Alte lumi în afară de acestea

The Talisman #3

by Stephen King, Peter Straub, Gabriel Rodríguez (Illustrator)

Finalul monumental al trilogiei TALISMANUL, semnat de Stephen King și Peter Straub, reunește firele narative începute în romanele Talismanul și Casa întunericului, oferind totodată o încheiere destinului lumilor din legendara și îndrăgita serie TURNUL ÎNTUNECAT. În același timp, Alte lumi în afară de acestea poate fi citit și ca un roman de sine stătător, la fel de captivant pentru noii cititori, cât și pentru fanii lui Stephen King.

Alte lumi în afară de acestea spune povestea lui Jack Sawyer, pe care cititorii l-au cunoscut mai întâi la vârsta de doisprezece ani, traversând America și Teritoriile pentru a-și salva mama, iar apoi în Casa întunericului, unde înfruntă un ucigaș de copii și alte întruchipări ale răului.

Grandios, captivant, plin de emoție și umor, Alte lumi în afară de acestea este o aventură spectaculoasă și alertă.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Audiobook, Thriller, Science Fiction, Dark Fantasy

768 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2026

About the author

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

Reviews

[LTJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

​“Other Worlds Than These (The Talisman Trilogy Book 3)” by Stephen King and Peter Straub is one of those special novels you will savor every page of. This was nothing short of exceptional storytelling, bringing both The Talisman and The Dark Tower series to a close.

Speaking of which, here is the complete Talisman trilogy by King and Straub in case you’re interested in reading it:

The Talisman
Black House
Other Worlds Than These

Also, because this does directly tie into The Dark Tower series, I have a special reading order that is highly recommended. I consulted and researched this with librarians, fellow Constant Readers, and those who have conquered The Dark Tower series and lived to enjoy long days and pleasant nights. That list is:

The Stand
The Eyes of the Dragon
Insomnia
Hearts in Atlantis
‘Salem’s Lot
The Talisman
Black House
Everything's Eventual (The Little Sisters of Eluria)
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
Charlie the Choo-Choo
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
Other Worlds Than These

I conquered The Dark Tower book series in February 2026, and it’s the greatest reading experience of my life. I highly recommend reading it this way, but also keep in mind you can read just the seven books of The Dark Tower series and be fine. My extended list will give you a deeper look at the lore, characters, and situations that will make everything make more sense. It’s totally up to you, but this worked tremendously for me, and I cherished every moment as it took me two years to complete my journey.

Before I dive into my horror book review, here are all the trigger warnings I found while reading:

- School shootings
- Violence against children
- Violence against babies
- Rape
- Cancer
- COVID
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Religion
- Leukemia
- Politics
- Homophobic slurs
- Domestic abuse
- Violence against animals (horses and dogs)
- 9/11
- AIDS

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, this was truly one hell of a ride and a bittersweet ending to both The Talisman and The Dark Tower series. All the illustrations here while reading were awesome. It brought back many fond memories of Jack Sawyer, Wolf, Richard Sloat, and so many other characters from The Talisman and Black House. Those illustrations before each chapter added such a nice immersion to everything, especially the ones with some fantastic Easter eggs of these two brilliant universes.

Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but I loved those Easter eggs​! They brought a smile to my face each time, especially with all the great references to one of my all-time favorite book characters, The Gunslinger and his legendary ka-tet. You’ll see what I mean when you get there.

Just like the first two books, this final entry is another tome and slow-burning, but make no mistake about it, it’s so worth the wait. King and Straub did a phenomenal job of building up to some crazy plot twists and mixing in gruesome, brutal horror. Even some of the illustrations were creepy. While this novel has some scary parts, it’s not as terrifying as ​t​raditional horror novels. It’s mostly about catching up with Jack, who’s older and surviving following the events of "Black House,​" once again trying to do what is right in the grand scheme of things.

This novel introduces two crazy villains in Roy Kinneston and Tara Lynne Speckhoffer, whom I truly despised. Their impact not only in America-side but also in Mid-World is insane. King and Straub did a great job of building up all sorts of suspense and tension throughout the story with these two, including a brand-new ka-tet​ for Jack. These new characters were flat-out awesome, especially Mary and Richard, leading to a monumental ending. That climactic race to the end, with everything unfolding into an epic showdown, was s​o much fun.

I didn’t expect what happened at all, and it blew my mind. As a huge Dark Tower fan, I found that it all made sense, tied everything together perfectly, and left me awestruck. I still couldn’t believe what had transpired, but my goodness, this will more than likely be my favorite novel of 2026. It’s an emotional, nostalgic, jam-packed novel that checks all the boxes for me, and even though it’s not as scary as I usually prefer, this was magnificent.

I give “Other Worlds Than These (The Talisman Trilogy Book 3)” by Stephen King and Peter Straub a 5-Star rating out of 5. This is a novel that will be discussed for many years to come, and my goodness, what a way to end the iconic Talisman and Dark Tower series. I loved reading this and enjoyed all the nostalgia, jokes, palavering, ​memorable characters, and the chance to ​spend time with Jack. To have grown with Jack from when he was a kid to adulthood, and now as an older man, was incredible, as this book touches on so many important life topics. Stories, friendships, memories that never vanish, and so much more. This was truly a literary treat that I will never forget.

Right here and now, rest in peace​, Peter Straub. I’m sure he is looking down with a smile, knowing his old friend Steve brought “Other Worlds Than These” to life for us Constant Readers.​​ Thankee-sai for the magic, the monsters, and the memories. May you find your way home across the beam.

[Zach Dionne · Rating 5 out of 5]

His best book in a decade and a half, since 11/22/63. Will write lots more in October. Get caught up, ka-tet. We got a new billy-bumbler.

[Trisha]

OMG I Had NO idea we were getting a Third installment in The Talisman series!
October 2026!!! I'm SO excited!!

[Dave Musson · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

Where to even start with reviewing a new Stephen King book?

