What authors write as well as SK?

[Kurben]

It is a valid question but King is good at so many things that all are part of a book. His dialogues are excellent, His character development are great. His way of makking the time and place come alive qwith small details that can be a song or a commercial or a movie or mention of a comic. Small details that, placed right, makes the story come alive. Also the secondary characters. Many authors gives life to the main characters but King makes you understand the secondary and sometimes even tertiary characters as well. That is rather rare. He is a masterful storyteller. I can go on. I don't know of anyone that sounds like himn when you read him. He has his own voice. Koontz, Simmons and the others have their own voices but i don't think are good in every department as i think King is. (McCammon is an exception, From what i have read he seems to have many voices which is rather strange)

When it comes to someone who writes darn good..... I must mention Orhan Pamuk (from Turkey). The Black Book and My Name Is Red are really good. An SF-writer that wrote very well is Ursula K. Leguin. Steinbeck and John Ajvide Lindqvist write well. Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Spain) and Irene Nemirofsky (France) Her Storm over France is great. James Clavell (ShoGun and King Rat are great). The best of Joyce Carol Oates are excellent but she is a little uneven sometimes. Someone, probably Skimom, mentioned Margaret Atwood. All these authors have their own voice and write very well.

 

[chester brooks]

State of Fear is the title you mean. It's great.

I been thinking of reading the death lands but its like over one hundred books.csNo more giant series

 

[chester brooks]

Who writes it

 

[Wayoftheredpanda]

The first two Hannibal Lecter books are amazing! Sadly the last two are a mega disappointment for me.

I really like "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton but I wouldn't consider it King-tier

The third Harry Potter book is up there though.

 

[Nomik]

Diana Gabaldon: hands down

 

[Neesy]

Diana Gabaldon: hands down

Good choice - her first novel Outlander was very good!

 

[Coolallosaurus]

What a great question! I have even more books to look into now. SKMB has fattened my 'To Read' list faster than a bear getting ready for hibernation!
I didn't see these authors mentioned, but apologies if I missed a post: Octavia Butler (especially Kindred) is very well written, fast paced, and brilliant! I think it was one of the first books I read since starting grad school that I stayed up all night reading. Flannery O'Connor's short stories (the novels, not so much). I think O'Connor and SK have a similar eye for the everyday and she is very readable. The greatest hits like "Good Country People," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are all well written. John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (fiction) and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (true crime) are smart, but also very readable. Very different in tone from King's works, but clear and well-written.

Diana Gabaldon: hands down

Good choice - her first novel Outlander was very good!

I've only caught snippets of the show and thought it was interesting. Will have to check out the novels now!

 

[Neesy]

What a great question! I have even more books to look into now. SKMB has fattened my 'To Read' list faster than a bear getting ready for hibernation!
I didn't see these authors mentioned, but apologies if I missed a post: Octavia Butler (especially Kindred) is very well written, fast paced, and brilliant! I think it was one of the first books I read since starting grad school that I stayed up all night reading. Flannery O'Connor's short stories (the novels, not so much). I think O'Connor and SK have a similar eye for the everyday and she is very readable. The greatest hits like "Good Country People," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are all well written. John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (fiction) and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (true crime) are smart, but also very readable. Very different in tone from King's works, but clear and well-written.



I've only caught snippets of the show and thought it was interesting. Will have to check out the novels now!

The first book (Outlander) is so good - you would love it, I'm sure.

It was recommended to me by a man, so it's not just fluff or romance, directed towards women - it's a good story with some Scottish history thrown in.

 

[Coolallosaurus]

The first book (Outlander) is so good - you would love it, I'm sure.

It was recommended to me by a man, so it's not just fluff or romance, directed towards women - it's a good story with some Scottish history thrown in.

My library has an audiobook version, so request has been put in! After your recommendation I did a bit of background reading on the author. Wow, she has such a cool background (a PhD in behavioral ecology, experience with tech, and an author!). It looks like she did a lot of research for Outlander, too! Thanks again!

 

[Steffen]

In terms of style? I'd go with Peter Straub. Straub's prose is easy to fall into, appealing to everyone from the blue-collar guy to the more discerning reader. This author even uses some of SK's literary "tricks" such as parentheses to include "intruding thoughts" in a character's monologue.

I see some other members here mentioned Clive Barker, but I would have to respectfully disagree in comparison to writing style. I love CB as much as SK, but their styles are far and apart. One of King's greatest strengths is also a frequent target of his critics: his effortless ability to spend paragraph upon paragraph describing a character or small event, rendering such detail that the novice reader may lose track of the narrative. Barker, on the other hand, writes with what I call an elegant economy of prose: he has the ability to say more with fewer words. Take for example this excerpt (one of my favourites) from Sacrament. It speaks volumes in mere sentences.

“I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?​

​

"So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”​

Let me please make clear that this is not criticism, but merely a comparison between my two favourite writers in terms of style. I wouldn't change a thing for either of them.

 

[J. Dean]

---More horror... a lot of us love Dean Koontz. I suppose I like him pretty well since I've been reading him since the mid 80s and still do. That said, I don't feel the need to read every one, and he sometimes gets so pompous I can't finish the thing. He has an admittedly better vocabulary than I do, and loves to show it off. He never uses a 10-cent word when a fifty-cent one will do. Odd Thomas excepted, his best work was decades ago.
.

Now see, I like the Odd Thomas series, although I thought Koontz started some very interesting ideas and left them hanging. It would have been nice for him to develop more of the horrors he had created in there, because some of them were downright terrifying.

Neil Gaiman's one of my favorites as well. Would be cool to see him and Mr. King collaborate.

And then there are Ellison and Bradbury: must reads