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Rate: 5/5

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Genre: Adventure, Horror, Thriller

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The Talisman is a masterclass of story-telling, gripping readers with an unforgettable and often emotional narrative of a 13-year-old boy navigating the world for the first time. 

Overview 

After The Stand and 11/22/68, The Talisman is the third book I have read written by Stephen King. I cherish those two books dearly, so I went into The Talisman with pretty high hopes and expectations. I do not know what would’ve happened if I didn’t enjoy it, but thankfully, that didn’t happen. Not only did I enjoy it, it also shot up to one of my favorite books. It was like the perfect book at the perfect time.

Most of all he remembered their expressions- all that exhausted concentration, all that pain… but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable.”

Stephen King’s writing always has a certain gravitas, a confidence that seems to have no bounds and hesitance. Every time I read his books, I am in awe; it’s as if I’m given a small glimpse of his great and creative mind, and as I flip through the pages I can’t help but be amazed at the experience. I genuinely think that King is one of the literature greats of our recent memory. Simply a phenomenal writer. 

The Talisman starts off with our main protagonist Jack Sawyer in a desolate beach hotel with his mother. With his dad dead and Morgan Sloat, his once business partner, chasing them for the control of their old company, he and his mother had escaped to this saddening place and are in a very tricky position. The fact that his mother seems to be dying from cancer doesn’t help Jack’s hope of living a normal life again. 

However, he meets a stranger called Speedy Parker who tells him stories about the Territories, a parallel, magical reality to our own that is fresh, lively, and uncontaminated. Speedy also urges him to retrieve an object called the Talisman that holds the key to his mother’s recovery that is located on the opposite side of the country. After listening to the lone stranger, Jack sets off on a journey that brings him to unknown lands, challenges every belief and friendship he holds, and forces him to grow as he faces the darkest aspects of the world. 

“He began to cry, not hysterically or screaming as people cry when concealed rage with tears, but with continuous sobs who has just discovered that he’s alone and will be for long. He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility.”

The storyline of The Talisman is somewhat disjointed; from the start to the very end, there are a plethora of different elements in between that are fun but sometimes meanders. Of course, this is not a bad thing at all. King, with his co writer Peter Straub, mixes the skin of  horror and fantasy to the bones of a traditional adventure story and creates such an original piece of storytelling. 

I cannot, for obvious reasons, spoil the plot points of this book, but I do want to mention that there were a few choices that genuinely shocked me and almost brought me to tears. I hadn’t expected either of the two authors to go the way they had, but thinking back, I think it was absolutely the right decision. It was a very realistic portrayal of our world, but the way it hurt and forced Jack to grow was hard to read, especially since he is so young and naive to the ways of adulthood. I can’t help but think of another reality where Jack gets to grow happily with both of his parents without having trauma and horror dumped on his lap. 

Overall, this book was an absolute delight to read. I was initially hesitant to start this book because of its length, but now I’m so grateful that I decided to go with it; these characters would remain in my heart and I’m sure I will be thinking about this book for a long time. 5/5

“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”