The man is such a literary force that he will always attract positive write-ups by the bucketload - particularly when he’s tapping into much-loved older material such as The Talisman saga and the Dark Tower, which he does with Other Worlds Than These. Whether it’s fear of upsetting an artist or, more likely, their PR folk who might be able to offer review copies and interview opportunities, a lot of modern reviews of books, music and cinema simply seem to be as positive as possible.

Now, that’s *not* a preamble for me being about to lampoon this sprawling novel and spend the rest of this review panning it. I am a huge Stephen King fan and I have been pinching myself every day for the last month about the fact that I’ve been able to get an advanced copy of this book and have built a relationship with his UK PR team where that has become a reality. I genuinely couldn’t be more grateful. Having made it to the end of Jack Sawyer’s journey, I’m not entirely sure how to sum up my feelings. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t a massive fan either.

And, in many ways, that’s to be expected - right? I actively disliked The Talisman and have never warmed to it on rereads, while Black House is a novel that I think is fine but that sits in the lower half of my King rankings. So, going back to that setup was always unlikely to strike a chord with me the same way, for example, You Like It Darker did a couple of years ago.

I do have issues with this book, and I’ll get those out of the way first so I can finish on the positives.

I found the pacing to be very slow. Considering that Jack is initially trying to track down his missing friend, then has to battle the tribe of evil, violent, red-headed teenagers - as well as bad Wolfs and slow mutants along the way - before then embarking on a final mission to effectively save Mid-World and *all* worlds…well, I never had much sense of urgency here. The book seemed to plod along and at no point did I reach the end of a chapter and feel like I *had* to keep reading. That energy, that propulsion that drives the final three books of the Dark Tower wasn’t here for this one, so I was never fully able to lose myself in the story.

I also found it difficult to immerse myself in Mid-World, but I accept that this is mainly down to me not being a fantasy reader. I struggled to see what King was trying to paint for us with any great clarity. The illustrations from Gabriel Rodriguez, while brilliant, didn’t actually help as they were far more steam-punk/Mad Max leaning than I’d ever imagined for Mid-World, and only added to my feeling of being in a fantasy world way out of my comfort zone.

Part of the issues I had with never fully being gripped by this book was how some big setpieces took place off-page, only to be relayed later through dialogue. In particular, a battle that throws back to a similar stand off in Calla Bryn Sturgis was something I would love to have read from the front line, not as a report back afterwards. Likewise the fate of an old French Landing pal of Jack’s that we don’t get to see for ourselves, which felt like a shame.

Jack Sawyer aside, the characters did little for me in this story either. The idea of the murderous teenage villains getting into Mid-world and starting a cult was wonderful, a truly brilliant hook, but we barely spend any time with them so it’s difficult to understand their drive or their appeal to the legions of followers they amass during the story. King is usually so good at creating compelling baddies - indeed, some of my favourite parts of The Talisman and Black House are folk like Morgan, Sunlight Gardner, and the Fisherman - it was a surprise that I wasn’t as grabbed by the nasty guys here. Even in last year's Never Flinch, I couldn’t help but be captivated by the villain. Here, I got none of that, and their arc petered out far sooner than I was expecting too.

Jack’s ragamuffin ka-tet also left me cold. They didn’t feel clearly defined to me - I frequently mixed up the male characters - and they didn’t seem like a genuine ka-tet, particularly not with the amount of references to Roland and his legendary posse. As such, when there were losses along the way - and it’s a ka-tet trekking through Mid-World so you knew they wouldn’t all make it, say true - I was left pretty ambivalent. That emotional connection to the core gang that helped drag me to the Tower just wasn’t there…and not even a Billy Bumbler could claw me back in, although I did enjoy seeing Richard take down plunja, and offer observations and silent contributions that Gromit would have been proud of.

The exception was, somewhat to my surprise, Jack Sawyer. I *hated* Jack as a kid in The Talisman. Hated him. My feelings softened a little in Black House, but he was still never going to be in my list of top King protagonists. The older, world(s)-weary version of Jack in Other Worlds Than These I found to be much more engaging and likeable. He is tired, reflective, intelligent, and quietly commanding. He’s a reluctant yet obvious leader, an undeniable gunslinger despite his lack of desire to take on the role, and exuded a subtle strength that I found to be incredibly well-executed.

Some of my favourite moments - just like the other two Sawyer stories - were with Jack in our world. I find him to be at his most compelling while on America-side and especially in this novel. We get that extra danger that he cannot be in our world for very long - that cliffhanger from the end of Black House, where if Jack stays here for too long the wound in his heart opens up and he will quickly fade away, gives such a brilliant sense of threat and immediacy to Jack’s visit that any slight hiccup brings with it the threat of real horror.

While I did get a little tired of just how many times we get reminded that the Territories and Mid-World are the same thing, I enjoyed being back in the world of the Dark Tower - particularly one set enough years after the adventures of Roland that Sai Deschain’s story is one of legend. It’s a post-gunslinger, post-Crimson King Mid-World and, until those pesky redheads rock up, seems to be largely a place of peace and gentle contentment. I really liked knowing that Roland and his gang had done something positive and were rightly lauded for their efforts.

Fans of the Tower will find their eyes spinning from all the references dropped into Other Worlds Than These. Whether it’s the dialect, the return to key locations from previous visits, such as Mejis and the Blasted Lands, and especially a nod to a certain Army experiment from one of King’s best novellas, there is a lot to enjoy here. If anything, I would argue this is more of a Tower novel than a Talisman one. While it would work as a stand-alone novel - indeed, it is being marketed with this very claim - if you’re familiar with Mid-World, if you’ve been to the Tower before, your journey here will be vastly enriched. You’ll soon slip back into ‘yars’ and ‘do-yas’ and wishing people ‘long days and pleasant nights.’

King has said in the build up to publishing Other Worlds Than These that it puts a cap on the Dark Tower stuff as well as Jack's story. Once you make it to the end of this one, you can absolutely see what he means, yet I can't help but feel like he would be able to unearth more from Mid-World without too much effort.

