Stephen King’s If It Bleeds is a fairly good but also fairly uneven collection of short stories from King.

The first story – Mr. Harrigan’s Phone – is a cool play on a couple different folk tales and legends involving the death of loved ones. It twists the “call from the recently deceased” ghost story into something remarkably eerie and unsettling. A good twist on old story.

The second story – The Life of Chuck – has a very intriguing first act and then just kind of feels disjointed and unrelated for the later acts. I “get” what it’s saying about death but the connectivity tissues and overall cohesiveness of the full story is weak. That said, there was something fascinating about the dance sequences… excised as its own short story, it would have been strong. I can say the same about the first part as well.

The third story – If It Bleeds – suffered greatly from pacing issues. It’s a Holly Gibney story and is related to the Mr. Mercedes series and The Outsider which is cool… but I think the story was just too long for its content and dragged. Since its the longest story in the collection, it drags the star rating down with it. Also, was disappointed that the “If it Bleeds” line was related to “If it Bleeds, It Leads” instead of the more amusing “If it bleeds, we can kill it” line from the movie Predator. And this is King… it he’s all about that trashy pop culture… could have gone either way.

The fourth story – Rat – has a great setup for a writer going out to the country to write. I liked that a lot… but then it has to be a King story and introduce a (possible) supernatural element which was rather old-hat. I know, I know – I’m reading a Stephen King book, what else would I expect? But King is a good enough writer that he can just write good old fashioned realistic fiction and the first half was so good, I wanted it to stay in that realm.

Overall, an uneven collection of shorts.