Realised this morning that Other World Than These, the third and final part of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman trilogy will be published later this year. I have read The Talisman (1984), but not its sequel Black House (2001). I didn’t even know Straub passed away in 2022.
The Talisman is not among my favourite books by King, mainly because I read it as an abridged Chinese translation. Also because I didn’t understand much about the art of co-authorship back then.
I particularly like the idea of ka-tet, a High Speech term from King’s The Dark Tower series that means a group of people drawn together by destiny or fate for a specific purpose, usually to fight against the dark and evil. Like Roland Deschain, Jack Sawyer has his own Kat-tet in The Talisman trilogy. But my favourites are young David Carver and his small group of survivors in Desperation, and Bill Denbrough and his Losers’ Club in It (1986). Knowing it is a whole group fighting for a common goal makes one feel less lonely and vulnerable, I suppose.
Images: 1. The Talisman, 2. Black House, 3. Other Words Than These (see above), 4. The Talisman, Traditional Chinese Edition, 2010. 5. The Talisman, Traditional Chinese Edition, 1985. 6. The Talisman, Simplified Chinese Edition, 2017.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 