The Talisman
The brainchild of authors
Stephen King and
Peter Straub, published first in 1984.
The Talisman is a brilliant adventure story, a classic
good vs. evil tale about Jack Sawyer, a young boy whose mother, an aging B-movie
actress is on the run from her late husband's business partner and dying of cancer. The story follows Jack across the country on a quest for a
mysterious object that will somehow save his mother's life and that of her other-worldly counterpart, the
Queen of the Territories.
The Territories is a sort of parallel world to ours that is filled with
magic and mystery. Throughout the novel, Jack "flips" back and forth from our world to the Territories, constantly on the run from the nasty, conniving business partner,
Morgan Sloat and
his Territories counterpart, an equally evil man who awaits the Queen's death so that he may rule.
Jack meets up with several characters in his journeys, in this world and the other, some good and some not so good. One character of particular note is
Wolf, a Territories
creep herder, who becomes a wolf at full moon. Others include
Speedy Parker, a black carnival caretaker who starts Jack on his quest and
Richard Sloat, the son of Morgan, who has no idea who his father really is.
The story has recently been sequelled with the release of
Black House, which takes place roughly twenty years later.