The Talisman: A Novel (original 1970; edition 2012)

I'm not sure this book makes a huge amount of sense, but it's extremely entertaining. A coming of age quest with werewolves (wolf!), haunted hotels, Lord of the Flies style schoolboys gone bad, epic gun battles, demonic knights and loads more besides. It's richly dreamlike, compelling and moving at time. Great fun, and I really hope the rumoured Spielberg movie gets made at some point. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/pTJWKgsdaiQ

Enjoy! ( )

This book was a gift to me this past Christmas from a friend who said that this is a book I needed to read! I am very glad that I did read it! This book was a perfect story of a young hero who faces his strengths and fears to save his mother's life. It was full of adventure and suspense that kept the story moving so strongly. I will admit though that the beginning was a little bit slowly while the exposition was set into place. After Jack began his travels though it really picked up! I highly recommend this book, but be warned it is very dark. A fantastic read, but a dark one. ( )

Listened to while on my Commute to work

I originally started this book back in October and gave up about a third of the way through due to the book not really being that interesting to me - I could never really care about Jack or what he was doing because it seemed like there was never a great description of what was going on - just what Jack was thinking in his head.

It got confusing at times and hard to follow so I put it down and moved on to the next book in my list (The Dark Tower 3 - The Waste Lands) and was more than excited to read that.

After finishing 3 I came back to this (after reading the first couple chapters of Wizard and Glass) after seeing the differences in the Waste Lands and the beginning of this book.

Now while it did get more interesting ( The Sunlight Home was the best part in my opinion) it was certainly a struggle to get through especially at the end. I am happy that I finished it but it really was a drag.

I didn't care about the characters, nothing really seemed to be happening, the things that did happen were really out there and strange.

Overall I am happy its over and I'm not really looking forward to the second part Black House. ( )

This book was recommended by Amanda. Let's hope it is better than the one I picked...stupid vampires...
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