Rating: 
Summary: Once you start you will be desperate to find time to finish
Review: This is one of King's better novels. The Nevada desert is an isolated and barren place especially since the mine in the town of Desperation shut down. People travelling to the town or just along Route 50 to other destinations mysteriously disappear. The dead cat nailed to a roadside is a sure sign that this is not an area to visit. Collie Entragian the local lawman will not be of much help. In fact he should be avoided at all costs unless you are also seeking death. This is a sensational thriller that is even humorous in a black sort of way at times. The first half is a superb escaping from a madman serial mass murderer type thriller with the second half bringing in the usual Stephen King supernatural twist. You will think twice before commencing a road trip through isolated areas after reading this classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Never Will You Drive Through Nevada the same Way Again
Review: This is one of the King's classics. I rank it up there with the Dark Tower books and The Talisman, as his essential novels. This is about the lonely empty mining town Desolation, in Nevada. And the many people who are forced together under unfortunate and terrible circumstnaces. You see, Collie Entragien is a psycho cop (who is possessed by Tak, a demon). He stops passersby and forces them into this dead town. And thus starts the epic battle between God and Satan. Through the power of their faith and belief (and the little boy who holds most of it), most of these prisoners are able to overcome their foe from hell. This book is very well written, suspenssseful, and entertaining. The author proves that even hacks themselves can have classics. And this is one of them.
Rating:
Summary: "License and Registration, please. Tak!" The Master at work.
Review: "Desperation" is one of Stephen King's finest works, a riveting scream of a horror novel that gets right to work, grabs the reader by the throat, and insists, all 500+ pages of gore-dripping goodness of it, on being read straight thru 'til morning. The secret of Uber-horror writer Stephen King's success is amazingly, masterfully, insidiously simple: he takes harmless little slices from ordinary life and then, bit by bit, lets the Horror seep in. Certainly King's world features ghosts, vampires, deranged scientists, spooks, dopplegangers and madmen galore, but the protagonists are every-day, commonplace men and women who venture out of their sun-dappled suburban subdivisions to do battle with Evil. King plays a fine riff on this eternally yummy and harrowing theme in "Desperation", which begins as Peter and Mary Jackson, driving back to New York from a trip with relatives in the Pacific Northwest, get pulled over by a policeman on a particularly desolate Nevada stretch of Highway 50, the loneliest highway in America. See, that's it, right there: King knows that it's a peculiar, highly particular, completely inimitable, spooky and slinky funny feeling you get down in the pit of your stomach when you peer into the rear-view mirror and see those red-and-blue police flashers. It's embarrassing, being pulled over, and it's---let's admit it---just a little scary and confusing. You know exactly where your driver's license and registration is, but you fumble it all the same, don't you, while the stony-faced trooper is peering in, maybe shining a flashlight into your car's interior. Looking for---what? Guns? Drugs? Bodies in the trunk? Anyway, King moves at 120 miles per hour into the guts of this grim little Nevada spookshow creepfest, introducing us to an interesting variation of the American nightmare: the Super-sized Highway Patrolman with a *really* bad attitude. And since this is King territory we've ventured into, rest assured there's plenty more wrong with the little All-American Town of Desperation, Nevada, than a really angry representative of the Law. The pacing is all first-rate, and "Desperation" is a singular page turner: I started just before 7 at night, and got done in the wee hours of the morning, just before dawn. It's chock full of gore---King is not one to skimp on the red sauce, but he's brought a vat of it to this picnic---and it's got some good, nasty, cover your head with the blanket and read the book by flashlight Honest-to-Goodness Scares here, too. So what do you have here? You have a 6 foot 7 super-sunburned cop who brings an entirely new meaning to the phrase "Walking Tall"; you have something ancient, Evil, and extremely hungry lurking in the old China Mine at the edge of town; you have some of the best characters in King's repertoire, particularly John Edward Marinville, the Norman Mailer/John Updike-esque Great American Author who is crossing the country on a Harley trying to write the next Great American Novel---and runs into the Great American Nightmare instead. So grab "Desperation", clear off at least a day on the calendar, get some batteries for the flashlight, pull the covers over your head, and if that trooper asks you for your license and registration---well, just say Tak!
