For those of you that have read it, what do you think of the writing style?
It was horrible horrible horrible. I can’t believe they chose to continue the story they started in the Talisman (one of my favorite books) with that tripe. " Now we fly over the nursing home and bore the readers to death!":wally
It’s been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember any real obvious differences during the book (i.e., parts that Straub wrote versus those that King wrote). They don’t leap to mind, anyway.
It wasn’t one of King’s better books, but it’s not awful. It’s just bad compared with most of his usual stuff.
I thought it was pretty good. I liked how it started semi-normal, then segued into more and more weirdness. It’s kinda how Neil Gaiman does it, but Gaiman is much better at it.
I really liked the writing style (if nothing else it was original and made you think.) I especially liked the parts where they talked about “borderishness” and “slippage.” King’s books don’t generally spook me out, but those passages did for some reason.
I made it about 200 pages, choking down each paragraph one by one, until I realized that, if nothing interesting had happened so far, it was very unlikely to get good any time soon.
Man alive, this book sucked. Worse than any of King’s recent works, in fact. And The Talisman is one of my favorite books of all time, so I really, really wanted to like the sequel. Ah, well. Life just sucks sometimes.
Ah. Here’s the message thread.
Hated it. Stephen King has the unique ability to generate some spooky stuff early on, but cannot hold it through to the end of a novel. (I’ve only read a little of Straub, so I can’t comment on his abilities here.) Both The Talisman and The Black House bored the crap out of me.
If you’re referring to any noticible difference between the authors, I’m betting that when you see a descriptions of genitalia, it’s King. He does tend to go on about genitals. Other than that, nothing stood out.
–Patch
Frankly, I thought Black House was pretty dull, especially as compared to The Talisman. The writing style, especially that of the first few pages, with the weird first/third person descriptions, really put me off.
To be honest, the only thing that got me through to the end was the book’s strong connection to King’s “Dark Tower” series. I wasn’t interested in the main plot of Black House at all, but I read it for the subplot of the Dark Tower stuff.
patchbunny: Huh? If anything, King’s somewhat known for shying away from descriptions of genitalia and sex in general (though he does have his moments). What are you on about?
I also did not enjoy it. Skimmed through it really.
I’ve been a loyal reader of King’s since 1980 and brother, he is so losing his touch.
I’m dismayed to know that ‘From a Buick 8’ was supposedly his last novel. That book blew too.
As for Peter Straub – I’ve tried and tried, but could never finish anything of his. (loved the movie, ‘Ghost Story’, though)
He’s been talking about “retiring” for oh, I dunno, 20 years or so. I remember him mentioning it in the old Castle Rock newsletter.
If you read the Stephen King Universe you get a great look at all of the connections between Black House and the DT series, among others.
I liked it.
It started out a little slow but improved towards the end.
Read Wolves of the Calla yet? I disagree completely that he’s lost anything.
And actually, I quite liked From a Buick 8. It was a different kind of story for King, but I really thought it was one of his most interesting books in years. Far better than the deplorable Dreamcatcher, to be sure.
I enjoyed “Black House”. Not one of my favorite King books, and not as good as “Talisman”, but enjoyable nonetheless. It was kinda confusing in the beginning. I particularly liked the inclusion of a blind man as a main character, and also the motorcycle gang.
I cried when Mouse died
I loved the Talisman and found Black House to be a waste of time.
Ditto.
I liked it. But it did start out slowly, with pages and pages of scene-setting before we got to the action and really engaged with the characters.
And it wasn’t much like The Talisman, so anyone who liked that and was expecting more of the same was likely to be disappointed.
Just finishing up my first Straub at the moment, Floating Dragon, and have been highly pleased throughout at the quality of the writing. He rarely grabs you by the lapels and shouts in your face the way King does at times (WAKE UP, THIS IS THE SCARY PART!!~), but he’s easily as fluid a writer as King.
You can tell they’re buddies and have influenced each other, though; The Dragon seems to me an early, affluent-Connecticut version of Pennywise.
Not wanting to wander too far off the topic, but this is something that I’ve noticed in his writing. It’s been a while since I’ve gone through many of his novels (like I hinted at, I don’t really like them), but by mymmemory semen/tecticles/vaginas do seem to keep popping up in his novels. The last book of his I’ve read, The Shining, has a descriptive scene of Wendy lying in bed after sex, feeling Jack’s warm seed running down her legs. Then there’s the guy in the dog costume talking to Danny about biting his cock. I recently finished Dreamcatcher, but don’t remember much from it other than despite how much it sucked, it was far better than the movie.
Sorry I don’t have more examples.
–Patch
I hated this book and I so loved The Talisman…
I’ve tried Straub before and didn’t like him ( The Talisman doesn’tsound like he had anything to do with it if you’ve read his other stuff). However, his book Shadowland, is one of the best books I’ve ever read.