I would strongly recommend you read The Talisman before starting Black House. This book resurrects our hero, Jack Sawyer—twelve in the first book and thirty-one in the second book. Jack first discovered he could flip to the Territories as a child. After saving The Talisman, he grew up and became a detective in L.A. When he moves to French Landing, a small rural town in Coulee County, Wisconsin, to retire, he's quickly caught up in the hunt for a killer dubbed The Fisherman, who kidnaps, tortures, and eats children. (Yes, gross.) Paired with an unlikely group of people, including bikers, a blind man, and a crazy woman in Ward D, Jack discovers the Black House and The Big Combination—a harrowing pit where slave children struggle to break the beams that hold The Tower in place. If you've read The Tower series, you'll know exactly what that means. The Krimson King is alive and well in French Landing, and Stephen King is at the top of his game. Six hundred twenty-seven pages fly by while Jack fights the good fight against the creepy bad dudes. ( )

So...I found the last few chapters the most interesting and fans of the Dark Tower series...if you have never read this you should. I believe that series was born inside this book....

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I read 'The Talisman' to which this forms a sequel many years ago and can't remember much about it other than I found it rather a disappointment, being a fan of both authors' work. Anyway, that isn't really a difficulty for the reader since there's enough background to fill in the gaps.

The book starts in a very disconcerting and distancing style where the reader is a bird's eye view being whisked from place to place and shown/told lots of things about various characters and situations. This gradually calms down although the whole book continues to be told in present tense with occasional head hopping between characters and quite a lot of info dumping about people's backgrounds. I found it a slow, very long read bogged down from time to time by dragged out pacing and I had to take a couple of breaks to read non fiction as a refresher.

I wasn't keen on protagonist Jack who takes a fair while to finally take on the role he should in solving the initial child murders - no doubt indirectly leading to unnecessary deaths - and much preferred a secondary character (avoiding spoilers as this character is eventually killed off). There are some powerful set pieces, such as the assault on the five biker characters (again, Jack is directly responsible since he should have told them to wait until he was available, rather than approach Black House by themselves), but most of the time any chance of building suspense is deliberately sabotaged - the reader is told that particular characters are about to be killed off. An odd character choice is to make a lot of an old lady at the carehome, constantly telling the reader how lovely she is etc, as if she is going to be key in some way, but only having her make one real appearance.

The distancing of the early chapters occasionally recurs - once, near the end, there is an actual reference to the two men (though not by name) who are writing the story so there is always the sense that this is just a made-up story rather than something the reader can immerse themselves within. As a fan of birds I also found it rather a misfire to have an "evil" crow featured. For fans of the Dark Tower series there are quite a few direct references, with the murderer being directly implicated in the plan to destroy the Beams and bring about universal destruction.

Altogether, it was rather a mixed bag and I would rate it at 3 stars overall. ( )

Black House is a story that could only be created in the minds of Stephen King and Peter Straub. In the sequel to the Talisman, we catch up to Jack Sawyer 20 years later, living in a small Wisconsin town. He’s presently a retired Las Angeles homicide detective as a result of a sketchy incident.

Jack is trying to live a simple life in his new community, with his new friends. Horrific murders take place in this sleepy town that are similar to ones that occurred decades earlier. The local chief of police begs for Jack’s help...

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog ( )

This is one of my favorites, I read the Talisman second, but this book was still better. ( )