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Black House
Black House
Author: Stephen King, Peter Straub
Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer travelled to a parallel universe called The Territories to save his mother and her Territories "twinner" from a premature and agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, WI....  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780345441034
ISBN-10: 0345441036
Publication Date: 8/27/2002
Pages: 672
Rating:
  • Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
 379

3.8 stars, based on 379 ratings
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Black House on + 47 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Another chilling, spooky Straub and King masterpiece. You'll be too scared to keep reading, too enthralled to put it down.
joeymac avatar reviewed Black House on + 2 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Best Stephen King book I have read since, well the Tailsman (also with Peter Straub)
reviewed Black House on + 4 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Not a bad book overall, but I prefered The Talisman.
reviewed Black House on + 22 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Awesome! This is the first of the newer(at least to me) Stephen King! It was wonderful!
reviewed Black House on + 46 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
In the seemingly paradisal Wisconsin town of French Landing, small distortions disturb the beauty: a talking crow, an old man obeying strange internal marching orders, a house that is both there and not quite there. And roaming the town is a terrible fiend nicknamed the Fisherman, who is abducting and murdering small children and eating their flesh. The sheriff desperately wants the help of a retired Los Angeles cop, who once collared another serial killer in a neighboring town.
Of course, this is no ordinary policeman, but Jack Sawyer, hero of Stephen King and Peter Straub's 1984 fantasy The Talisman. At the end of that book, the 13-year-old Jack had completed a grueling journey through an alternate realm called the Territories, found a mysterious talisman, killed a terrible enemy, and saved the life of his mother and her counterpart in the Territories. Now in his 30s, Jack remembers nothing of the Talisman, but he also hasn't entirely forgotten:

When these faces rise or those voices mutter, he has until now told himself the old lie, that once there was a frightened boy who caught his mother's neurotic terror like a cold and made up a story, a grand fantasy with good old Mom-saving Jack Sawyer at its center. None of it was real, and it was forgotten by the time he was sixteen. By then he was calm. Just as he's calm now, running across his north field like a lunatic, leaving that dark track and those clouds of startled moths behind him, but doing it calmly.
Jack is abruptly pulled into the case--and back into the Territories--by the Fisherman himself, who sends Jack a child's shoe, foot still attached. As Jack flips back and forth between French Landing and the Territories, aided by his 20-years-forgotten friend Speedy Parker and a host of other oddballs (including a blind disk jockey, the beautiful mother of one of the missing children, and a motorcycle gang calling itself the "Hegelian Scum"), he tracks both the Fisherman and a much bigger fish: the abbalah, the Crimson King who seeks to destroy the axle of worlds.
While The Talisman was a straightforward myth in 1980s packaging, Black House is richer and more complex, a fantasy wrapped in a horror story inside a mystery, sporting a clever tangle of references to Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, jazz, baseball, and King's own Dark Tower saga. Talisman fans will find the sure-footed Jack has worn well--as has the King/Straub writing style, which is much improved with the passage of two decades.
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reviewed Black House on + 298 more book reviews
I am a big King fan I found this book kinda tough to get into at the beginning but once I got going I didn't wanna put it down..will be reading more by King for sure..
ashley949807 avatar reviewed Black House on + 27 more book reviews
This is a great book if you liked Stephen King's Talisman.
reviewed Black House on + 5 more book reviews
The Black House is an excellent read. These two authors are at the top of their game.
reviewed Black House on
The story that began in The Talism is continued in Black House.
Tabitha avatar reviewed Black House on + 6 more book reviews
As an avid Stephen King reader I was a little disappointed with this book I normally can't put his books down and this one has taken me about a year to read since I just lose interest in it. Its a good story, but way to confusing and not very exciting as far as I was concerned. I heard it got great reviews so I am obviously not a good critic. I read both one and part 2 of this, but I won't be rereading them like I normally do with Kings books
ladycholla avatar reviewed Black House on + 2081 more book reviews
For Stephen King lovers. Stardard scary stuff.

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