A crazy Nevada policeman, Collie Entragian, is going about pulling vehicles over on a desert highway. The people that he doesn't immediately kill he takes to the small town of Desperation and locks them up in jail. The first to be captured are the Carver family whose RV is sabotaged while driving on the highway, and after killing their daughter Entragian locks the rest of the family in jail. The next to join them is Mary which is followed by a once famous writer Johnny Marinville. Already in jail is Tom Billingsley, the only one still alive from the community of Desperation. At first it is thought that the group is fighting against the policeman, however as the story progresses, a much bigger force is unveiled. This is essentially a fight between the good, which is God communicating with them through the young David Carver, and evil, in the form of Tak, which has surfaced from the mine pit, inhibits the bodies of humans and uses its host to perform its activities. I really liked the plot in this book and the fact that there is so much detail and in depth descriptions of the characters, I was immediately drawn in. David Carver's character is excellent and by the end of the book, which also has an unexpected twist, I found myself loving him more and more. I still have much to read from Stephen King but this is one of the best I have read so far and probably the most chilling and gory.
What was supposed to be a romantic weekend away with her husband turned out to be a horrible nightmare for Jessie. She is fed up of his sleazy sex games but she comes to regret the moment she kicked him in his crotch, causing him to have a fatal heart attack and leaving her handcuffed to the bed, all alone at their cabin where her screaming is heard by no one. During the hours she spent attached to the bed, Jessie is haunted by the voices in her head which represent different personalities and eventually help her get out of the situation she got into. Other than the voices in her head, her only other company is 'Prince', the dog which comes inside the cabin to feed on Gerald's body, and 'The Space Cowboy' which is her visitor at night, except she doesn't know if he is real or her mind is playing tricks on her. This is a psychological novel and although King includes some gruesome bloody details, the horror lies within Jessie's thoughts and her fight for survival. It keeps you wanting to know what happened next and although it's not the best I've read by Stephen King it did keep my interest. The voices of Ruth, Goodwife Burlingame and Punkin are real in a situation like this, where the brain isn't entirely functioning well and when in fear the conflicting voices represent your own thoughts and speculations. King also explores the doubts one encounters when in fear, where you can't distinguish between reality and your imagination running wild due to the state of panic you are in. The ending has an interesting twist. When you think you can breathe a sigh of relief that Jessie made it, you learn that perhaps her 'The Space Cowboy' wasn't just a figment of her imagination and there might be more to it than that.
This book revolves around a nine year old girl called Trisha Mcfarland. During a hike with her mother and brother, she decides to stop and take a bathroom leak while her mother and brother are arguing, mainly about their parents' divorce, which Trisha is very fed up of hearing about. When she starts walking again she gets off the trail and is lost in the woods. The rest of the book describes Trisha's survival in the woods, eating checkerberries and nuts and drinking water from the stream while knowing that someone, something, the 'subaudible', is keeping an eye on her and waiting for her to ripen enough before it feasts on her. Most of the time I found this book to be dragging, and felt like the author was trying too hard to make the situation sound scary and introduce fear and suspense, however for some reason it wasn't working for me. More often than not I thought he took too long trying to describe the gory details and wanted him to move on. Not to mention the continuous references to the game of baseball which I didn't get, but that is because I have no idea about baseball and it only seemed like a minor incovenience. The story picked up again near the end when Trisha finally found a road and at that point it got me hooked. I was a little disappointed with this book, I have read a few of King's books and loved them, but this one just didn't seem like it was from the same author. It's enough to say that this book took me about 6 months to complete, albeit that it has only some 300 pages. The story wasn't gripping enough and that made it hard for me to pick it up and continue reading.
