After the mess of The Talisman, this book turned out to be pretty good. A bit gruesome for my taste, but the plot was tight, the characters were memorable, and the Dark Tower-related scenes were excellent. The glimpse we get of the Crimson King's nether world is chilling and perfectly imagined.Synopsis - a serial child killer is on the loose in a quiet Midwestern town. With two mutilated bodies found (I did mention gruesome, didn't I?) and two other children missing, the local police chief turns for help to 31-year-old "retired" Jack Sawyer, who has repressed all memory of his boyhood quest for the Talisman. Over the course of three or four intense days, that past must resurface if he is to face the evil powers helping the killer.
The characters here are much better. Henry Leyden, the blind man behind several of the area's most famous radio personalities, is a fascinating fellow whose skill and courage is put to a horrific test. The Thunder Five, a college-educated motorcycle gang determined to find the killer with or without the help of the police, also add a lot to the story. Jack is essentially the same faceless hero, but at least he doesn't have to carry the whole novel on his own this time.
There are two weak elements and one red card violation. First, the narrative style is very distracting. Meant as a shout-out to Dickens's Bleak House, which boasts a truly successful experiment in narrative technique, the limited omniscient fourth person present tense employed here might work if it didn't keep calling attention to itself, especially in the first two chapters: "And now we descend into the home of so-and-so. Doors are nothing to us, we pass through the walls like ghosts and see so-and-so sleeping. If we lean close, we can hear her talking in her sleep..." King and Straub, please get your metafictional jollies elsewhere.
Second, the supernatural elements are about as random as they were in The Talisman. Why does Jack see robin's eggs? What's the deal with the bees and "d'yamba"? Why is Speedy still the same age? Related to that, the character of the Territories changes to make it more Dark Tower-y. Suddenly Speedy is talking a little like Roland and mentioning Mid-World. Whatevs.
Last, the red card violation. The makey-outey scene after Jack flips back to the mental ward is completely unbelievable and inappropriate. The woman's son is missing, she's in a mental ward, she loves her husband, and she's met Jack twice. So what if he validates her dreams of the Territories? So what if Jack's in love with her Twinner (who he just met a few minutes ago)? It makes no sense. No sense at all.
Arbitrary rating: 3.5 out of 5 college-educated motorcycle gangs
No comments:
Post a Comment