Another Kingly performance...

Ah, unbeknownst to me, I stepped back into the lands of the Dark Tower.

I'm a bit of a tramp for Stephen King books on tape. I'll pick up and listen to just about any of them, especially if they're read by either Frank Mueller or George Guidall - who combined to read the entire Dark Tower series, and Mueller took the duties on this audio book.

The basics - Black House is the sequel to The Talisman cowritten by Stephen King and Peter Straub about twenty years ago now, and it's been at least a dozen years since I read that volume. I vaguelly remembered the story there being about a boy named Jack who had to go to some other world to save somebody. No matter, though, Black House does enough to catch us up on that story that I feel that a reader wouldn't have to have read the first volume in order to understand and enjoy this one. I would think, however, that only the folks who've been following along with the Dark Tower series are really going to enjoy the majority of this book, as much of the story relies on minnions of the Crimson King and trips into Endworld or worlds just beside it.

In spite of the connection to King's magnum opus of the Tower, the feel of this book is vastly different in feel from most of King's books. The narrator speaks directly to us for much of the book, informing us that we are floating in and out of scenes through keyholes, open windows, cracks below doors - observing from power lines over the action or riding in on the backs of pickup trucks with the characters. King and Straub's descriptions move like movie cinematography, drifting over the countryside and seeing the town of French Landing from above, coming down into each scene but rarely just appearing there. We drift from one scene to the next on the wings on birds and breezes. True, King's typically omniscient narrator is there, mentioning here and there that the character we are leaving is one that we will never see again or who won't see his family again - a trait that can be at times a bit too cute.

All in all, this is an excellent read/listen. King and Straub have brought back Jack Sawyer, a fascination character who has enough foibles to be interesting but who is able enough to play the hero successfully. They have also introduced a number of other characters - the eruidite biker bunch, in particular - who are among the better support that King, at least, has provided. Here and there the details given are superfluous - as when at the very end of the book, the description wanders to another world lying just beside the main two of the story and we hear a little too much about a despot falling - breaking the pacing of the story's denouement.

In case you'd like to check out a few other opinions... BookReporter.com... SFGate.com