The Talisman
Published: 8, November 1984
Author: Stephen King & Peter Straub
Genre: American, Classic, Dark, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Occult, Shape Shifter, Supernatural, Suspense, Thriller, Werewolf
Book 1 of 3: Talisman (The third book has not yet been published.)
Check out the review of this book here:
Summary
Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, sets off from Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire, in search of a crystal known as "the Talisman" in order to rescue his mother Lily, who is dying of cancer.
Jack's adventure takes him across the American heartland as well as "the Territories," a bizarre fantasy country located in a reality parallel to Jack's.
Persons in the Territories have "twinners," or counterpart individuals, in our world. Twinners' births, deaths, and (it is implied) other key life events are generally mirrored.
Twinners can also "flip" or migrate to the other world, however, they simply share the body of their parallel universe's equivalent.
When flipped, the Twinner, or the actual person, will instinctively begin speaking and thinking in the language of where they are flipping into.
In rare cases (such as Jack's), a person may die in one world but not the other, rendering the survivor "single-natured," with the capacity to flip back and forth between the two realms, body and mind.
A strange character known as Speedy Parker, who is the twinner of a gunslinger named Parkus in the Territories, teaches Jack how to flip.
In the Territories, the adored Queen Laura DeLoessian, Jack's mother's twin (a movie star renowned as the "Queen of B Movies"), is also dying.
With the assistance and encouragement of Speedy Parker, Jack sets out for the magical Talisman in the Territories.
After meeting a guy named Osmond, who works for Morgan Sloat's twinner, Jack leaves the settlement and follows a soldier along a road.
Morgan almost captures Jack in the woods, but he flees. The trees then assault Jack, nearly strangling him and forcing him to flip back into America.
Jack continues his travels around the United States, eventually landing a job as a bartender in the fictitious town of Oatley, New York. Smokey Updike, the owner, is vicious and nasty to Jack, and he treats him as a slave.
Jack flees Oatley a few days later, pursued by a monster named Elroy, who has been following him during his stay in Oatley.
He eludes Elroy long enough to return to the Territories, where Jack recalls another of his father's associates, Jerry Bledsoe, who was killed in a bizarre explosion.
Morgan Sloat had created the explosion by merely flicking between the two realities, according to Jack. After bumping with Elroy and Morgan again, Jack travels to the American Territories and discovers that he unwittingly caused the deaths of eight construction workers nearby, giving him great sadness and reminding him of Jerry Bledsoe.
In Ohio, Jack encounters Snowball, a blind singer who may or may not be Speedy, who inspires Jack to continue on his adventure.
On the highway, Jack collides with Morgan at a petrol station, flips into the Territories, and almost drowns in a river. Wolf, a big werewolf beast, comes to Jack's aid.
Before Morgan enters through a portal and activates a gadget that allows lightning bolts to hit, the two become friends.
Using the final taste of the juice, Jack returns to his world with Wolf. Jack wonders if he will be able to return to the Territories now that his juice has been depleted.
As they arrive in Indiana, Wolf quickly adjusts to life in the United States. A police officer arrests Jack and Wolf and transports them to the Sunlight Home, a boy’s school for misfits.
The owner, evangelical psychopath Robert Gardner, is Osmond's Twinner in the search for Jack.
The guys are bullied by the school's prefects, namely Sonny Singer and Heck Bast. After a few episodes with the prefects and Gardner, in which a student flees the school and the youngsters are interrogated in the middle of the night, Jack and Wolf flee into the Territories, only to discover that the Twinner of the School is a prison camp.
In the restroom, the prefects battle Jack and Wolf, and Gardner, realizing who Jack is, drugs Wolf and kidnaps Jack, torturing him to expose himself.
Wolf transforms into a werewolf after being put into a crate in the fields and wreaks havoc on the school, massacring countless children and bursting into Gardner's office.
Wolf assassinates the prefects in Gardner's office but is shot and killed by Sonny, who then bleeds to death from his wounds. Before going forward, Jack consoles the dying Wolf.
Jack locates Morgan Sloat's son Richard at an Illinois boarding school. Jack tries but fails to persuade Richard of his exploits and Morgan's purpose.
The two escape and flip into the Territories when the school is changed into a monstrous parody of itself as the pupils morph into werewolves and seek to goad Richard into tossing out Jack.
There, they encounter a guy named Anders, who is delivering weaponry to Morgan's warriors in preparation for a final fight against Jack.
Richard, who is now hallucinating and thinks he has a tumor, is actually suffering from an illness given to him by Morgan.
Jack made the decision to grab the package personally and stage an ambush. They must first travel by train across the Blasted Lands, a horrific environment filled with fireballs, deformed beasts, and smugglers.
The army base was bombarded by Jack and a sickly Richard, who destroyed much of Morgan's armada and killed Elroy and Osmond's boy.
Jack travels to California, where Richard finally concedes to the existence of the Territories.
They arrive at Point Venuti and enter the Agincourt Hotel (the Alhambra Inn's twin) unseen by the surviving werewolves.
Speedy Parker, who is frail and dying, meets them on the beachside. Inside the Black Castle, Jack battles stone suits of armor protecting the Talisman and captures it, causing an earthquake that disbands the rest of Morgan Sloat's werewolves.
Jack understands there are more realms than the two he is familiar with, and the Talisman connects them all.
He uses the Talisman to cure Richard, kills Gardner on the castle steps, and battles Morgan on the beach.
He eventually kills Sloat, heals Speedy, and returns to New Hampshire in a limousine. Jack reunites with Lily and employs the Talisman one last time to save his mother and the Queen.
Useful Search Related Words & Keywords
Across The Country, Along The Way, Black House, Dark Tower, Highly Recommend, Jack Sawyer, King And Peter, King And Straub, Morgan Sloat, Tower Series
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