It’s worth mentioning the ending here, without spoilers of course. Personally, I liked it a lot - it was probably my favourite bit of the entire book. It felt like a fitting conclusion to Jack’s story and was beautifully pulled off by King. At the same time, it does echo something he’s done before, so I’ll be fascinated to see what the Constant Reader community thinks once they all make it there themselves. There was also an idea that - unless I completely missed it earlier - gets thrown in right at the very end that I absolutely loved and really wish we had been given more of.

For me, though, the most impressive part of this story is the heart to be found in it, the love for a friend lost.

King has talked in the build-up of how he tried to channel the late Peter Straub ‘like crazy’ in this story. He still sees it as a collaboration, which is why his friend’s name is on the cover too. It was Straub’s idea that sparked this story into life, and you can certainly feel the influence of Straub’s writing on the prose here - admittedly, this is probably where some of the pacing I didn’t care for came from!

But what really stands out is a sense of loss, a sense of regret that King ended up writing this one by himself and not with his pal, like he had the other two entries in this series. Jack is driven by a sense of loss in this story, and clearly wants to complete his journey in a way that would make those dear to him feel proud - and it very much feels like a representation on page of King doing his bit in honour of his friend. Sure, we get deep in the Dark Tower weeds and that is all King, but this is also a satisfying and worthy conclusion to the story that first germinated from a few drinks at Brown’s Hotel in London in 1977. That love and loss is poured directly into the pages of this novel and it is difficult not to be moved, whether you end up liking the book or not.

Even for someone like me who is not a fan of this particular trilogy, it’s difficult not to be impressed at the scope of Other Worlds Than These. More than 40 years on from when he first did it, King gives us another sprawling, epic bit of fantasy than crosses worlds and weaves its own kind of magic across almost 900 pages - no mean feat for a writer pushing 80 who still manages to push out at least one book a year.

Talisman fans will obviously lap this up, I’d wager most Tower junkies will dig it too, and there is still enough here for other Constant Readers to enjoy - even if, like for me, it doesn’t fire on all cylinders. Other Worlds Than These will never come close my list of favourite King books, and I dearly wish more of it had had connected and stuck with me while I ploughed through its pages, but there’s no denying this is still a hefty piece of work that I can see plenty of readers lapping up.

My only true worry with this book is the impression King gives of getting his affairs in order - he even says that ‘it’s time to think about tidying up’ in an afterword that could definitely be described as having a resigned tone to it. For him to proactively say this is not only a wrap on Jack Sawyer but on the Tower too gives me a slight jitter, likewise that afterword, where he reflects on his long career, the joy it has brought him, and the fact that many of his Constant Readers are now getting grey and old themselves (not *all* of them, Stephen!). The pessimist in me, on a dour, miserable day, could be tempted to read that as a farewell note. While I know he can’t go on forever, I really hope he isn’t done just yet. Even with this novel which, ultimately, is not for me, he’s still clearly got a plethora of ideas running through his head, as well as the talent, desire and energy to shape them into another book.

Of course, all things serve the Beam, ka is a wheel…I know that. But here’s hoping we get plenty more. Long days and pleasant nights, Sai King!

[Panda · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Psst. 4 days!

⏳

Audiobook (23 hours) narrated by Patton Oswalt
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Patton Oswalt is an interesting choice of narrators. He is a well known comedian and actor. I have up until this time never have run into a narration by Patton, although he has many although I thought he had many, I had mistaken the books listed under his profile as both author and narrator, instead of author only. I believe he had one book narration which was his memoir, that I link below in my review after finishing the audiobook edition. His awards have come for writing, comedy, and performance rather than narration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patton_...
I have confidence and curiousity at 8pm EST on October 5th, ⊹ ࣪ ˖⏱ ୭˚. ᵎ having to wait for 3am as my pre-order follows PST which is 3 hours behind us, ⊹ ࣪ ˖⏱ ୭˚. ᵎ before I can get my first looks. I'm not sure if I'm going to be sleeping tonight! 🤪✌︎︎

In my pre-reading review I'd like to make notes that The Talisman trilogy is, before even opening it's cover, on it's face one of the most interesting trilogies in this genre, if not across all genres. Why do I think this, you ask? Friendship:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYfe7ZcEcy-/
Stephen King and Peter Straub started on this collaborative effort wayyy back, publishing their first book of the series The Talisman in 1984.
17 years later, they published the second book in the series, Black House
25 years later, 3 years after Peter Straub's passing, they published the final book of the trilogy. This one. The one I await. Watching the clock. ⊹ ࣪ ˖🕰️୭˚. ᵎᵎ👀

While we wait, or while I wait and if you are so inclined to join me, there are a couple of articles of interest I'd like to share.
One from a daughter of an author, an author herself. Words of her father:
https://www.vulture.com/article/peter...
I saved it on waybackmachine, just in case the article is taken down as it's a few years old:
https://web.archive.org/web/202209121...

Another article, this one about Stephen King's and Peter Straub'f friendship. How they met in 1977 and how King finding an email from Staub after his passing motivated him to complete their series:
https://parade.com/news/stephen-king-...
Since I had it open, even though this is a new story, I also saved it to waybackmachine:
https://web.archive.org/web/202603031...

A video from a bit over a decade ago with Stephen King, Peter Straug, Emma Straub, and Owen King:
https://youtu.be/oCYwTuew-ig?si=izLmS...

A sample of the new book, as read by Sai King:
https://youtu.be/6DV_jGLlD5s?si=7Yjsf...

And now we wait....

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. . .⌛⏰👀Waiting🌀↻🔜↻🔜↻

🔑📖✩°｡⋆⸜ 🎧✮🏁▶️ Let's Do This!!!
========
I'm about 33% of the way in. I will admit that I am having a bit of trouble with the narration. It's difficult to go from Frank Muller for the first two books to Patton Oswalt. The voices are just so incredibly different that my mind is having trouble processing.

Sai King himself is thrilled with the narration of the book, as you can hear in this conversation between Sai King and Sai Oswalt:
https://youtu.be/7Nl-chBVaY4?si=x2xCJ...

