Desperation by Stephen King

Desperation, Nevada is a town in need. Desperate need. Because something has been living beneath it while trapped in an abandoned mine shaft, waiting for the chance to escape its prison to exact revenge. Able to take control of human hosts, this entity is about to reign terror on an unsuspecting group of strangers.

Brought together by Desperation’s Sheriff, their fight for survival has only just begun. Facing an evil able to control the very world around them, this unlikely band of survivors are about to battle for their very lives. But David, a young boy abducted by the Sheriff, seems to know what is stalking them.

Helped by Audrey, an employee of the mine where the entity was held, the plan is laid to end the evil once and for all.

Desperation was released almost a decade after the world became aware of another author who shared much of King’s writing style. Richard Bachman was, of course, Stephen King, the writer adopting another pen name to settle an argument. Desperation is a stand alone novel, yet a mirror image of another, The Regulators, written under Bachman.

Desperation is a great horror story with believable characters and a plot that should have made it one of the top reads of the day. But for me, it fell short of the mark. Maybe it was because I read the Bachman version first, the character’s names all shared with the other book.

It just didn’t come together for me, the story sometimes lacking that pull so many of his others do so well. I struggled to finish it and when I did, simply closed the book and moved on to something else. It wasn’t something that created any sort of reaction from me, leaving me instead with a ‘whatever’ feeling.