Rating: 
Summary: An engaging set up for the tv series.
Review: Of course, this is not one of Stephen King's masterpieces; it is designed mainly to promote the Kingdom Hospital tv series. (I would rather read the rest of the story than watch it, but only this journal has been published so far.)
Initially I found the Sally/Eleanor Druse character un-engaging, however midway through the story I became fully fascinated. The story is one worth reading and seems to work on different levels: the current hospital bureaucracy, the strange suicide attempts, an evil spirit, and lobotomies on children. It ends abruptly and unresolved, but sets up the tv show nicely.
Rating:
Summary: An engaging set up for the tv series.
Review: Of course, this isn't one of Stephen King's masterpieces; it's designed mainly to promote the Kingdom Hospital tv series. (I'd rather read the rest of the story than watch it, but only this "journal" has been published.)Initially I found the Sally/Eleanor Druse character un-engaging, however midway through the story I became fully fascinated. The story is one worth reading and seems to work on different levels: the current hospital bureaucracy, the strange suicide attempts, an evil spirit, and lobotomies on children. It ends abruptly and unresolved, but sets up the tv show nicely.
Rating: 
Summary: regardless
Review: of if this is a ripoff from another story this is such an obvious attempt to make money off the stephen king name, whether or not it was written by him or someone else it's only half a story albeit a somewhat decent one but you're still paying normal price for what adds up to be an advertisement for the show Kingdom Hospital. Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth reading as a stand-alone.
Review: Oh, what a waste of time. Maybe it's good in tandem with the (now cancelled) TV show, but alone it's tedious, it drags, and, since it's designed to get you to watch the show, has no real resolution or denoument. If you MUST read it, get it from the library, don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth reading as a stand-alone.
Review: Oh, what a waste of time. Maybe it's good in tandem with the (now cancelled) TV show, but alone it's tedious, it drags, and, since it's designed to get you to watch the show, has no real resolution or denoument. If you MUST read it, get it from the library, don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: ABSORBING
Review: On the order of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer this story has the power to hold attention, relate to and hate characters, cringe at details and want more. The crusty old woman who tells the tail is a cross between Murder She Wrote and Miss Marple - and the vocabulary is a little too "high tone" for such an elderly dowager, but at the end you are flipping end papers looking for more. Excellent read - and you should!
Rating: 
Summary: If the book is anything like the show...
Review: PPeeewww!! This show is horrible. Long, drawn out, my gosh, when I watched the first two hours of the premier on channel 7 I thought it was only going to be a two hour movie. Towards the end I thought "Wait a minute. Don't tell me this is going to be a series!!!" Then I find out it's a 13 week series. 13 WEEKS!! What the heck can they do for 13 hours? If the book is anything like the TV show, and by reading some of the reviews it seems it is, well the book must be just as horrible. What a waste of time. The concept is great. A hospital built over a grave of children who died in a fire many years before. That would've been cool. But, man, did they drag it out. What's with the Aardvark? Heck, I don't know. But you know that the Stephen King's "IT" was great!!!! Until the very end. When it turned out to be this big "Spider" and the clown was working for him to lure people to it. That was pretty stupid. They could've done it without the Spider. But, the rest of it was very well done and it wasn't 13 weeks!! Here's a lesson: Don't take too long to tell a story. You'll lose the audience!!!
Rating:
Summary: Not a story, just a printed trailer
Review: Save your money - this isn't a complete story, just a printed trailer for the TV series. Bought it, read it, and returned it in disgust.
Rating:
Summary: solid ghost tale just not as kingly as fans expect
Review: The poster boy for underachiever (not the school grade child type as he almost forty years old) Bobby Druse works as an orderly at Kingdom Hospital in Lewiston, Maine. In December 2002, Bobby calls his mother Eleanor to inform her that a patient Madeline Kruger nee Jensen tried to commit suicide while she keeps insisting that it is 1939 and she needs to know what happened to her friend Sally Druse. Finally Bobby mentions the long note that Madeline penned referencing the little girl is coming. Eleanor has a deep interest in the paranormal and thinks the drugged out Madeline is referring the deceased Mary Jensen. With the help of her son, Eleanor begins to investigate strange phenomena at Kingston and soon learns that the hospital was built over land where a textile mill burned to the ground in the late nineteenth century; many workers including numerous children died in that blaze. Eleanor wonders if these poor souls and others including Mary have become trapped here because they cannot find solace or if something evil is holding them prisoner. She hopes at least to free Mary. Though in some ways this journal sounds like an amateur sleuth starring in the movie Poltergeist, fans will appreciate the lead character as she investigates the unknown. The plot is exciting especially for ghost story fans. The support cast seems two dimensional though those who work at Boston General know how to "treat" a patient, just ask Eleanor. Overall this is a fun solid ghost tale just not as kingly as fans of the supernatural in Maine expect. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Find out the secrets, then watch the TV series
Review: The white lettering on the front cover of The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident cover glows ominously in the dark. The unexpected effect is eerie and a little unsettling. The tiny word "Fiction" in faint red text on the back cover stands out less clearly and is the only thing that indicates the book is a novel. Its predecessor, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer , tied in to the Rose Red miniseries, was a bestseller partly because many believed King wrote it (it was actually written by Ridley Pearson) and partly because some people thought the book was based on a real supernatural investigation. The Journals opens with a letter to King by Eleanor (Sally to her friends) Druse, asking for help in carrying out her research into the events at Kingdom Hospital in Maine, where she has uncovered an otherworldly crisis. She wants King to have her journals, recorded between late 2002 and 2003, in case something happens to her. The septuagenarian is a volunteer and regular patient at Kingdom Hospital, well known by staff and patients alike. One of her oldest friends, Madeline Kruger, is hospitalized on a stormy winter night after attempting suicide. In 1939, Sally and Maddy were both admitted to the old Kingdom Hospital, suffering from whooping cough, shortly before the hospital burned to the ground. Maddy leaves behind a message indicating that something happened to them sixty years ago that Sally has successfully banished from her memory. Perhaps something related to the mysterious lesion that appears on a brain scan taken after Sally collapses and strikes her head when she witnesses something horrible after Maddy dies. Sally is a believer in mystical events and often conducts siances with her fellow patients at the hospital. She carries healing crystals and meditates to try to communicate with those who have passed on before her. After Maddy's deathbed revelation, Sally becomes aware that the tormented spirit of a young girl haunts Kingdom Hospital, struggling to convey another message. Sally's badgers her unambitious, beleaguered son Bobby into acquiring Maddy's old records and papers to help her uncover what she has been repressing for six decades while she simultaneously deals with persistent spirits at the hospital - among them a sinister shade she calls Dr. Rat - and the various levels of incompetence exhibited by the hospital's staff, including scalpel-happy Dr. Stegman, in exile from Boston General, who has left a trail of surgical horror stories on his record. The Journals overlaps some of the events to be played out during the fifteen-hour series, which debuts on ABC on March 3rd, but it also provides backstory only available to readers of this book. The anonymous author knows his or her medicine, especially neuroscience, and the volume makes for interesting reading on its own, though it ends with Sally's mission only partly complete. To discover more about the mysteries being played out in Kingdom Hospital, readers will have to turn on the television and see what Stephen King has in store for them this spring.
| 