There's also a new interview out about the book and narration on Esquire. Do note that I did not read the entirety of this interview as, despite me not seeing any warnings, there are spoilers!!! But if you have finished the book, don't care about spoilers or are not interested in this book, you may want to indulge in the interview. I will give both the original link and one I saved on Wayback machine, just in case:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment...
https://web.archive.org/web/202610051...

OK, back to reading.
======

Upon finishing this one I have added myself to the queue for the kindle version of this book at my local library.

Patton Oswalt is an actor, who among his many talents and skills has done voice acting. Narration isn't something that he generally does, although I believe that he narrated his memoir Patton Oswalt: Black Coffee and Ice Water.
One of the characters in this book was written based on Patton Oswalt, which is one of the reasons that Stephen King asked him to narrate this book. Of course, Patton said yes.
With Frank Muller's voice in my ear, it was difficult to not be distracted by the narration enough to enjoy the book.
The narration itself isn't horrible. There's some inconsistency of voice where at times instead of using the chosen character voice, Patton speaks as himself. It's a subtle slip here and there, not such a huge issue. The biggest issue for me is overall tone, cadence, and the feeling behind the basic descriptive narrative. While Patton's voice is clear, at a consistent audio level, without any vocal ticks or erroneous sounds, it doesn't have that deep ominous tone. Patton is blessed with a voice that often sounds cheery, which is great, unless it's backing a dark mid-world horror story in it's final chapter.

I am well aware that many enjoy and have enjoyed the narration, including Sai King himself, as he says in the YouTube video collaboration with Sai Oswalt that I linked above. I am also convinced that this world also holds a special place for Sai Oswalt. I feel some guilt, believe it or not, with not being able to get past his voice. Try as I might, it was a distraction for me. I am hoping that once I receive a print book that I can do an immersive reading and perhaps following along will allow me a fuller experience. That and having gone through it once already, I have a realistic expectation of the audiobook, so hopefully...

The book itself is full of nostalgia right off the jump. At the 30% mark more things start to enter the mix, with the last 30% being packed full of mid-world, both things that those of us who have traveled here over the years wished to see again as well as some that we hadn't yet had the pleasure of until this reading.

There is a lot going on. So many details of people, places, and things. A couple of them had me shocked and exclaiming a certain name in joy as I had not anticipated their presence. What a sweet and very special meeting that has been.

The nostalgia gives this novel a strong 4 stars. In a couple of months or so, when my book comes up in the queue, I will do this all again and add to this review with hopefully a fuller lens.

As a side note, I am disabled. I have been reading Stephen King since the age of 11 or 12. My Nana was a huge Stephen King fan, would purchase the newest book out and it would make it through to all of her daughters, of which she had 5. My mother, being the oldest, was generally first in line and I started sneaking the books when she wasn't reading them. I think I made it through a good 3 or 4 before they realized I was reading adult horror and my Nana made the case for me that they all read them and clearly I could handle reading his books as I had been. A few years ago, due to my disability reading became a chore and then something that I just wasn't able to do anymore. I continued to pick up the newly released books, but I couldn't read them, and then I became aware of Libby and Audible. I started re-reading all of Stephen Kings books approximately in publication order in 2023. I mention this as some may think, if I had an issue with the narration why not just return it and get the hardcover? If only it was that easy! For me, while I generally very much enjoy the world of audiobooks, it is not a choice.

All that being said, if you have a choice, I recommend doing a sample of the audio to see what you think and choose which form best suits your tastes. Whichever you choose, mid-world awaits your presence!

Happy reading!

PS. Thank you for finishing this trilogy, Mr. King. It was an honor to read your words as guided through the ghost of Peter Straub. I like to think of you writing this as Samantha in Ghosts https://youtu.be/03--3HM4YKc?si=_A4_t... just darker. Thank you Mr. Straub for your contributions. It wouldn't have been the same without you.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't see it coming, nor did I even ask for it, but Stephen King and Peter Straub's third book in the Talisman series, "Other Worlds Than These" was an irresistible, and necessary, read.

The journey started for me in 1985, when I first read "The Talisman". The protagonist, Jack Sawyer, was about the same age I was at the time I read it. I immediately fell in love with the book. I would have to wait seventeen years for the sequel, "Black House", but it was worth the wait.


Artwork by Gabriel Rodriguez

"Other Worlds Than These" continues the story of Jack, an older and wiser ex-LAPD detective living fully in the Territories, a.k.a. Mid-World, who occasionally flips back to our world now and then.

The novel starts with very little preamble. It expects one to at least know a little bit about the backstory of Jack, so jumping into this novel without reading the previous two novels may be confusing. It also starts out fast and hard: two homicidal teenagers on a killing spree in Nebraska---eerily echoing the 1957 killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate---have inexplicably flipped to the Territories, leaving a wake of "infected" teenagers who are suddenly becoming homicidal. Jack and his ka-tet are set upon a quest to put an end to the violence, the source of which Jack suspects is the Crimson King.


Artwork by Gabriel Rodriguez

If this is beginning to sound like a Dark Tower novel, it's because it is, which is---to die-hard fans anyway---even more reason for celebration. Unlike previous novels in which King merely teases the reader with Dark Tower easter eggs, this is the most blatant attempt to create a long-awaited sequel to his beloved fantasy series, overlapping with King/Straub's beloved fantasy series.

Straub sadly passed away in 2022, and it's unknown how much he had to do with this final novel. King, in an afterword, says that he and Straub hoped to someday return to the Territories/Mid-World, but those hopes were dashed with Straub's untimely death. With the blessing of Straub's family, King decided to continue the story and complete the third novel.


Alternate cover art for Kindle edition

It's not a perfect book. It drags somewhat in parts, which is partly due to its length (almost 700 pages) and partly due to King's occasional inability to find a way to end his novels. That said, King has done an amazing thing here by combining two of his fantasy worlds and making them one, and then bleeding that world into our world with such glorious and wonderful results.

This book is why fans continue to read---and love---Papa King.

