 Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we're in front of the Stephen King shelves, so it is a Stephen King themed video. But we have an addition today in Peter Straub, because they wrote The Talisman Together. That cover is hot garbage. I'm just going to say that right now. If you are watching this review, which is going to be spoiler free, this covers garbage. At the same time, you have this cover, which is just pure 70s, which is odd because the book came out in the 80s. I guess it was a holdover from the 70s. Anywho, but yeah, we're going to talk about this version, it's the same version. It's just easier to hold, and I like to gesticulate wildly, so you guys get to see all the gesticulations. I'm going to warn you up front that I don't like this book as much as, I would say it's probably in my top 20, can I have the bottom 20 Stephen King books? And the reason for that is, again this is going to be spoiler free, but we are going to be talking about some issues vaguely. The issue here throughout the entire book is Peter Straub. Now there's a lot to unpack with the whole Peter Straub and Stephen King relationship. Stephen King called Peter Straub up because he thought Peter Straub writes like him, so he thought it would be good to try and collaborate with Straub, and they collaborated, and then after the talisman came out, Stephen King came out and said he'd never collaborate again. Since then he's collaborated a second time with Peter Straub with the black house, and he's collaborated with Richard Chismar, and he's collaborated with Owen, his son Owen. There is some discussion in the community about whether or not Stephen King had any hand in Sleeping Beauty's or Gwendi's button box, but I think there is a part of him in each, even though it is very, very minute. So getting into the talisman, why do I feel that Peter Straub is the problem with this book? First off, it's a running joke in the community that all the boring parts were written by Peter Straub. That's not the case. There's a lot of boring, soulless, just bland, it's not fun to read prose, and that stuff is usually Peter Straub. The way you can tell is he uses adverbs more than King ever did. There's missing that element of one-on-one talk with the reader that Stephen King does so effortlessly, where he'll say something like, can I get an amen, or can you dig it, something like that in the narrative to let you know this is a Stephen King book. And of course that stuff can be faked, but Peter Straub isn't that type of author. He's not that type of guy, period. He is far too egotistical to pretend to be someone else. So Peter Straub's stuff is definitely easier to, well no, I would say you can definitely tell what sections Peter Straub wrote and what sections King wrote. But not all of Peter Straub's sections are boring and not all of Stephen King's sections are exciting. One of the problems here is you constantly feel throughout the entire middle of the book, as if neither one of these authors have any idea where the hell they're going. They know they want to write a long book. They don't want to step on each other's toes. There's a sense of safety and security to it that I usually don't find in the balls to the wall narrative that Stephen King is used to writing. On top of that, Peter Straub is so, so insanely vague with his stuff that it's jarring to the point because he'll go on and on and on talking about this thing and what he could be alluding to. And then Stephen King will just fly in and he'll be like, death, destruction, murder, mayhem. And to listen to Straub and King talk about this book, it's like they're talking about two different books. Stephen King, when he talks about the Talisman, talks about how much fun it was writing it and being in the world. Whereas Peter Straub talks about the literary merit of the piece. And that's completely, that is the problem and the reason these two guys don't go together. They're like oil and water for me anyways. Now I know there's a bunch of you who enjoy this book. It's your favorite Stephen King book. Same with the Eyes of the Dragon. I don't personally understand it, but you do you. There is a section in here that adds to the argument that Peter Straub is not the worst thing in the world. Cody, calm down. But there's something about the toward the end. There's all I'm going to call it is the Knights segment. And that whole section is written by Peter Straub. Peter Straub likes to joke, well actually he doesn't joke. He has a very deep seated animosity toward people who think that only Stephen King wrote the book, which is fair of course. Because whenever they talk about the movie they talk about the Talisman by Stephen King and rarely is his name ever added to that list. Even though he had, I would say he had more of a hand in this book than Stephen King did. And I think that was part of the reason why Stephen King decided he wasn't going, or you know it's kind of like Friday the 13th part 4 of the final chapter, Jason's dead or Jason goes to hell. You know we're never going to see another one and then King comes out and does another one. Just like we're never going to get another Castle Rock story after Needful Things and we get Wendy's button box and so on and so forth. Oh by the way I'd love to hear the community's point of view on the new Wendy's novel. Wendy's Lucky Feather written by Chismar only. I would love to hear what the community has to think about that down there in the comments below. Be nice if your opinion is negative and if your opinion is positive that's great. You know I've changed the thing. But if you're going to be negative at least be nice. I don't have the most positive but I think it's just being a skeptical King fan. I don't have the most positive as but honestly if I'm completely 100% honest it feels like someone's milking something. But I have not read it and I will read it and I will choose for myself to figure that out when we get there. But back to the talisman. There's a lot of illusion. If you're going to be reading this for the first time and you're here for the no spoilers I want you to pay