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Though I have not been very enthusiastic about
The Talisman, I knew
I would eventually get around to reading its sequel, Black House, and this for three reasons:
1- I had already bought it
2- I reasoned that Stephen King and Peter Straub both evolved
during the twenty-year period between the two books and would probably
be better at writing together since they had done it before...
3- And probably the reason which won (1- would have won
eventually, but I could have waited much longer...): I knew that Black
House is one of the Dark Tower-related books, maybe THE most Dark
Tower-related book if we except the DT books themselves, and I
am a huge fan of the Dark Tower series...
Therefore, before embarking once more with Roland and his pals on
this fascinating quest for the Dark Tower (Song of Susannah, Dark
Tower VI), I wanted to grasp whatever information I could relating
to dark tower matters... Well, I have not been disappointed on any
level: I learned more about the dark tower, I thought that the
story was much better than The Talisman, AND (am I getting used to
it?), I was less bothered by the parts I thought were not
written by King...
This is how the story begins: Twenty years after his quest for
the Talisman in this other world called the Territories, Jack Sawyer
has no recollections of what happened. He dismissed his vague
memories as a childhood neurosis brought on by his mother's own
neurosis which led her to think she was dying of cancer... Twenty
years later, Jack, who has made an impressive though short career
in the LAPD, is retired in the small town of French Landing, in
Wisconsin, a part of the US he has fallen in love with some years
ago, as he was solving a series of murders whose perpetrator was a French
Landing inhabitant. Jack has settled down, made a
few friends like Chief inspector Dale Gilbertson and mostly his
fascinating uncle, blind radio broadcaster Henry Leyden. Jack has his own
reasons for not wanting to solve another case ever again, but fate (ka?)
decides differently. In the previously quiet town, a series of
gruesome murders involving children worries parents and puts the
local police on edge. The murderer taunts the parents of the victim
and the police, driving the town on the verge of mayhem. At first,
Jack refuses to help, but when 12-year-old Tyler Marshall disappears,
it seems he doesn't have much choice. Soon, Jack realizes there is
more to the serial killer nicknamed the Fisherman than a common
murderer, and mainly, there is much more to Ty Marshall than an
ordinary kid, and of course the "more" has something to do with the
almost forgotten territories and with a creepy black house, almost
unnoticed, in which evil lurks...
As much as I struggled to remain interested in the Talisman
story, I was (after a very puzzling first chapter where I couldn't
at first make sense of what it was all about) hooked by the story. I
was glad to see that once again King (and Straub, let's not forget
Straub, in order to be fair I think I might even read one of his novels once
and cease to attribute everything I didn't like in the novel to him...)
make a lot of literary references, this time to Charles Dickens's
Bleak House (which I have not read, I admit) and to Poe's
The Raven. Also a tribute to nineteenth century literature is the
way Straub and King write as "we" (the omniscient narrators), and
address the reader directly, with much foreboding and warnings...
I was even more glad to realize that King's references to his own
books went beyond the DT books, since he also refers to the short
story "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (Everything's Eventual), a story
of Roland before his quest for the DT, to Ted Brautigan ("Low Men
in Yellow Coats", Hearts in Atlantis, the novel actually updates us on Brautigan's fate a little bit), and to the TV series Rose Red (There
is also a small allusion to Storm of the Century, maybe even
a tip on Linoge's true identity?). With each book,
King's imaginary world(s) become more and more complete and we get
closer to seeing the big picture! In Black House, we get more
information about the Crimson King, the tower itself and more precisely
about the beams that hold the tower and their breakers. I think that
Black House can appeal to readers that are completely
unfamiliar with the DT books (readers who have not read The Talisman
will have more difficulties...), although don't be mislead by the
critic who wrote the blurb: "Black House has an ending that almost
ensures yet another sequel." There won't be any sequel to Black
House: or rather you'll have to read the DT books to have have
answers to unsolved questions (yet to come...)
As for me, I will shortly read
Song of Susannah, the Dark Tower
VI, and I marvel at King (and Straub)'s imagination and at King's
craftiness at
weaving all these various threads and cross-references without
tripping himself!
Rating: 
© Discussing Books, 07/08/2004
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Critiques