[iain jones · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

A much anticipated book from @stephenking .. Thankyou @Stephenking and the late Peter Straub for getting me back in touch with Jack Sawyer and Mid World.
Also Wrapping up The Dark Tower series and the KaTet

I don’t want to say too much as it will take away the enjoyment for fellow readers..
Remember there are other worlds than these and other readers !

Thankyou also to Gabriel Rodriguez for the fantastic Airwork.

[Edgarr Alien Pooh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I needed to be written. The third installment of the Talisman series, written solely by Stephen King but rightfully acknowledging Peter Straub (R.I.P) as co-author on the cover.

Although, I must add here that my book has 866 pages, not the 608 listed on Goodreads.

Other Worlds Than These predominantly plays out in the territories, or mid-world. There are crossovers to current-day America but not nearly as much as the first two of the series. This book is the one that finally shows us that the territories of the Talisman books are in fact the same world as mid-world of the Dark Tower. And it does this through echoes, in fact the whole book is an echo.

Roland Deschain, Black House, Oy, Crimson King, Talisman, Dark Tower, Richard, Queen of B's, Todash Space, Morgan of Sloat, Beams, Ka-tet, Gilead, Wanda Kinderling, Speedy Parker........ all of these from the Dark Tower series and the Talisman series are echoed in this book and brought together without a perfect meld.

There are still many unanswered questions, some will probably never be answered. As always, the evil side, be it the Crimson King and the Man in Black of the Dark Tower, Randall Flagg in The Stand or Pennywise in It are all about bringing down the beams that secure all of the worlds. Roland Deschain set out to conquer the Crimson King and protect the six beams, but discordia is so much closer in Other Worlds Than These as there are only two remaining beams. So what happened to the others?

Do not attempt to read this book before reading the first two books in the Talisman series AND the entire Dark Tower series. In a lot of ways, if you do, it won't make sense to you, but worse, you just won't enjoy it as much. We all love the Stephen King Easter eggs in all of his books, this one is just one big echoing Easter Egg that you will appreciate.

[Gyalten Lekden · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Ka is a wheel, and you don’t get to retire from going on mythic quests. At first glance this novel feels much more like a Dark Tower novel than a Talisman novel. But once you set Jack on a quest, he may not be chasing the man in black or following the path of the beam to a mythical tower, but he is exploring the idea of what it means to be a hero, and echoes and reflections of young jack’s cross-country journey fall alongside his current expedition. Instead of journeying to save his own private world, in the form of his dying mother, he is instead saving all worlds against the creeping entropy of Discordia, and ka continues to roll.

King has created a wonderful crew of characters that move in and out of Jack’s journey, and he manages to always have intimate, personal moments shine through the expansive and grandiose undertaking. The story is somewhat episodic in nature, again similar to the first Talisman novel, and that allows for a steady pacing that keeps the reader engaged throughout, eagerly waiting to see how to overcome the immediate problem while still keeping the bigger picture in mind. King explores what it means for cruelty to be infectious, and how is most at risk, who is unprotected, and while an ungenerous reading will want to see a bunch of good-for-nothing teens being saved by the heroic Boomer what feels like the more appropriate reading is observing the youth being failed to be protected by the older generations, and therefore being susceptible to corrosive influences. There is no singular antagonist in this story, and instead it shows that humanity is something that needs to be not just fought for but maintained, practiced and cultivated regularly.

Look, is King fast and loose with some of the magical/mythical elements of Midworld, just giving a little exposition to explain why the rules, as we have come to understand them, are maybe different now than they were in previous books? Sure. But also, there are only two beams standing, time and reality are in constant slippage, what do you expect? Everything done feels in service to a larger narrative and not just literary convenience or laziness, and so I didn’t mind a bit when King tweaked things here and there. He manages to bring Jack’s story full circle and complete the Talisman saga while also making the dark Tower feel even more mythic and complete at the same time. He cares about responsibility, devotion, love, family, and what it means to embody all these things. It is a story about love and loss, about reconciling yourself with the choices you have made and the circumstances forced upon you, never giving up but accepting that we are sometimes given enormous tasks that seem impossible, and yet there is no one to undertake them but us, so we can undertake them with grace or abscond to self-cherishing and self-pity, which serve no one and nothing but Discordia.

It is hard to take this novel just on its own, because it is part of something so much larger than itself. Of the three Talisman novels I may still find a favorite in _Black House,_ but this is far more ambitious, and it largely succeeds. The reading experience felt all-encompassing and was an absolute delight, and a worthy conclusion to the saga.

[Joshua Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

While there were a few slow parts, especially in the third act, this is King's best work in many years. This book had as many-if not more-connections to the Dark Tower series than the previous Talisman books, and I was here for it. And King's method of recapping the first Talisman novel worked really well (and could allow some readers to skip that incredibly slow novel). To be fair, I did feel most of the secondary characters not up to King's standards (I lacked an emotional connection to them all), and most of the humor fell flat for me, but overall, I really enjoyed my time in Mid-World.

[Char · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

There were so many Easter eggs I know I didn’t catch all of them.
I’ve ended this journey and closed the circle, but Ka is still a wheel. Long days and pleasant nights, and thankee Sai King.

[Scott · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Background – Stephen King and Peter Straub published “The Talisman” way back in 1984, and that followed with the sequel “Black House” in 2001. Now, following Straub’s passing in 2022, King took his ideas and suggestions for a third book and finished the trilogy with 2026’s “Other World’s Than These”. There is 42 years separating the first and last book in this trilogy.

Length-wise - my hardcover is 691 pages and featuring 38 beautiful black-and-white illustrations by artist Gabriel Rodriguez (who previously worked with King, providing drawings for his previous book “Fairy Tale”.

Important note - this is another one of King’s books where his protagonists fight against the evil characters leaking out of the alternate worlds of his “Dark Tower” universe into ours. “The Talisman” Territories are directly connected and better known as “Mid-world” of that universe.

Plotline – This is the last story in the saga of Jack Sawyer (as far as we know).