attention to two things specifically. One thing is the color green. After you read the novel or if you watch my Thursday Theorist before you read it there will be spoilers throughout though tomorrow. I want you to pay attention to the color green and I also want you to pay attention to the aspect of a twinner. As far as I know as far as I'm concerned this is the first time the terminology pops up is in this book. Every single character has a different version of himself because of the way he caused the wheel and all that stuff. But actually it's still a multiverse kind of thing. Cause will just mean... Well I can't say that either because that's a spoiler. The book ties in very heavily to the Stephen King universe. I don't know if there's any nods to Peter Straub's stuff. I'm not as well read as far as Peter Straub is concerned but I know that there's nods throughout in fact and if you don't like people writing in books you're going to be severely triggered right now. So look away children look away. I have notes all throughout the back of the book. This is my thrift store 25 cent copy I have a whole row of them up there if you guys see my paperback, not book haul, my paperback king collection. All those books up there I got super super super cheap just so I could write in them and take notes. But there's loose references to Blaze which was a trunk novel from way back into way back. Let's see here there's mentions of, there's allusions to the horn of Eld. There's 19 sprinkled all and this isn't, if you have not read the majority of Stephen King stuff is probably not, a lot of these little things are probably not going to resonate with you but I also think that this book was a catalyst for all that stuff. Around this time Stephen King was working on this book, he was working on the wastelands, he was working on it, he was working on all these different things that became the connection for in fact I think he says, I can't remember in what intro he said I think it's nightmares and dreamscapes, I want to say it is in the forward where he talks about how he was working on the wastelands and it gave him the final connect for it, his novel it and he was working on this book around the same time as well. I believe it's 84, let me check one more time before I get checked into oblivion. 1984 is when this book came out, it came out in 86 I believe but he had been working on it since 81 and then the wastelands, I'm not sure exactly, I guess we could just go ahead and check couldn't we since we're, nope my version is wrapped, sorry it's actually sealed see, it's a seal copy so I'm not going to get into that, even though people tell me to unseal them because it causes like you know creases and what not, anyways but this is a very, I don't like this book because in the middle, if you got this far, I don't like this book because in the middle of the book it just comes to a halt while these two authors go back and forth with all this superfluous information and it just keeps going and keeps going and there's one point in time where I rage quit it and it's reread it took me three months to read this book, this is what you guys have been waiting on for me to finish this one and I still got to get through Black House but when people ask me whether or not I like this book what I say is it's okay, it is the most okay book in all of Stephen King's work, I can do without it, I can do with it, there's absolutely nothing in this book that connects the world as a whole that isn't in other books, there is one unique twist that connects that I don't think anyone has talked about and because I read these two books back to back it helped so I might reorganize my extended dark tower list and update it yet again, I know people go wait a second, wait a second, yes especially Sarah, you didn't tell me I need to read this, this list is always, always evolving because I constantly am finding new connections and constantly going hey it would have been better had I read that before this or so on and so forth that's also why I recommend everybody if you're getting into Stephen King start at the beginning start with Carrie and go complete through the Bachman books all that stuff in order of publication that doesn't mean you're gonna get them in the order they were written but it'll be good enough because he's updated the books you know throughout throughout the years especially with the stand there's three different versions of that book one in it well I'm I don't I don't know off top of my head but I know one happens in the 80s one happens in the 90s there's another one in the middle somewhere where they updated it just you know like five years instead of ten years is a whole bunch of crazy crap that went on the stand but have you read the talisman what do you think about the book and I know this review is kind of ranting all over the place but it's kind of mood I'm in have you read it did you like it did you not like it if you are going to comment and say that you liked it let me know why let me know what it is about the middle section especially that you liked and I'm not talking just about the wolf set I'm there's a whole chunk of book here you got 735 pages here and there's only really three big events to the entire book that blows my mind it's as if the stand where you know this thousand page book only happened in one town fireman you know it's just is it's on par with that not enough happens I don't think and I think part of that reason is because Straub and King were going back and forth either trying to outliterary each other which is hilarious or because they didn't know where they were going to go I don't know if Straub is a pancer or not or if he plots out as novels I know Stephen King the only book he ever plotted I believe was Rose matter I could be wrong let me know now I'm there in the doobly do if and blue if you're watching this I don't think I know what you think of this book so please let me know your history with this one I'd love to hear from you brother anyways until next time I am any you've been you this has been another Stephen King book review I'll talk to you guys later bye bye