Desperation - a lonely town at the back-end of nowhere in the Nevada desert. At the moment, even quieter than usual.

The town cop brings a number of travellers to the town in groups, his reasons at first unfathomable; later, though, the group's fate becomes frighteningly clear. David, a devoutly religious schoolboy, may turn out to hold the answers they are looking for, and may be the only one who can save their lives...

My Thoughts

Stephen King has played another gimmick from his repertoire with this book. At the same time as it was released, Richard Bachman (and we all know who that is) released The Regulators which is, as far as I know, a sister book to Desperation (I haven't got round to reading that one yet). Once I read The Regulators, I'll let you all know how the gimmick worked!

Desperation itself is a meeting of several of Stephen King's styles. The gross-out horror of his Christine/Carrie days is still in there (in manageable slices), but the largest proportion of the book is more in the style of The Stand, It or The Langoliers - a force beyond human comprehension is encountered, and must be defeated, lest the human race be destroyed.

I enjoyed this book immensely (although, rather annoyingly, it's too thick to fit in my coat pocket for reading on the train!), as I always seem to with Stephen's latter-day writing. As is becoming normal, the book ends with an unexpected twist in the tale, but you'll have to find that out for yourself.

As an aside, I recently re-watched Sleepwalkers - apart from the normal appearance by Stephen King himself, did anyone else notice that Clive Barker played a bit-part?