Thursday, June 9, 2011

Desperation by Stephen King, and The Regulators by Richard Bachman




Have you ever wondered if any of the old sci-fi time warp novels actually have some truth to them? Is it possible for another parallel universe to exist with all of us in it, but playing different roles? Stephen King along with Richard Bachman have written two stories with this idea in mind.

 I would like to stress that these books aren't part of a series, they are two seperate novels that are able to stand completely on their own without the other. It doesn't matter which you read first (I read The Regulators first only because I found it in the library thinking it looked cool), and you don't have to read both, but i suggest you do if you are a King fan.


Richard Bachman's The Regulators 


A few months ago, I was glancing through the Caldwell Library's King collection (not half as good as mine I would like to mention) and I discovered this novel. It was first of all mis-shelved ( I assumed a King fan recognized the pen name and then accidentally placed it back in the King section) and my intention was to place it back where it properly belonged, in the B- section.  But a quick glance at the cover made me take a peek at the first few pages. A few chapters later, I decided to bring it home.

The book takes place in Ohio, on a nice street called Poplar. The whole community is having a happy go- lucky day. The birds are chirping, the sun is shinning, and the nice little paper boy is making his rounds. Well the paper boy was making his rounds until an idiling van decides to shoot the kid into next week. But that's just the beginning of problems on happy go- lucky Poplar street.


Stephen King's Desperation 


When you drive through Nevada, you might remember everyone calling Highway 50 the loneliest highway in America. But for seven individuals( who all happen to drive across the highway at some point in time)their stay in Nevada will be a memorable one. Of course you might remember it too if a serial killing, six-seven foot and three hundred pound cop was chasing you.


Both of these books to me are really cool. I thought it was genius to make two different stories and different scenarios for the same characters. I really can't give away a whole lot, but the "bad guy" is the same in both books. The other characters vary in the books, but if you want to understand more then you got to read them.

I also thought it was genius for the publishers of each book ( Dutton for Bachman's and Viking for King's) to match the covers together. The picture above is the cover for both books (first editions) and when placed side by side, they create one picture. Also the back of each book has a window to see the front cover of the other.

For The Regulators, I give it 4 stars out of 5.

For Desperation, I also give it a 4 out of 5. Both books are great, and both authors deserve kudos for their work.

NOTE* Both books have explicit content in them. Explicit language is used, and there are quite a few scenes where gore and sexual references are mentioned. In Desperation, there are a few scenes dealing with religion.

3 comments:

  1. Richard Bachman is Stephen Kings pen name. He did this so he could publish more books in one year due to laws back then about only being able to release a certain amount of books.

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  2. here's some proof.....
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman

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  3. I placed them separately only because when you read Stephen King's comments on his pen name, he describes it as a person or as another part of him. I thought it would be interesting to view Bachman as another author. To me the writing styles of Bachman and King have huge differences.

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