Re: Books by Stephen King
Okay threadcromancy is both because my needful things review is up and can be Read here, and because I've just finished reading The talisman, which is a collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub.
This one doesn't get talked about when people discuss King's novels, and to some extent I can see why. Indeed, whilst I've only read one Straub novel, Floating dragon, there were quite a few things here that reminded me of that in style, particularly the dips into rather odd poetry, predestination and fantasy, not to a real edge to hollywood stardom, which were less like the gritty stephen King we know.
That being said there was a lot of typical kingism here, a really well done protagonist who was a twelve year old boy, and a journey literally across the entire length of America, plus a lot of horrible experiences in both this world and in the fantasy world of the territories, which at least in this novel, isn't related to the dark tower world.
Okay, for those who haven't read it, the talisman is about twelve year old Jack Sawyer, son of a B movie actress from the fifties. His mother is dying of cancer and being menaced by his father's business partner Morgen slote (yes with a name like Morgan slote you just know he's going to be a nice chap).
it turns out that Jack's situation mirrors that in the fantasy world of the territoriess, where the queen is similarly dying and being menaced by Morgan of Oris, her evil minister. For this reason, jack is sent off, ---- by a very typically king lovable old theme park handy man who actually turns out to be a gunslinger in the other world), to recover the Talisman which can cure both his mother and the queen.
I admit the start was slow, and partly that was due to Straub's rather annoying habit of only giving half an info dump, then having the action go somewhere else, indeed I know people have a downer on infodumps in literature but given Jack had to have several conversations with speedy parker (the old handyman I mentioned), why Speedy couldn't just tell him more in one go I don't know.
However, I admit I'm a sucker for journey stories, so once Jack started off, I got interested.
The teretories was a wonderfully dangerous world, indeed even farmer's markets and the like had a hinge of danger to them, and some things Jack encountered were down right disturbing. Occasionally, jack would need to flip back to America to travel for a while, but surprisingly these secdtions didn't drag, since like the Stand, the authors gave things a real sense of place and horror, and some of the very normal nastiness Jack ran into was nasty enough.
I admit one thing I didn't like, was the fact that when Jack ran into various dodgy guys whilst hitch hiking, they were always referd to as "queers" or "sissies" as if "queer" and and "pedophyle" were the same thing.
Not that the book has any out and out homophobic rants, indeed there are background comments about one of Jack's dad's friends being a perfectly nice gay guy, but the fact that Jack simply blanket categorises all the creeps as "queers" didn't feel right to me.
That being said a lot of other stuff was just quite awesome, indeed the book contains probably the best example of a werewolf I've read in a long time. Who'd have imagined werewolves as shepherds, what's mor werewolves who are very canine, but just as wolfish when the moon comes up.
Indeed if I have a miner problem, I do wish we'd seen more of wolf and that he'd been in the book for longer, though yee gods that was how to do tragedy!
Unfortunately, after wolf exited, JAck's next companion was his friend Richard who really was a disappointment.
Honestly, if Richard were female I'd be calling him an utter damsel for how useless he was.
I don't mind characters having an arc, starting off useless then becomeing awesome, however Richard pretty much starts off like the panicky character in any disaster film, then when he stops doing that and finally believs what is happening, he gets ill Jack has to literally carry him!
In the end, when jack has to go into the final big scary location, he's told he needs to take Richard with him, yet all richard did was literally pass out in the hall!
I think one thing that contributed to this, is that towards the end jack became a bit too awesome and the authors were a little too in love with jack. There is a point where writing universe spanning ultimate awesome power of light works, and a point when it just looks as if the main character is succeeding too often.
Sometimes, I applauded Jack's success. Sometimes I loved the poetry even when I just had to run with the logic (especially when jack was using the talisman), sometimes however, it just felt as if Jack was running around yelling "demon begone!" and getting through a little too easily, as when he's able to rambo his way passed an entire army even though he's never fired a gun before in his life./
With Jack hogging the awesome, poor richard had his share rather stolen I thought, which was a bit of a shame.
That being said, a lot of the time, jack's awesome actually did work, especially when some of the things he was up against were so down right nasty, indeed Morgan slote was a wonderfully unpleasant villain, sort of like Jim Remmy from under the doem crossed with jafar .
I do wish Jack's relationship with his mother had been a little less snarky, though Straub (and in this case I think it probably was Straub), was able to show Jack's feelings quite successfully in the narration, even if their interactions were always a bit on the snide side.
So, all in all the talisman was pretty awesome, albeit I can see why it's not exactly everyone's cup of tea, since you really need to have a liking for journey stories and an ability to occasionally just relax and run with things working because they do to really apreciate it.
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