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Revival is the 66th novel book published by Stephen King; it is his 53rd novel, and the 46th under his own name.

The book was released on 11 November 2014.

The novel was first mentioned by King on June 20, 2013, while doing a video chat with fans as part of promoting the upcoming Under the Dome TV series. During the chat King stated that he was halfway through writing his next novel, Revival.[3] The novel was officially announced on February 12, 2014.[4] An excerpt was included at the end of the paperback edition of King's Doctor Sleep, published on June 10, 2014 (ISBN 978-1451698855). In an interview with Rolling Stone, King stated that Revival was inspired byArthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and, like several of King's preceding novels, the idea for this novel has been around with him ever since he was a kid.[5]

Summary[]

When Charles Jacobs, a new minister comes to town, little Jamie Morton is excited. Almost everyone in the tiny Maine hamlet comes to love Jacobs, his beautiful wife, or both of them.

When Conrad, one of Jamie's older brothers develops a throat injury which refuses to heal, his voice not returning, Jacobs's offers to help with an experimental electrical treatment. Using a small device of his own making, he places it around Conrad's neck. Turning it on, a small humming emanates, and Conrad's voice slowly returns to him. All he asks in return is that the Morton children present thank God for the miracle.

Things change all too suddenly when Mrs. Jacobs and her baby die in a gruesome auto accident. Half-crazed, the reverend denounces God and religion during a sermon, and is banished from the town. Thereafter Charles Jacobs pursues a successive careers as a sideshow huckster, and then faith healer, fueled by his lifelong experiments with electricity. Jamie meanwhile, grows up to be a successful musician travelling across the country, and eventually develops a heroin addiction.

After coincidentally attending and collapsing due to withdrawl in a fairground show of Jacobs's, he is "saved' by him. Jacobs, with Jamie's consent, uses another unorthodox electrical treatment to heal Jamie and cure him of his addiction, like he did with his brother years prior. The experiment is a success.

Afterwards, after performing as his assistant for a while, Jacobs helps Jamie get back on his feet. Calling in a favour with Hugh Yates, a music producer in Nederland, Colorado, Jamie secures a job working in a recording studio. However, since his "cure", Jamie experiences strange side effects, including jabbing himself with sharp objects while in a fugue state, as if trying to inject heroin.

After attending one of Jacobs's healing "Revival" shows with Hugh Yates and both experiencing strange effects as both are previous patients of Jacobs's (Jamie with addiction, Hugh with deafness). This experience leads Jamie to start looking into those that Jacobs has healed. As it turns out, many of them have experienced similar side effects and some have killed themselves and others as a result. Later, Jacobs gets in contact; Jamie's childhood sweetheart, Astrid, has developed terminal cancer. Jacobs agrees to heal her, but only if Jamie will become his personal assistant for one last experiment. Jamie reluctantly agrees, and Astrid is cured.

Jamie helps Jacobs prepare for his final experiment: Jacobs has discovered something he terms 'Secret Electricity', an all-powerful energy source that he has been using to effect his miraculous cures over the years. He now intends to harness a massive surge of this energy and channel it into a terminally ill woman named Mary Fay, who he has relocated to his lab. Jacobs' plan is to revive Mary Fay after her death, not in the conventional manner, but in the sense that she will be clinically dead and yet able to communicate with Jacobs and tell him of the afterlife, and what fate befell his wife and child after their death.

The experiment works, but not in the way Jacobs intends. The revived Mary Fay does become a doorway to the afterlife, but to the horror of both Jacobs and Jamie, the dead go to "The Null", a dimension of chaos, where dead humans are enslaved for eternity by insane, Lovecraftian beings, the most powerful of which is known as "Mother." When Jacobs collapses with shock and Mother attempts to cross dimensions and attack Jamie. Unloading four bullets out of five into Mary Fay's corpse, he breaks the connection. The fifth however, a stray, kills Jacobs while he is in shock on the ground.

After some time, Jamie investigates and many of the people cured by Jacobs he found have gone insane and killed themselves and others, including Astrid, who kills her partner and herself. After returning to Colorado from his business in Maine with Jacobs, Jamie finds that his boss, Hugh Yates, has also killed his secretary and himself. Leaving the sum of his wealth to Jamie, he moves to Hawaii.

The existential dread of "The Null" and what awaits after death, and heavily reliant on antidepressants have left Jamie with a very simple life. In Hawaii, he attends therapy, and looks after his brother Conrad, Jacobs's first patient, who is committed to an institute after attempting to murder his partner and then himself. After walking down the hallway, Jamie notices and attempts to ignore a patch of wall different to everywhere else, where a voice from a rusty keyhole beckons him. Deep down however, he knows nothing with stop his and all humanity's fate... they will come to Mother.

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