If you're looking for my reviews of a certain author or genre you can check my tags list. You can also see my list of book reads in 2007 & 2008 and 2009.

Book Title: The Talisman
Author: Stephen King and Peter Straub
Genre: fantasy
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from book cover): A stunning, reverberating epic of fantasy, adventure and odyssey.

The Talisman is the story of a young and courageous boy searching for the talisman, the one thing that will save his dying mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories where violence, surprise and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape, in a novel as extraordinary and as unforgettable as Lord of the Rings.

My thoughts: I must start by saying I've never read anything by these authors, so I can't say which part was written by whom. At the beginning I felt like they were doing it like an RPG – now I write, then you write. The writing seemed odd and confusing at first, it took a while to get into the book but then, before I noticed, an all afternoon and night passed by.

We follow the story of a 12 year boy, Jack Sawyer, whose mother is ill, actually dying due to a cancer. Having confused memories of his childhood, of his death father and his business partner, we come to learn of his Daydreams. Running with his mother from his father business partner, Morgan Sloat, Jack finds Speedy who sends him on a quest to find the Talisman and save not only his mother but the Queen of the Territories, his mother Twinner. Jack starts then a journey that will challenge him.

As I said, I've never read anything by this authors but I've always associated King to terror, so I was surprised when I stumbled upon a fantasy novel. We have two worlds very similar, populated by different beings which are also similar, as it happens with Twinners, twins of a person in the Territories who are very similar but yet different, and who may have or not the same destiny. It seems confused, but it gets clear when you read it, just as it's clear that the authors love to read stories besides telling them, so you stumble across references to other works such as The Lord of the Rings.

I really liked the characters, though I didn't felt a strong emotional connection with them, as it happened to me with other books. Also, I loved the Territories and of how they were linked to the American Territories, as Jack comes to refer to his world. It makes one wonder about how the places we know might be once you flipped to the Territories.

It's a very pleasant book, to those who like the genre, and it has some gore parts. The final was kind of left open to a sequel (with an amazing quote from Mark Twain that made me want to read Tom Sawyer) which was published in 2001, Black House, and tells a new adventure of Jack 20 years after the events of The Talisman. To know that this book is somehow linked to the Dark Tower series, of which I've been hearing some very nice reviews, makes me want to keep reading books by Stephen King.