Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #766838 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1 pages

Customer Reviews

Good and scary
I really enjoyed Desperation and it was good to see King get back to his horror "roots". I wasn't sure about Regulators at first because, although I knew it somehow tied in to Desperation, I thought it might get too corny. And although it is a tad corny, the way King has created two completely different stories with the same characters is amazing and ingenious. I recommend them both. (Remember Cynthia Smith from Rose Madder?)

A book a week will show on any author.
First, let me say that there is much I like about King's work. His time and place settings (childhood in Maine) are fantastic, his themes provide perfect escapism, which is what I look for in fiction, and his books are long -- when I shell out my $25, I know I'm gonna get more than two night's entertainment. But, as King's career goes on, it is all the things that I do NOT like about his writing that come to prominence, crowding out the good in the process. This happens with many authors, of course, especially those who put out three or four books a week. What I don't like, and what Desperation and The Regulators are full of: 1. Gore, slime, and muck passing for horror -- Swarms of spiders eating eyeballs, vultures plucking out eyeballs, arms and legs being ripped off by animals and/or gunfire, throats being torn open by giant lizards who bathe in the resulting fountains of blood. This is gore and excess, and not even remotely scary. Sometimes it's even laughable. How about when the house trailer is moved through the desert by thousands of coyotes! "It must have taken hundreds! Maybe thousands of them!", King writes. See, it's hard to write something that is SCARY, that's why King hardly ever does it anymore. Actually the opening scene of the Desperation, where a couple driving through the trackless wastes of the Nevada desert is menaced by an unseen policeman from his fast moving cruiser was quite chilling. But once again, that kind of thing (realistic, believable situation made terrifying) is not easy to do, hence its scarcity. 2. Kings fascination with vulgarity, especially masturbation and diarhhea -- Anybody who has ever read King knows that he loves this stuff. He can't get enough of it. Remember the book or short story where the hero (an author) is sitting on the toilet wracked by diarrhea spasms, and he begins to muse on the fact that no author that he had ever encountered before had ever written of the experience?! The odor, the pain, the release. Well thank you, Mr. King for being the first! 3. The Political Correctness -- This was REALLY on display in The Regulators. The scene where mother and daughther "just two white girls riding out the storm" refuse to help the others, -- as if letting your friends and neighbors perish in times of trouble is somehow a "white thing" -- the way their selfishness is compared to ignoring the homeless, refusing to give to panhandlers, and the deforestation of the rainforests, (how many forests have vanished only to reappear later in bits and pieces with the name "Stephen King" stamped on them, I wonder) the scene where the white woman begins hurling racial slurs when things get ugly, (she gets killed of course), the incredibly, forced, patronizing, predictable, and oh-so-cute scene where the black man offers his back as a stepping stone for a white man to climb a fence and they sit around laughing about the "liberal's worst nighmare, where a white man climbs to the top on the back of a black man", etc. etc. Bottom line: if you're a King fan, go ahead and read this one, otherwise rent a slasher movie, listen to junior high school boys locker room talk, and watch network television for the same thing.

excellent!
I got even more than I wanted and on time even though the seller had to send the package priority mail. I really appreciate the extra effort!