Desperation | Stephen King

Title: Desperation

Author: Stephen King

On my journey through Stephen King, this is the first book that can solidly be placed in the horror genre since Needful Things. That said, only the first half of the book is truly scary. Collie Entragian is freaking terrifying, and the creepy animals also messed me up pretty bad. In the second half of the book, it starts to get pretty religious. I don't mind the Bible references, but they are objectively pretty heavy-handed and overtake the story.

I breezed through the first half, but the second half was a chore to get through, not because of the religious aspect, but just because the plot suddenly slows way down, and I could not focus on it at all. My attention span hasn't been great lately (hence the gaps between posting reviews), and the slow pace definitely did not help.

Anyway, the first half was awesome, and that's what saves this book. I give it three out of five stars.

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QUOTES:

"Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions."

"In these silences something may rise."

"'You said "God is cruel" the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say "Snow is cold." You knew, but you didn't understand.' He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. 'Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?'"

"Those who do not learn the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat it."

"When a person stops changing, stops feeling, they die."

"How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?"

"In many interviews he had identified himself as a man outraged by death, but that was pretty much the same old big-balls crap he'd been selling throughout his career. He was terrified of death, that was the truth, and as a result of spending his life honing his imagination, he could see it coming from at least four dozen different directions...and late at night when he couldn't sleep, he was apt to see it coming for four dozen different directions at once. Refusing to see the doctor, to have a checkup and let them peek under the hood, would not cause any of those diseases to pause in their approach or their feeding upon him--if, indeed, the feeding had already begun--but if he stayed away from the doctors and their devilish machines, he wouldn't have to know. You didn't have to deal with the monster under the bed or lurking in the corner if you never actually turned on the bedroom lights, that was the thing. And what no doctor in the world seemed to know was that, for men like Johnny Marinville, fearing was sometimes better than finding. Especially when you'd put out the welcome mat for every disease going."

"'Why didn't you kill me like you did that guy back there? Billy? Or does it even make any sense to ask? Are you beyond why?' 

"'Oh s***, we're all beyond why, you know that.'"

"Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid's lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty."

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READING PROGRESS:
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan: 81%

A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller: 32%

Origin by Lew Gibb: 38%

The Regulators by Stephen King: NOW STARTING