Lateness seems to be my thing…. I won’t bore you too much with how late this post is, at least not too much. In some ways, this post is more timely than my last one, as I’m not nearly as far into Thinner as I was into The Talisman when I did my last post. At least, if you go by page count from the beginning of the book…. If you go by page count from the end (as in, how much of the book I have left) then I’m much later on this post….. as I only have like 10 pages of Thinner left. I thought about waiting to finish and then doing a double post, but I’m kind of bored today so I thought I’d get this one done. Besides, I’m ready to get Talisman off my brain… You’ll understand this more when I get to the review portion. The other reason for my delay is I was hoping to possibly watch Silver Bullet and actually get my posts in order. But I really don’t know when that’s going to happen…
So let’s jump into The Talisman.
This was my second reading of The Talisman. I remember really enjoying it the first time I read it, so I was looking forward to this read through. Recently I recommend it to my wife to read, and she started it but never got really into it, so she didn’t finish it. I couldn’t understand why she was having such a hard time with it, I remembered liking it, and I thought she would too.
Now I understand.
I didn’t really enjoy it this go around. In fact, about two-thirds of the way though it really became a chore to force myself to read it and get through it. This is the first time I’ve really felt this way about a book. I simply was not enjoying it. And I’m not completely sure why. The story itself is odd, yes, but I can’t exactly say that’s completely what the problem is. There were portions of it that were good and I really like those parts. Then there were other parts that were just hard to read. I’m curious if part of that is because King co-wrote this book with Peter Straub. I’ve only ever read one Straub book, Ghost Story, and I remember not really getting into it that much. Now, I’m not exactly sure how “co-writing” a book works, but I’m thinking that perhaps the reason I didn’t get into this one that much was because it wasn’t “pure” King. In fact, that was one of the things I thought about a lot as I was reading, “This just doesn’t seem like King”.
If you haven’t read it, here is a brief synopsis. The story is about a young boy named Jack. Jack’s mother is dying, is father was killed before the book takes place and they are living on their own. Jack soon discovers that he has the ability to transport himself into a different world, called the Territories. The Territories is essentially like a middle ages version of America, or at least, that was the impression that I got from it. It turns out that everyone in our world has a counterpart in the Territories, called a twinner. Jack is one exception, as his twinner died when he was just a baby. This gives Jack a unique ability to go back and forth between the worlds in a way that other people are not able to do (people with twinners simply take over the body of their twinner when they go over, but Jack is free to be himself in both places). Just as Jack’s mother is dying, her twinner (who just so happens to be the queen) is also dying in the Territories. Jack must travel across the country to reclaim an object called the Talisman in order to save the lives of his mother and her twinner. Of course, there are others who would prefer this doesn’t happen.
And that’s really the basics of the story. You’ve got a 12-year-old kid traveling from New Hampshire to California, all on his own. And I wondered why Amanda couldn’t get into it…
One of the things that really bother me about the story was the completely opposite scales of the spectrum that Jack and his friend Richard (who Jack meets up with about halfway through the book) fall on. Jack completely accepts everything he finds out about and takes on the task he is given with a fortitude that I wouldn’t expect of most adults. Richard, on the other hand, is so unwilling to accept the things that Jack tries to tell him about the Territories that he completely shuts down and refuses to believe any of it. Even when Jack takes him to the Territories, Richard convinces himself that he merely suffering from a fever. Once Richard finally accepts what is happening, he is still completely useless to Jack as his the epitome of weakness. So here we have two boys, one who is completely heroic and can handle any task thrown at him, and the other so weak that he can’t handle anything at all. Yeah, can you tell I didn’t enjoy this book??
The one character that I did sort of enjoy was Wolf. He was from the Territories and is sort of like werewolf type creature, only friendly (except for once a month…. I’ll let you figure out what time of month that Jack has to avoid him…). Now, when I say I liked Wolf, let me clarify. I remember liking Wolf a lot the first time I read the book. And this time he was probably the character I liked the best, but there were still aspects of him that bugged me.
Oh, and one other thing that bothered me was the over use of the word “gobbled”. I can’t really explain why this bothered me so much, and the word wasn’t really used that much. But for some reason, that word just sends shivers of annoyance through my body when I read it, so any use of it is really too much for me. And it seems that almost every time I turned a page, Jack was “gobbling down” some kind of food or another. Jack would get some food somehow and just “gobble it down”. He didn’t just eat his burgers quickly, or even scarf them down, no no, he “gobbled” them. Ugh.
And that’s really all I have to say about The Talisman. Clearly, this takes the place as my least favorite book so far. And yet….. I won’t go so far as to say you should avoid it. If you haven’t read it, and you are a fan of King, or of the fantasy type genre, I would say you should give this one a try. And if you like it, that’s great. But, if you have a hard time getting into it, I certainly won’t be judging you 🙂
As I said earlier, I’m almost done with Thinner, so I might be back quite soon (or not, ha-ha). Also, if I get myself in gear and watch Silver Bullet, I’ll be back with my thoughts on that one too.
I’ve also updated my road-map to include some of the new books and movies that have been announce recently. Most of the new things are added at the end of the road-map (for obvious reasons), however, for some of them, like the new remake of Carrie that comes out later this year, I decided to place them on the map where they should be for someone who wanted to use my map in the future. Just because I won’t be able to watch the new Carrie until it comes out and it will be way out-of-order I still felt I should have the map represent how things should be read/watched, not representative of the order I end up doing them in (for the case of movies that come out after I have passed the place they should have gone). So, if you’d like to view an updated version of the map, you can find one by clicking here. Also, if you find any mistakes I’ve made, or you know of something that has been announced for sure that I don’t have on there yet, just let me know. There are some things I haven’t placed on there just yet (like the new remake of IT) simply because while they have been announced, they haven’t yet reached a point that they couldn’t still be canceled and nothing would come of them (like seems to be happening with The Dark Tower movies).
Anyway, that’s all I have for you today. As always, thank you for reading.
One Page At A Time 