Recommendations of the Editorial team
Stephen King – the ranking
87. “The Talisman” (with Peter Straub, 1984, German: “The Talisman”) ★ ½
Manpower Deluxe! The living number one and the living number two of the horror literature breed together, as the publisher wanted the publisher to have announced it, “the greatest horror book ever”. PR budget: $ 550,000 in the circumstances at the time. After the publication of the novel, no one has dared to make such “mega-mega” announcements. The world has obviously learned from the “Talisman” error.
The story is a strange “Lord of the Rings” variation. The twelve -year -old Jack Sawyer wants to heal his cancer and has to dramp America from east to west. This is faster by changing into a fairytale -like parallel world (“fleeing”), where people handle magic drinks in the medieval. The knights are in charge. And you are afraid of werewolves. Antagonist is Jack’s “uncle”, the industrial Morgan Sloat (that would be a great Harry Potter name!), Who once killed the father of the little boy and not only sees a field of sales for his goods in the so-called “territories”, but also wants to let the queen die to crown herself. It is the story of American colonialism that King and Straub want to tell again. The discoverers and merchants immediately want to take new territory for themselves.
But Sloat is not the only schematic figure. The novel doesn’t read like a novel. But like a series of ideas of two authors. There is the black poor caretaker who turns out to be a wise man. In the middle of the story the history of an orphanage that deviates from the street, which is led by a violent religious fanatic. Pedophilic hitchhikers who have to resist Jack. And with the unstable, crying werewolf “Wolf” the most unappealing figure ever that ever Stephen-KingCosmos has sprung. A start-finish story, the end of which you already long for in the middle of the American continent, and whose parallel universe does not develop any life.