In “The Talisman” Jack is a young boy who finds himself in the Territories, a parallel universe, while trying to save his mother from a debilitating illness. He ends up finding the talisman, which he used to save both her and her territories “twin”, the queen, from an army of evil forces.

In “Black House” Jack is an adult and retired homicide detective, battling suppressed memories of his experiences in the Territories. He is pulled into the hunt for a demon possessed killer that targets children while being able to travel back and forth from the Territories.

In “Other Worlds Than These” Jack is now an older 57 years of age, trying to live his life under the radar and stay out of trouble in the small town of Dezi in Mid-World. He is dealing with loss (but you will have to read the book to find out why) while running errands for Governor Youngblood that involve traveling back and forth to Earth to buy books and Coca-Cola.

However, his usual routine is interrupted by what appear to be two separate threats that may actually be connected in some strange way.

One occurs when Jack is visiting Nebraska on a supply run for the governor, and discovers that a local teenage couple go on a surprising murder spree without any explanation other than their actions seem to be inspired by the famous real-life killers – Charles Starkweather and Cari Ann Fugate - back in the late 1950’s. Not only have they not been caught and seemed to disappear, Jack’s close friend, Sheriff Dale Gilbertson, has gone missing while searching for them.

The other threat is even worse – one that comes with a greater risk of damage and destruction. Governor Youngblood has sent Jack to investigate a mysterious new disturbance taking place out near the Blasted Lands. No one can explain what is other than some kind of powerful force bigger than a tornado that is growing physically bigger. The locals call it the Gullet or Gash and anyone getting too close find themselves getting pulled in and taken away.

Before he knows it, Jack finds himself in a race against time to not only find his missing friend and two crazy killers, but to try and stop an unknown dark force that is expanding in Mid-World and threatening all of the other worlds including Earth. Will Jack be able to find the connection between the two that is driving to bring Discordia back to rule all of the worlds in darkness and destruction in what is looking like will be his last stand?

Thoughts and Reflections – I have a lot of thoughts flowing through my head as I finished this book, and I will do my best to hit on the big ones.

The good news is King, using Straub’s input, delivered a winner that included his usual amount of horror and fantasy/Sci fi elements, pop culture references, and reflections on our political challenges and broken systems. Standard King. But more importantly, although this novel is not perfection, it is awfully close to hitting it in in several ways. It has the never-give-up heart of Rocky Balboa and the reflection provoking elements of Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Road Not Taken” (or in this case, “the one less traveled”.

I could talk about all of the things I enjoyed – and there were many – like the Jack, his state of mind and motivations; the supporting characters (I was especially drawn to Mary and the bumbler, Richard); the plotting and many key scenes that contained really cool moments, especially in the first half of the novel were especially strong, and how this one felt like King’s earlier novels when he was in his prime and hitting them out of the ballpark.

I could admit to some parts that slowed things down a bit, a lack of full explanations regarding the Gullet and mysterious items Jack and his ka-tet were transporting, and elements of the ending that will take a while to settle in and feel more accepting over time.

Instead, I am going to focus on the how the book made me feel…

More importantly, this is a reflective and melancholy novel. Bruce Springsteen’s home recorded album “Nebraska” and his “Deliver Me from Nowhere” biopic focusing on his period of struggling with depression both kept entering the back of my mind while I was reading this. I have been reading Stephen King since I was in my late teens (yes, I was one that proved his motto copied from the Catholic Church – “if you get them while they’re young, they’re yours forever”) and this book feels like its serving multiple purposes. It’s closing out “The Talisman” trilogy for King and his good friend, Peter Straub, as well as its important connection to King’s “Dark Tower” universe - his own version of Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere that came after.

Both of those are important, but for me, there was another purpose, one even more personal. This felt like a story for us older people who had been with King since the beginning of his career. For his avid readers that have been following his “Dark Tower” series and many other stories that ranged from children with incredible powers to an innocent man in prison to a man who is given the gift (or curse?) to try and stop President Kennedy’s assassination (my personal favorite). This book felt like a last journey not only for Jack, but for King, and each one of us personally. We are the target audience for this and it felt personal. Really personal. I found myself reflecting on so many different aspects and moments in my lifelong journey as an Uncle Stevie reader and remembering that special feeling that when he’s hitting in all gears what a fantastically special experience it is to read his books. It’s the most magical escape I can think of.

This is not meant to be sad or bittersweet. I’m sure that we’ll see a few more books from King before he’s done. But he’s getting olde, and unfortunately so are we. Yep, but that’s life, man. I get it. I guess what I am saying is that this novel in particular really hit me with the realization that we’re nearer to the end than the beginning of the journey, and I just simply want to appreciate it and treat it like the high note it is if it turns out to be one his last books as he continues his self-proclaimed “tidying up” work.

Other Notes – The audiobook was narrated by Patton Oswalt with an afterward read Stephen King himself.

In September 2025, King announced that he would have a live conversation with Emma Straub, the daughter of Peter Straub, in November 2026. Within two hours all available tickets were sold out, and a free livestream of the conversation is planned to be available for fans to view on YouTube.

Overall – For me, “Other Worlds Than These” was better than “Black House” which was better than “The Talisman”. It was my favorite of the three and a damn good worthy read. You can choose to agree or disagree. The beauty of it is that as Shakespeare is credited with “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”. Amen to that and thank you Uncle Stevie for bringing me joy as a reader.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy The Talisman or Black House. In fact they are my most actively disliked King books. So maybe you think I shouldn't have read this, but I remain a Constant Reader and it was my right. It's not like it's another Holly book which I won't ever touch. Besides, I remained hopeful. There was no reason not to hope that this book could have broken the streak: it's been over 20 years since the last, it has a single author (King wrote it after Straub's death, incorporating ideas Straub has contributed), there was nothing about the book's foundation or potential that made it any more or less likely to be a bad read for me than any other King book. And it started off well enough, there was plenty of interesting story potential, and the opening illustrations gave it a rad Borderlands vibe:



And it was Borderlands-like, complete with futuristic ATVs with mounted guns, sci-fi type guns, travel across blasted landscapes, and psycho mobs to fight. Except in the Borderlands games the psychos have more personality and better lines of dialogue, and Claptrap is ten times funnier than any of the painful attempts at humour by this book's characters.

