Starred review from October 2, 1996
If the publishing industry named a Person of the Year, this year's winner would be Stephen King. Not only is he writing the first modern novel to be serialized in book form (The Green Mile), but with the publication on Sept. 24 of The Regulators (Dutton; Forecasts, June 17) and Desperation, he becomes the first bestselling author--maybe the first author ever--to issue three new major novels in one calendar year. And there's more. With this astonishing work, King again proves himself the premier literary barometer of our cultural clime. For if The Regulators is a work of secular horror, this is a novel of sacred horror (King's first), and explicitly so. Like the second panel of a diptych, Desperation employs, with one major exception, the same characters as The Regulators, and the same source of horror: an evil force named Tak. (The novels aren't sequential, however; people who die in one can live, then die, in the other.) The exception is David Carver, 11, who, with a handful of other passers-through, including a major writer who's recently embraced sobriety, is trapped in the desert mining town of Desperation, Nev. There, Tak stalks them by possessing humans and turning them into homicidal maniacs, and by unleashing armies of coyotes, spiders and scorpions. The terror is relentless--this is King's scariest book since Misery--though the storytelling is looser than in The Regulators to allow room for spiritual themes. For united against Tak are not only David and his pals, but also God, who moves through the boy. King's God is the God of Job, implacable, beyond human ken. As the savageries inflicted upon David and others multiply, they must discern: What is God's will? And, how can God's will be done, when it seems so cruel? Near the story's end, the writer muses that horror "isn't the sort of stuff of which serious literature is made." King knows better, and so will anyone who reads this deeply moving and enthralling masterpiece of the genre. 1,750,000 first printing; BOMC main selection; simultaneous Penguin Audiobook.
Starred review from March 30, 2009
From the vault of horror master King comes a terrifying tale of Desperation, Nev., a place ruled by a maniacal man in uniform and haunted by deadly secrets. In true King fashion, the story features a small cast of likable yet deeply flawed protagonists that may or may not make it to the final page in one piece. Narrator Kathy Bates, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film adaptation of King's Misery
, takes the reins and holds listeners rapt from start to finish. Bates has the inherent ability to make anything, no matter how over the top, sound realistic and immediate. A Signet paperback.
August 1, 1996
It has been a remarkable year for King: His ongoing serialized novel, The Green Mile (e.g., The Green Mile, Pt. 1: The Two Dead Girls, Audio Reviews, LJ 5/15/96) revived an old publishing tradition that harkens back to Dickens; he closes out the pseudonymous Bachman saga with The Regulators (which will be released simultaneously with Desperation on September 24); and now, the first-ever abridged audio edition of his work is published. Desperation tells of a group of travelers who are unlucky enough to venture through the town of Desperation via Nevada's Route 50. One by one, the travelers are abducted by what at first appears to be a deranged cop; only later do they realize that he is something a whole lot worse. The disparate cast is intriguing, with center stage belonging to a young boy whose recent religious transformation worries his parents; an aging, alcoholic writer seeking to reverse his downward spiral; and a resourceful young woman who hitchhikes her way into a bad situation. Fans of King's unabridged recordings will chorus, "Why this, why now?": Desperation is the author's best novel since the early 1980s. Still, much of the story is intact, and the abridgment is extraordinarily long, with a running time of nine hours. Reader Kathy Bates, who has portrayed various King characters in films such as Misery (1990), contributes a beautifully restrained reading. For all popular collections.--Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal