Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook

It definitely starts off just like you, with 12-year old Jack Sawyer heading into a mysterious universe in the hope of finding a cure for his sick mother. Wild adventures and friends await on a road fraught with risk, and Jack’s wicked uncle is close behind, trying to stop him.

However, this is a Stephen King novel, and it didn’t take long for Your Talisman to morph into something dark, gritty, and primitive at the kind of way just Stephen King could handle.

My relationship with kid’s music books or novels with kids as protagonists is odd. I love many of them, from The Narnia Chronicle into Pullman’s Dark Materials to Harry Potter Into Redwall in all its iterations. Yet, as I’ve grown older, I’ve moved away from stories that heavily feature children. There is just something a bit too farfetched about a kid saving the world. Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook. Maybe I have grown up; perhaps I’m just a cynic. Perhaps those two are the exact same thing. Whatever the case, I just glanced at The Talisman’s synopsis prior to buying, figuring a large ol’ Stephen King novel seemed like a fantastic choice no matter the topic.

I was amazed at what I found, but not skeptical. Stephen King is very, very proficient at writing children.

The Talisman knows it isn’t a kid’s audio book, and that is why I found it so compelling. Jack is young, and that only makes his street all the more dangerous. Even when his journey has been whimsical, there is still this little haze on everything that something very bad might happen. It is the kind of realistic dream that Stephen King has done over and over again, only today the scale has shrunk to something less mad. Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook Free.

Essentially, it works damn well, and the sole reason I’m harping on about it is that I find it interesting. The dichotomy of what The Talisman is and how it’s introduced is cool. I like that it’s basically a child’s audio book for adults. The Territories which Jack finds himself in feel like the sort of parallel universe I’d have enjoyed when I was Jack’s era, only far more dangerous, and Morgan Sloat is basically a Disney villain, only far more ruthless.

Throughout, you will find werewolves, big castles, charming trinkets, haunted forests, monsters, and a crazy train ride which was a specific highlight. Talisman Audiobook Download Free. All these triggered some mental nostalgia of everything I adored as a child thanks to their presentation and the way Jack sees the planet, yet there was always something more about them, something real.

By way of example, when Jack matches Wolf, I instantly fell in love with all the big, oafish werewolf. The two hit it off, and Wolf himself is a small simpleton and a complete love. Yet he is a werewolf, and throughout the full moon, he goes feral. When both get stuck in the world, a clock begins ticking down, and the zero mark spells ferocious carnage. Wolf doesn’t wish to hurt Jack, not, but that means nothing changes.

When both get caught and sent to some sort of odd, half-cult wayward home for disgruntle children, the stress of that ticking clock only goes up. The Talisman by Stephen King Audiobook.

It is this sort of realistic danger combined with the whimsical that make The Talisman such an wonderful publication, and the dichotomy that is Wolf surely makes him an wonderful character.

The same complexity are seen at Jack’s other company, Richard Sloat, even though for different reasons. (Richard’s last name ought to give that off) The ticking timebomb here is not one of carnage but among revelations, also Richard lacks the fortitude to manage it. He’s annoying at first but for the ideal motives, and his narrative arc is compelling.

I have always liked a book that can instill the idea of “a fantastic distance” in me. Enormous journeys need to feel big, and that reflection of all, “Wow, the beginning of this exploration feels like years ago” is something I find impressive. Stephen King The Talisman Audiobook Download. The Talisman has in spades, and it’s easy to get lost in just how much truly changes involving Jack’s first dialog with Speedy Parker and his entering The Blasted Lands.

It is a novel in which a lot happens, however it doesn’t feel like a big sprint to the finish line. Jack finds himself in a lot of places, and the time spent in every one feels natural. This becomes doubly important as he’s racing his mother’s illness, and after he finds out the talisman, he still has to bring it back. If Jack gets lost or stuck for a few weeks, that’s a few weeks where his mother is dying.

The Talisman gives the type of journey where the entire world is against a child, and that means the falls are barbarous and the successes are overpowering.

If I have any criticisms at all, it’s the Talisman follows the hero’s journey too tightly. Jack is known as, Jack goes, and Jack finally finds what he’s searching for. In terms of storyline, the sound book really does play matters safely, but in regards to world construction and characters, it’s still a complete joy. Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook Free. Jack himself is a great protagonist, being only a little self-evident and cynical, and the people he meets on his journey are pretty amazing in 1 manner or another. King excels in producing people, and that doesn’t change.

If it feels as though I’ve downplayed Peter Straub’s additions to The Talisman, it is because I’m unfamiliar with his work. I don’t know what job he had in the composing of this audio book, but it certainly reads and feels like a Stephen King book. Personally, I consider that high praise, but fans of Straub may not.

I truly loved my time with The Talisman, and it comes with a high recommendation. If you are in the mood to get a straight-up fun adventure, it is well worth a read. The Talisman Audio Book Free.

His assessment of The Talisman in particular seemed in line with both strong sentiments expressed by reviewers in trade and popular publications.Newsweek assaulted the sound book for its obvious commercialism, epitomized by the fact that the 600,000 first edition hardcover copies set a new publishing record; the review further takes on the publication for flaws in plotting, style, characterization, pacing, and narrative result (Charles Leerhsen, “The Titans of Terror,” 24 Dec 1984). People magazine’s “Worst of Pages” for December 24-31, 1984, cautioned that “in horror fiction, two heads are better than one only when they are on the same body.” Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook.

