Rating: 
Summary: Readable but no classic
Review: It's kind of hard to know where to start with a 800+ page novel like this. I didn't HATE it, but I didn't like it as much as I did the Talisman. Both the authors have suffered from excess wordiness of late and they could have used the services of a good editor here. Yes the novel does offer the occasional gem but you have to hack your way through a forest of needless words to get there. Worst of all, I didn't feel they were taking the fantasy elements seriously and the ending is an insult to the reader. Fantasy only works if the author is totally committed to the alternative world he creates and if it has clearly defined rules. Stephen King always seems to me to use fantasy as a way of changing the rules when he has painted himself into a corner plotwise ...
Rating: 
Summary: Black House: Best book I've ever read
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. I never read the Talisman, but I think I am going to. The thing thats so great about this book is not just the extremely unique and suspenseful plot, but the characters. The characters are each TRULY unique, each with their own thoughts, points of view, and feelings. The end leaves us expecting another sequel (hopefully) which I cannot wait for.
Rating:
Summary: Sequel to the Talisman, just barely
Review: To begin with, I really love The Talisman. It is one of my favorite books of all time and one that I re-read whenever I am in the need for a good story. That being said, The Black House was a MOST disappointing sequel. The narrative style that is employed was annoying. The introductions of the characters in the first section of the book drags. The middle part is very good and moves along nicely. The end of the book is fairly predictable but does OK. The last part, after the narrator's warning, was very good, as well.The Territories are hardly touched on and the major scene that is played out there is annoyingly full of references to Stephen King's Dark Tower and the Gunslinger stuff. I would have preferred that The Talisman world be untainted by the rest of the King-verse, but it's too much to ask, I suppose. Very few of the characters are engaging and interesting, unlike the Talisman where there were so many fascinating characters to meet and I think that is what disappointed me the most. If you enjoyed The Talisman, this is an OK book - I suggest borrowing the book or buying it used. If you like the Stephen King Universe, this book will probably make you happy for the tie-ins. Personally, it is not a book I am going to keep or re-read.
Rating:
Summary: book of the year!!!
Review: It's been a long time since I read a King and Straub book. Pet Cemetary and Ghost Story being the last - a looonnngg time ago! I was surprised and delighted at the quality of writing, knowing of King's non-literary reputation but there were sections of this story that were truly mesmerizing and although the subject matter is both gruesome and disturbing (and the nightly news isn't?) what really won me over was the warmth and dynamics of the relationships between the various characters. Towards the end you do have to know somethings about the original Talisman and the Dark Tower books to "get it" but all in all I would say this has to be a book I would read again, and I've only ever read one book twice...the Bible. Black House was for me more than a book, it was, as it should be, an emotional experience to laugh and cry your way through and when it ends, you wish you could meet these characters in real life...
Rating: 
Summary: Vaguely Distasteful Mess
Review: A big disappointment coming on the heels of the excellent Dreamcatcher and Hearts in Atlantis, Black House proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that fantasy lies beyond the reach of Stephen King's otherwise potent talents. Three stories vye for precedence in this increasingly dopey pop opus: the police procedural it begins as, mannered but quite readable, the serial killer/horror show it seques into, disgusting but scareless, and finally an epic fantasy so woefully undetailed it feels like a joke. The Territories, not a vividly imagined otherworld even in The Talisman, are here a low-budget renaissance fair of cliches, but not even they can compete with the spectacularly colorless and resonance-free hodgepodge of Dark Tower mythology. A clutch of capitalized names and little more, the Dark Tower/Crimson King/Breakers/Gunslingers mess has covered four volumes on its own, infected unrelated volumes of King fiction, yet remains so underdetailed we can only what its all about, and why we should care. King (I'm not forgetting Straub, but his presence here seems limited to the midwest, small-town setting) cranks up the pretension, neglects to endow his hero and heroine with any measure of personality (though some of the supporting players are energetically realized cliches -- cool, adept blind guy, cycle gang with Ph.Ds and hearts of gold) and adds insult to injury by shamelessly milking the child abuse/murder angle for all its worth and then pretending this is anything more than grotty exploitation. The final hundred pages defy any modicum of storytelling sense, and come complete with a particularly dopey coda. The Talisman was no Lord of the Rings, but at least it successfully melded King's narrative drive with Straub's elegance -- Black House is just a vaguely distasteful mess.
Rating: 
Summary: When worlds collide...
