Black House

So many of King's feature youngsters dealing with adult sized horror, it's easy to wonder what became of these young people when they matured and how they processed the horrors of their youth, whether or not it lingers. And Uncle Stevie has himself wondered, giving us the second half of [It] and [Doctor Sleep]. Jack Sawyer of [The Talisman] is one of those endearing characters, and his journey one that begs for a follow-up. [Black House] focuses much on the lingering effects of the terrors of his young life but is much lighter on the details from that other land where Jack quested. It still features, as the dark force trying to puncture the veil into this world emanates from there. Jack has become a policeman, and the evil making its show more way into ours has taken the form of a killer who preys on children. Though he took an early retirement, Jack is pressed back into service and he soon learns there are elements of the crimes only he can understand, and only if he's willing to remember all the things he's tried to box away in his mind. The police procedural elements of the novel create an intense and readable narrative. But having read [The Talisman] so recently, and it's a favorite, I pined for more from those other lands and those who people them. But it's a small quibble - this is still a solid entry in the King canon.

4 1/2 bones!!!!!
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King and Straub kick back, let rip and do what they do best. They don;t care. They know they're the masters. They know this stuff inside and out. They know they've influenced about two generations of creators who adore them. they know they're the original and the best. They'll feck around with a chatty loquacious omniscient third person narrator, so it's more like a guided tour than anovel. They'll evoke Dickens - so what? They're part of the same literary pantheon - big wordy potboilers full of a mix of lovable and horrible characters. Multiple personality DJs, decent sheriffs out of their depths, crooked retirement home operators, brutal child killers, intellectual beer-making bikers, brave special kids, sick mothers, and good ol' show more Jack Sawyer. They can bring these people to life with their eyes shut. They probably wrote this blindfolded sitting on top of a radio tower just to prove they could. And they did. show less

A distanza di qualche anno e dopo la rilettura continua a piacermi. Alcune parti sono superflue ed è eccessivamente lungo, ma di gran lunga migliore de Il Talismano. Qui c'è molto più King, quello delle citazioni e i riferimenti ai Pistoleri, al Ka, alla Torre Nera. E mi piace anche per questo, 'Yer-culo se mi piace!'.

Black House, the serial killer-themed sequel to King and Straub's 1984 collaboration The Talisman, unfortunately finds the two bestselling authors at their worst. This novel bears little resemblance to its predecessor, a sweeping epic that spanned two worlds and featured a variety of intriguing characters. Not only did King and Straub fail to convince me that the hero of this novel was Jack Sawyer as an adult (young Jack was a vivid, well-drawn character in the first book, but here he's painfully dull and never comes to life), but none of the characters for whom the reader is meant to feel affection is actually likable.

Each author indulges in his most annoying tendencies here. King's weakness, of course, is repetition: I felt a special show more loathing for the trademark exclamation of Henry Leyden's alter ego George Rathbun ("Case closed, game over, zip up your fly! Why, even a blind man could see that blah, blah, blah") after it had appeared about 700 times in the text. Straub's Achilles heel is the radiant-woman-who-shines-with-a-holy-inner-light syndrome; it's what made his most recent novel A Dark Matter an uncharacteristic dud, and here it's applied to a downright repellent character named Judy Marshall. If the authors absolutely insist on making this an element of the story, shouldn't Good Queen So-and-So at least be someone the reader can stand?

To top it all off, Black House is written entirely in the present tense. I don't know who made this baffling decision, but it ensures that the novel is an uphill climb all the way. The Talisman was fascinating: I became embroiled in the story and forgot that I was reading a book. The sequel never lets you forget, not even for a minute. There's you, unfortunate reader, and there's this clunky, laboriously-written tome in which you simply cannot lose yourself. Halfway through it begins to feel like a leaden weight upon the mind; it speeds up a little near the end, but that's not enough. Novella? Sure, it might have worked in a shorter format. Hefty beach book? No way. The premise is not sufficiently interesting to hang an entire novel on, particularly a novel the size of Black House.