Essentially, The Talisman originally endured the consequences of extremes of both reputation and anticipation. From 1984, King had established himself firmly as the greatest author of contemporary horror; after at some distance but still figures to be reckoned with were such authors as Dean R. Koontz, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon … and Peter Straub. Of the sensed “heirs” to King’s throne, Straub enjoyed perhaps the maximum standing, in part due to the literary style he brought to these books as Ghost Story (1979), Shadowland (1980), and his own apocalyptic version of an escaped virus and its wake, Floating Dragon (1982). Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook Free Online. The fact he had also published an elegant volume of mainstream poetry, Leeson Park and Belsize Square: Poems 1970-1975 (1983) only enhanced the anticipation that his fluid style would rub off King, that King’s storyteller’s energy and unbridled imagination would in turn energize Straub, and their alliance would almost inevitably lead to the greatest horror novel ever written.

Such anticipations seem doomed by their nature to disappointment. Maybe no book could have lived up to the promotion hype , or up to the expectations of supporters of both authors (King would undergo the same type of critical drubbing with the launch of Maximum Overdrive, his directorial debut that was promoted as the ultimate horror movie, scripted and directed by the greatest horror writer). Surely most subscribers looked forward to something like an extension of The Stand and Floating Dragon, simple horror capitalizing on the strengths of both King and Straub.

What they obtained, nevertheless, was an interlaced mix of horror and fantasy, of real world terror and alternate-universe science fantasy, where atomic testing in our world can create the vast expanses of this wastelands in the Territories (and, possibly, on the world of Roland of Gilead as well). Instead of King’s vividly colloquial prose, or Straub’s coolly ironic academic tone, a third, almost wholly unexpected voice arose, one suitable not to the ultimate in horror but rather to an extended narrative that takes to a pacing and movement of its own. The Talisman Audiobook Streaming. And instead of a single-minded quest to destroy (or at least incapacitate) a monster, there’s the open-ended epic quest for the Talisman, the mystic nexus of possible worlds–an image as ethereal and powerful since Jake’s vision of the Dark Tower itself at The Wastelands. Even given the period of The Talisman, it would be nearly impossible to do justice to the mythic echoes the Talisman evokes, or into the multiple landscapes in this world and in the Territories which lead to the Dark Resort and the confrontation between light and darkness.

This King and Straub also incorporated critiques of contemporary politicians and writers, of social and economic conditions, of education, of parenting–most this made The Talisman more difficult to approach, and therefore appeared to warrant the cavils of reviewers and critics.

It didn’t, but keep the novel from reaching literally millions of subscribers. In an unprecedented distribution conclusion, Viking maintained The Talisman from stores before the actual day of book. This entailed storing almost six hundred million copies in warehouses, then dispersing them instantly. On the very first day of earnings, with sound bookstore walls observable seas of black and red and gold, The Talisman recouped all Viking’s promotion budget. Less than two months after, by the end of 1984, over 880,000 copies had been sold. The hardcover edition stayed on the bestsellers lists for 28 weeks, together with all the paperback adding an extra fourteen to the total; for almost a quarter of the time, the publication was in the number-one place. Within three years, The Talisman had emerged in Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, French, Swedish translations, demonstrating not only to King’s growing global popularity, however, in light of numerous reprints in these languages, to the novel’s too. The Talisman Audiobook Stephen King.

He undergoes trials that test his physical and mental endurance; together the way to California along with the Dark Hotel, he passes through a crucible that tempers him strengthens and hardens him making him an analogue into Roland of Gilead. The plot is complicated, at times nearly tangled as characters move back and forth between worlds. That motion allows readers new and often startling perspectives on familiar themes; we see order dissolving into chaos equally here and there, and also the only act of a single individual might be all that may forestall disaster in both (possibly whatsoever) worlds. In this sense, The Talisman leaves behind the anti-heroic naturalism of much modern fiction and contributes to the very same roots that encircle Tolkien and Lewis and even, in its own manner, the Mark Twain of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn–into the prose-epic impulse that King had already invoked in The Stand and The Dark Tower. Stephen King – The Talisman Audio Book.

The Talisman’s length adds to the sense. But the story tried requires scope and length and time. It’s a quest boat covering days and weeks and months; its own heroes traveling tens of thousands and hundreds and thousands of miles through psychically and physically draining landscapes. And even as it stands, it reflects roughly only half of what King and Straub might have done with this narrative. In the end, Jack returns home in a matter of days (in a Cadillac chauffeured by a werewolf, no less)–the first conception had him taking almost as long to return to the Alhambra Hotel as it did to get him to California. The reach of the narrative is rough; the themes it tries are wide-ranging; the narrative manner, a seamless blend of King’s lively imagination and Straub’s literary shine, requires span.

Mark Twain’s words from Tom Sawyer are an Proper epilogue to the Type of narrative The Talisman attempts. Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook Free.

So endeth this chronicle. It being the history of a boy, it must stop here; the narrative could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When a person writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop–this is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best could.

The narrative King and Straub have chosen to inform must end with a flood of light; together with the salvation and recovery of Jack Sawyer’s cancer-ridden mom and her Territories analogue, Queen Laura DeLoessian; and together with the transformation of this Talisman from thing to symbol and then to nothingness. Jack Sawyer will appear for a short scene in King’s subsequent publication, The Tommyknockers–and it’s a welcomed and memorable return. But in the conclusion of The Talisman, his task completed and his quest safely above, he’s restored, for a brief time at least, to the world of kids balanced precariously on the brink of adulthood. Stephen King – The Talisman Audiobook.