The foundation of the book was interesting: serial killers mirroring Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate's 1950's nihilistic murder spree. Sure, this was already done in Black House, where the bad guy drew comparisons to Albert Fish, but that's okay, that can end up as the Talisman series' theme even though it only started in the second book. Unfortunately, King forgot to give the killers in Other Worlds any personality, or have them interact with the main character at all, or make them relevant at all to the main story. Instead of any of that, King just blows them up half-way through the book, and as it turns out their entire existence was meaningless. The killers could have been eliminated from the book entirely without affecting the outcome. But at least the reader has the experience of random truckers reading the Wikipedia page about the original killers to the main character.

So yep, the theoretical main villains are fridged, but they have good company inside that fridge: Jack's wife, whose only purpose in Black House was insta-love for Jack, and who died before this book started so Jack can feel sad and aimless and provides an excuse for Jack to read a summary of The Talisman to the IRL reader as the book progresses. Also Jack's best friend Dale, who has no dialogue and only appears on-page to be killed to give Jack something to feel mad about, so mad that he blames a bunch of random possessed psychos and is glad when they die even though he knows fully well they are children possessed by an evil force and it's not their fault at all.

Other than all that, the only motivation Jack has to do anything is that he is told to do so by someone else. He is told to go investigate the Bad Thing because ... no known reason, except that later the person who told him go is suggested to know more than anyone else, including the reader, does, and no we are never given any more information than that. He later puts together a band of losers, sent off with literally Lord Farquaad's "Some of you may die..." speech and they're told to take A THING to the Bad Thing and throw it in, which they do without knowing anything about what A THING is but hey, we are told that the Bad Thing will grow and destroy the whole world—oh no, it's actually all worlds! All of creation across multiple dimensions will be destroyed! For real, I mean it, I said so. Believe me! Also maybe the Crimson King is in there, I dunno but it's possibly I guess?—so sure, let's spend the second half of the book doing that.

All of this could still be fine if the journeys to places and events along the way were interesting, but they were not. I cannot recall the number of boring campfire scenes and days spent traveling where nothing worth reading about happens. There are ostensibly some hazards along the way, but ... they're all so lame! Like, the caravan reaches a bridge across a river. Will they all make it across? ... Yes they did. They reach another bridge. How about this time? Oh, the tension ... yeah they make it again, it wasn't even hard. One time maybe they could have run into trouble and would have had to scramble to find a way to save the last vehicle from falling into the river, but Jack's handy "intuition" made them set up the solution to this problem in advance so when it happened they just did what was planned and there was no problem. That is just good storytelling.

There were enemies along the way. They were just so generic each time. Like, oh no, redheaded psychos with guns. And then, oh no, wolfmen with guns. Then more redheaded psychos, and so on. None of these encounters were interesting, or presented effective threats, or had anything but the expected outcomes. They were just there for the sake of an uninspired story beat during an uninspired travel sequence.

That's a big part of why Other Worlds Than These is the most James Patterson-like book of anything King has ever produced. It's written in uncharacteristically short subchapters, chunks of story which mostly fail to advance anything, be it plot or character. Another part is the sheer meaninglessness of story elements and characters that receive minimal setup which leads to no worthwhile payoff. We are told early in the book that Jack has a ka-tet of sorts in the losers club back in his Mid-World home town, but most of them aren't seen on-page until the book's second half, "Part II", in which they each receive less than 1/100th the development that Roland's ka-tet members did even just in The Drawing of the Three. They're clearly designed merely to be cannon fodder, and thus when they get knocked off it's of no consequence to the reader, and not even to their fellow characters, really, who shrug and move on.

But this book's not meant to be about the side characters anyway, right? It's about Jack. Jack Sawyer, "a beloved and enduring King protagonist" according to the book jacket, so beloved that The Talisman is ranked 47th out of all of King's books in number of Goodreads ratings (Black House is 67th). Jack as a character leaves a lot to be desired. His entire personality is free-association: he exclusively responds to things with snippets of old songs, memories of movies, or turns of phrase. Eighty percent of the book's dialogue is Jack speaking in colloquialisms that the listener has no chance of understanding. Count for youself how many times this conversation plays out:

Jack: "Reference to thing outside your lived experience."
Other person: "I don't understand that."
Jack: "Never mind."

Jack has lived in Mid-World for the past 15 years but has clearly never made the slightest effort to modify this habit so that the person he's talking to has a chance of knowing WTF he's saying. Even when speaking with Americans that he knows come from 1976 he insists on frequently referencing things that happened later, triggering the same dialogue as above. Surely his beloved Sophie would have, at some point, blasted his ass for doing this constantly; it would have had to drive her nuts the longer it went on. Anyway, that's his entire personality.

It's hard to enjoy a book when it keeps pulling me out of it to question things. Like, clear copy editing errors, as in events happening out of order, or characters referencing things that are fully outside their frame of reference. You can see my book updates to get a taste of the many times I was forced to stop and question the book. I have not had a reading experience like this since The Silent Patient. I didn't set out to nitpick the book. I would have loved to just go along for the ride, but as someone who actually reads the words on the page, when later words seem to contradict the earlier words, I have to stop and consider it. I can and have moved on from such things at times, but the sheer frequency of such things in this book made this impossible. I was shocked—shocked!—when in the back matter King thanked the copy editor, who he says caught a billion things. Could they maybe have caught a billion and five instead? Really I shudder to think what state the manuscript was in before the copy editor got their hands on it. And it's unusual for King to thank all the editing team in his books; I don't know if this is his age at work leading him to greater public gratitude, or if he just struggled with this book in particular, or if there are some age-related cognitive changes at work, or if it's just that writing Epic Fantasy is not his thing (and the Dark Tower series was a one[seven]-time lightning flash) and he was simply out of his element. Whatever the reasons, it was a challenging reading experience.