I'm a huge fan of Straub, and I like some of King's work, too. I know they can do better, and in the third installment of the Jack Sawyer saga I expect that they will. show less

Sorry to say, this book sat on my shelf for far too long, a real sin since both Stephen King and Peter Straub are just about my favorite writers ever. King, of course, is the King of Horror, but I think Straub is his equal, if not his better. Straub’s GHOST STORY and FLOATIING DRAGON are among the finest reading experiences of my life. Each man has a distinct style, King is the true populist and master of gore; Straub is the more elegant and subtle writer, but he knows how to deliver a real shock to the reader. And for us horror fans, when these two masters of the genre teamed back in the 80’s to write, THE TALISMAN, an epic fantasy of alternate worlds with great undertones of horror, it was pure heaven.

BLACK HOUSE, a sequel of show more sorts, was written fifteen years later and came out in 2001; in it, the boy hero of that earlier book, Jack Sawyer, is a grown man in his 30’s, a retired cop living in the small Wisconsin town of French Landing, his memories of that childhood adventure (when he traveled across The Territories to save his dying mother) are long forgotten. But the past won’t stay buried, as French Landing is plagued by a child killer reminiscent of the infamous Albert Fish, so much so that he has been nicknamed, The Fisherman, and the harried local police chief calls on Jack to help solve this horrific case. Soon, Jack is on the trail of the killer with the help of blind local Deejay and a motorcycle gang of philosophers, and regaining his memories of his 13 year old self in The Territories. He will need to do so because The Fisherman is a creature of this alternate realm as well, where he serves the will of The Crimson King, a malevolent character from King’s THE DARK TOWER series. In the end, if Jack is to save the young son of a woman he has fallen in love with, Jack Sawyer, will have enter the Black House, a portal to the malign world at the center of the Dark Tower, and save not only The Fisherman’s latest victim, but save a universe of worlds as well.

It has been many a year since I first read THE TALISMAN, and BLACK HOUSE is not a straight up sequel, but any reader who has not read the former book will have trouble getting through the latter. Some people might be put off by the style of the book, where the narrator breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader; not just any author could pull this off, but I think King and Straub do it expertly. Fans of the writers will try and dissect the book to find out what is King and what is Straub; the Wisconsin setting has been used by Straub in other books (a character from his IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW is referenced), while the aged monstrous child-killer, Charles Burnside, could easily be a creation of King. Both writers have a incredible talent for creating a fictional place, especially small American towns where evil is rampant just out of sight, and we get know French Landing so well, including its seedy bars and boarding houses, along with a convenience store, a nursing home and the streets that lead into the countryside. And both writer’s uncanny touch at characterization is well in evidence, as even minor characters are vividly realized; among them, Chipper Maxton, the dishonest nursing home owner; Wendell Green, a hateful reporter; Beezer St. Pierre, grieving father and head of the motorcycle gang; Tyler Marshall, one of the bravest little boys anyone will ever meet between the pages of a novel. I think everyone’s favorite will be Henry Leydon, the blind radio man and one cool cat.

A lot of readers will find this book to be overwritten, scenes go on for pages and pages as the writers take their time getting where they are going, but nobody uses words like King and Straub and to such great effect. The plot of a small town overwhelmed by an evil force is a horror story trope by now, but it is one practically invented by King and Straub. Even if the book, which comes in at more than 600 pages, is a little dense and may take some effort to get into, it is well worth it, for BLACK HOUSE is a great horror read. King and Straub have promised a third Jack Sawyer book, after sixteen years of waiting, I think it is about time. show less

Audio version. I remember the first time I read this, I found the style of the narration incredibly irritating. If this had not been a Stephen King story, I'd have abandoned it before finishing the first chapter. But it *is* SK, and more importantly, the sequel to The Talisman. So I had to finish it. Rereading it many years later, it's still irritating, but Frank Muller's sublime voice makes it better. A little. And of course the story overcomes the obnoxious style and adds to the Dark Tower universe. But I'm sure glad this is the only story where we fly over scenes and observe them with the narrator. Bleh.

I've always considered Stephen King as the ultimate "Master of Horror". Team the Master up with Peter Straub ...another noteworthy horror writer and you should have a winner..right? Unfortuantly Black House just falls short. The killer is perverse,but not frightening at all. Actually he is more comical than ominous, and his thoughts read more like mischievous adolescent rage than visions in a psychotic mind. The fact that he is not in complete control of the evil occurring throughout the county also diminishes his character’s powers as evil. Overall The plot is predictable and the characters have neither the fear-factor of the clown from "It", nor the sheer evil presence of Tak from "Desperation". Even the dead cat from Pet Sematary show more had more punch. I expected more from these two authors. Worth 3 stars but no more IMO. show less