PORTLAND’S # 1 SIGHTSEEING TOUR Harbor Lights and Sights Cruise 105-minute cruise with beautiful views of Casco Bay’s famous lighthouses, lobster boats, seals, seabirds and more. Just $28 Portland City and Lighthouse Tour 105-minute trolley tour of Portland’s history, architecture, and landmarks, including a stop at Portland Head Light. Just $28 Don’t just see Portland — Discover it. Photo by Jack McCabe $52 for both! Book online @ Portlanddiscovery.com Call today 207-774-0808 • info@PortlandDiscovery.com Long Wharf, 170 Commercial St. (next to DiMillo’s) • Tours depart May-October 80 p o r t l a n d monthly maga ine Book Review venturing some constructive criticism. “The novel is maybe a third too long, chiefly because as he wanders around King can hardly see a place, a face or a chair without embarking on a wordy, if not liter- ary, description of it.” Even so, Thomas fin- ishes with a big thumbs up: “[Owen] should persevere, for when he is good—and that is often enough to make a page-turner of this book—he has a captivating energy, a preci- sion and a fondness for people that are rare and that make the reader doubly impatient for him to do what he does best.” Owen did persevere, and in 2017 his ep- ic novel Sleeping Beauties was published. Co-written with his father, Sleeping Beau- ties woke up the critics. Xan Brooks of The Guardian credits Owen with revitaliz- ing his father’s work. “Maybe all [Stephen King] required was his son’s intervention,” Brooks writes. F or Owen, Sleeping Beauties has played a much different role. “I’m sure there are plenty of people who won’t believe it, but neither of us went into the project thinking ‘we’re going to write a big bestseller.’ We wrote Sleeping Beau- ties because we had this idea that we were both excited to explore. We didn’t know if it would work. We didn’t even know if we’d be able to finish, [or] if we’d be able to mesh styles and create a shared voice that was coherent,” Owen says. “More than anything, I was excited about the opportu- nity for us to spend the time together that we got to spend.” The steep slope of collaborating with his father was not lost on Owen. “He was pretty successful already. He didn’t need any help from me.” But helping is a family tradition. It was “If you publish a book, you have to accept that you have in a way given it up. Now it belongs to the world, and the world gets to say whatever it wants.”