Danny Torrance, who survived the explosion that destroyed the Overlook Hotel, is an alcoholic, moving from town to town until he's drunk it dry or beaten someone up or gotten fired. The True Knot travel the roads of America in RVs and Winnebagos and every now and then they take a child with the shining and torture and murder them, generating steam, which keeps them alive long past the natural stretch of human years. Alba is a young girl with an extraordinary power, and while Danny finally reaches bottom and starts the long climb to sobriety, Alba begins to grow into her power and the True Knot migrate along the highways and turnpikes and camper parks, all three paths destined to cross in a savage conflict.

This is the newest Stephen King I've read in a very long time, and it's great to see he still has it, refined by the sort of craft and skill you can only possess after writing more than fifty books. The fact that it's a sequel to The Shining should have been more of a big deal for me than it was, maybe, and indeed, the true heart of this sequel is Danny's heartbreaking descent into alcoholism and his efforts to shake off his father's legacy and his own disease, not the supernatural battle and the climactic return to the site of the long-gone hotel. That was never going to match the raw power of the toxic man and the good woman and the little boy in the haunted hotel in the first book, for all that the years of experience have tempered his abilities. But Danny in AA? Yeah, that's where it's at, and that's what you get and that makes this a Good Book and even a Great Sequel.