Review: I have for many years been an avid reader of Stephen King and, to a lesser extent, Peter Straub. I have enjoyed virtually all of the writings (including the Bachman short stories). But enjoying is quite the same as appreciating. There are elements in King's writing which continue to bother me. That doesn't mean I stop reading his works, but I continue to wish he'd get better at some aspects of story-telling. Case in point: King has no idea how to write a romantic element into his novels. Such relationships as might be expected to have a romantic turn are almost invariably clumsy, maudlin, and -- generally speaking -- genuinely implausible. Most of the time, I think, these themes are superfluous, even when the supposed motivation for the actions of the main characters involve romantic involvement. As a less significant aside, King's world seems to be utterly devoid of any sympathetic gay characters. The only gay characters that even come to mind are two men killed by "It", if I remember correctly. Now, that aside segues into a more serious problem. Increasingly, King's novels require both an excellent memory and thorough acquaintance with his work. I first read the Talisman when it came out in the mid-80s, so it was a real stretch of my memory to dredge up details of that story. Many of the readers of the Black House will have to read The Talisman before they can really follow the action, despite what I admit was an attempt to give essential information in the narrative. I suppose that's the price one pays for having a sequel appear 20 years after the first novel. I can forgive that infelicity, however, for otherwise this book couldn't have appeared at all. More troublesome to me is the introduction of the Dark Tower narrative into this book. It is possible, I suppose, that I simply failed to note the similarity between the Talisman's dual-world and the Dark Towers' universe when I first read the Dark Towers, although I really don't think so. This marks a kind of annoying tendency for King to make off-hand allusions to his other works in a number of his novels, but never, that I can recall, has it been so central to the narrative as in this case. Now, the reader must not only have read The Talisman, but also the Dark Tower series in order to understand the novel fully. Somehow, this seems to me to be too much to ask of any but the most avid King devotees. Now--What this novel does is what King is best at: the marriage of natural horror with the super-natural. He takes our instinctive loathing and fear of sexual abuse of children, not to say an even deeper loathing if canibalism, and ties it to a super-natural source. Nearly all of King's novel's do this, it seems to me, and it is a key to why his work often provides a very real sense of discomfort in the reader. Not that we ever come to understand the natural evil presented; quite the opposite, we are permitted to de-naturalize the evil and attribute it to some concretized evil, condensed into one thing, be it a huge hotel, a Black House, a giant spider-like creature (and Clown), or the Walking Dude. There is a distinct Manichean element in King's novels: Good and Evil are opposing forces in the Universe (or Universes, as the case may be); Evil dominates much of the time, but is always vanquished in the end--only to re-appear in the next novel. I simply don't think that this sort of approach is particularly sophisticated...which may not bother Stephen King in the least. He is certain to be remembered as one of the most popular and successful writers of our time...but not as one of the best. Oddly, I think he COULD be both; I'm not sure what restrains him from trying to be both. Having cheerfully taken King to task (I confess, I have a hell of a time discerning Straub's contributions; probably just that I haven't read nearly as many of his works), I have to say I enjoyed the book...as I almost always do. I just don't ADMIRE the book as much as I'd like.
Rating:
Summary: It does get better .. but does that count for much ?
Review: First off I better tell you I didn't read the first novel Tailsman, I only strted to realise the book was a second near the end. It's also painfully obvious this is going to be a trilogy from the way the book ended... finally. It was very difficult to stay with this book in the beginning, which is strange because I love thriller/murder mysteries which is how it starts out. Unfortunately it wasn't very thrilling... it just went on an d on with things that just didn't seem to connect and I really didn't appreciate the narrators in the novel, they seemed unuseful. Like the authors didn't know how to get a character in that situation to see, so we'll use some ether. Luckily it does get better at the end the fantasy comes in and things do start to tie together, the last part of the book is quite good, however you think after it's all said and done was it worth it? mmm not for me. There is a lot of hype about the main character being an awesome detective however this goes no where and no real detecting gets done seems to allfall in his lap, which I thought was sad. I am not a real King fan, when he is good he is stunning when he is bad he just seems to dribble forever. Unfortunately this is the latter.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: What utter, pretentious drivel. This book is an insult to The Talisman. I loved that book and really looked forward to the sequel. After 18 years both authors have become long-winded and obviously in love with their own prose. Compare the two books and the difference will be immediately apparent. Over 200 pages in and Jack has finally remembered what came before. I have decided that I don't care how it comes out. I am going to move on to something that is written better and is more enjoyable to read such as one of Phil Rickman's novels.
Rating:
Summary: Intollerable
Review: Ten minutes into this book I had to check to be sure that I was actually reading the sequel to The Talisman. Granted, this book was not intended to be a smooth continuation over from the Talisman but the writing style even changed. The 'guided tour' styling that is used throughout the book is absolutely maddening. I can't stand it and to make me even more frustrated I cannot understand why they would completely change writing styles from one book to the next when it's THE SAME SERIES. A slow start combined a horrid writing style brew up a very bad novel. As hard as I tried, I could not finish this book. Even if you've read the Talisman, I suggest you point your spending money at a more worthy novel! Black House is garbage.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I can't remember the last time I gave up on a book. It's been years. Black House headed for the shelf after a mere 88 pages. I couldn't bring myself to wade through the lengthy and arbitrary verbiage employed to describe, for example, a street. I found it neither relevant to the story nor setting the tone, mood, etc... This, to say nothing about the bizarre first person "we-based" narrative. Kudo's to you if you made it through and enjoyed it. "Now we float down and click submit to turn in this review. We wish we could have rated it lower."
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