery? No one knows.”

King might've still been working out how to properly do a crime/mystery book with The Colorado Kid without any horror elements, and this was the approach he took, for better or worse. At least the whole thing’s not too long, and maybe there’s something admirably bold about taking a genre with stories that usually provide answers and just refusing to give many (or any), but still, you will come away from The Colorado Kid supremely unsatisfied.

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