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: this had to be the best book i have read all year...the book was well written...i recommend this book to any person that like suspense....there were days where i couldnt put the book down...the writer leaves you wanting to know what was going to happen next...excellent .......A MUST READ.......
Rating:
Summary: Read them both together!
Review: This book is a sister to The Regulators and both are amazing! I recommend reading them together, but be careful...King uses the same character names with different identities...it can get confusing when you read the second book! The two books are twisted and incredibly addictive!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Creepy and spine tingling!!
Review: A great book to pass your free time and be prepared to get goosebumps and tingles all over when reading (especially at night)! Stephen King's books are a true work of genius and this latest one rocks! Be sure never to pull over when a cop car has its sirens on when you are driving in the middle of the Nevada desert...the copy might just be Entragian,the psycho and main character of this novel!
Rating:
Summary: Desperation
Review: Stephen King should be best author of the year. He has a wild imagination. I enjoy reading his novels because he is very detailed with his writing. Its like a mini movie screen in your brain while you are reading. This book is very interesting and confusing at times but you need to know whats going on. This novel switches scenes and writes about dreams people have. I would recommend this novel to people who have strong stomachs because it will blow you away. People with a great imagination should definitely read this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Weird!!! Very well written and very WEIRD! 5 STARS *****
Review: I had pretty much given up on Stephen King after killer books such as, The Dark Half, Needful Things, and so on. I remember when desperation came out and not thinking more than once about, never reading it. I happened to be staring at the cover (hardcover edition) and just couldn't take my eyes off of it: spooky feeling or something? I came to the conclusion that out of all the book cover art on all of King's work, Desperation was my favorite, so why not read it? Good choice.' The characters are all more than real, your driven into this very weird nightmare King was woven, and it's weird in a very bizarre, uneasy kind of way, making it as scary as the old King masterpieces. One last thing ... I'm typing this right now during the biggest blackout to ever hit the East Coast, August 14, 2003, and the power blitzed out from Canada, Through New York, as far west as Ohio (that's me), and it went black at 4:10pm eastern time-I was just finishing the last page of this book at the very second and it still has me freaked out! An exact incident happened to me during a very powerful storm that knocked out power lines for a day back in 1995 and at that very moment I was reading Needful Things! I am CONVINCED that Stephen King is BAD luck in the summer time. I'll stick to the other 3 seasons for Stephen from now on!
5 STAR VERY WEIRD RATING FROM SCRAGGY'S TOMB OF HORROR, USA.
Rating:
Summary: Easily the most enjoyable....
Review: ...modern Stephen King I have read. It has VERY well-developed characters, settings, and overtones. The plot is well developed, you learn the right amount at the right time. Moreover, the deep religious tones make give the book good morals. Stephen King does it again...
Rating: 
Summary: A Re-Tred With Its Own Twists
Review: After finishing Desperation, I couldn't help but feel a little deja vu. There were many similarites to things I had read before, but I wasn't positive of where to point them out. To say the least, Stephen King backtracks through some of his older (and better) work in order to accomplish the construction of the novel. While there are well-concieved concepts here, I found that the novel had a shaky grip on its own plot akin to The Stand, initializing plot-threads that immediately end after beginning and seem to have little purpose. Another relation to The Stand is the constant turn of the antagonist into "the enemy of God." This wouldn't be so bad, as it was done well in The Stand, except here there are so many themes that seem to relate to man vs. nature that the theme of Tak vs. God would be overshadowed if not for David. And rather than make the subtlties that are so magnificently done in The Stand, there are simple outbursts of a mysterious voice in David Carver's head, one I can only call a deus ex machina of a poor kind.
That is merely on a novel-scale. On a note more important to my own preferences, I found the relation between the climax of Desperation and the climax of It to be far too similar, which disappoints me, as It is probably my favorite King novel. In spite of this, Desperation is a decent novel. There are great characters, along with classic King horror (such as the people on hooks) and his charismatic prose that I can only sum up with the title "The thing that was once Ellen Carver." The mystery of the prison's use is very good as well. All in all, it is worth the read, but it could be so much better if King had cut out his homage to past novels and stuck with the main story of Desperation throughout. -Escushion
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