Humour in this book ... yeesh. There's a clown character. He is not funny. The other characters don't think he's funny. But after he's gone, the other characters adopt his catchphrase and repeat it many, many times throughout the rest of the book, either in memory of him or, more often, it's just Jack's free-association personality at work. I would say that the effect is like, if you had a friend who constantly used, "That's what she said," and then the friend died and those who knew him then often say, "That's what she said," in his place and get teary eyed about their loss. Except it's more apt to imagine that friend saying "six sevennnnn...." all the time and now you also say "six sevennnn..." all the time in his place and consider it homage.

I expect the clowning was meant to be an "echo" of Eddie from Roland's ka-tet, just as many things in the book are considered "echoes" of things from Jack's prior adventures and/or the Dark Tower books. Except that whole theme goes nowhere, it's just an idea that's talked about but affects literally nothing, other than as an excuse to give Jack magic gun aiming prowess out of nowhere. I really didn't mind that a series that started before the conception of the Dark Tower was then shoehorned into the Dark Tower multiverse, but I found it lazy and unworthy to try and paint Jack and his pack of target practice dummies as an echo of any kind of Roland and his ka-tet. The whole book utterly lacks the gravitas and story heart of the series it tries to emulate. It depends on telling without the showing to help the reader feel that the thing being told is true, especially when it comes to the book's central threat.

And as for the ending ... I won't spoil it, but the goddamn LAST PAGE of this book .... I mentioned that the entire second half of the book is Jack and his so-called ka-tet transporting a Mystery Thing to the Bad Thing, because some rando told them to. Along the way the Mystery Thing gradually changes and can, like, heal people, whatever. But it remains a Mystery Thing. Then, on the very last page, it is revealed that the Mystery Thing is Actually This Thing. And Actually This Thing is a real thing. A real thing that was completely materialized out of nowhere and crammed into the book on the very last page, for reasons (?). And it was entirely WTF. I sat there just staring at the page and rereading that last passage trying to make sense of why by all the gods King would insert this thing in this way. It's baffling! The easiest narrative comparison to make would be if the main character woke up and realized it was all a dream, but it was way worse than that. After a while of making confused puppy face at the book and various inarticulate sounds, I had to pass the book to my wife and tell her to read just that last paragraph, in which it was stated that Mystery Thing is Actually This Thing. She read it, she frowned, she asked, "Was Actually This Thing ever mentioned in the book before now?" and I said, "No!!!" because it was not.

Maybe you've read Holly. If you haven't, look over the negative reviews and you'll see a lot of complaints about King shoehorning social politics into that book. Disregarding whether or not any single reader agrees with the politics, I think many readers would agree that the way they were applied in that book was anti-immersive and not a good way to tell a story (and King always says: STORY is the most, maybe the only, important thing in his books). Take every application of social politics in that book, roll them all up into a ball, don't bring up any hint of them beforehand and then shove them all onto the final page of Other Worlds, and you'll approximate the reading experience I had.

Like, seriously King. What the fuck was that.

I could often feel King's auto-writing at work here, just churning out association after association, repeating details and phrasing over and over again, repeating story beats. So many details felt flubbed or loose or flat-out wrong, if it wasn't for the author's acknowledgments I would have thought no one applied editing passes to his books, as it has often felt for decades. And worst of all, for all that King insists that finding a good story is the most important part of writing, this was not a good story. There were potentially good story elements, many of which were Straub's ideas and Dark Tower "echoes", but King failed to make a good story out of it this time.

One last WTF thing I can't stop thinking about: the fat family chapter. Jack, in his Mid-World travels, meets a fat man, so fat that he needs manservants to push on his butt so he can get into a bus, with a family so fat that Jack is sure their front porch must be reinforced for them all to stand on it together. And then the daughter of the family, fattest of them all, tweaks Jack's nipple and he gets an involuntary hardon, har-de-har because he would never be attracted to her because she's so fat, right? And then later he has to fight her and she's trying to fuck him and he has a boner again even though she's so disgustingly fat and trying to kill him, he just can't help it. Like ... what the hell, man? My wife's evergreen comment about Stephen King is that he always adds weird sex stuff to his books and, well, yeah, weird sex and fatphobia such that it's really hard to imagine what he was thinking when he wrote all of this.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far from his best, but one of his best in a long while. No Holly, thank Gan! A decent if somewhat lackluster completion of the Talisman and Dark Tower series. It would be best if the reader is familiar with these. It’s been awhile since I’ve read them but the memories came flooding back like remembering old friends.

[M.C]

Desperately excited....

[Geoff · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

I hated the ending just like I hated the ending of the gunslinger series. Other than that this is a very good story

[Dan · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Apart from some minor grievances, I loved this. I'm a Tower junkie for something like 27 years at this point and this scratched a lot of my persistent itches. Not perfect by any means but a lot of fun.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

The magic is still alive, say thankya Sai King.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I'll just nitpick a few things. Terms and sayings that have been said ad nauseam in previous King novels. Shitting in one hand, etc, was perhaps slightly overdone. Same for a few other old sayings that may get pulled off if we're being a stickler for correct time periods, but personally, if they should have come back in a book like this, I would have preferred new ones from those periods instead of just these glorious returns from already published works in the same series.

That's pretty much all I have to say about this that is bad.

As for what is good?

MUAHAHAHAHAHAH let me tell you the ways. This is not just a novel that goes full circle to the Talisman, one of my favorite early King novels and one that really turned me onto Straub in the first place, but it fully strengthens and deepens all three novels completely. I loved the second much more than the Shining's sequel, for example.

But more than any of that, this novel is a pitch-perfect companion, perhaps a coda, or definitely a different pitch to the Dark Tower series. The whole shades upon shades aspect was brilliant. As was the shadows of words and worlds and people. Roland and company didn't show up, but Mid World absolutely did. In spades and spades.

Chef's kiss.

And as for the red heads? I'm one, but I'm neither a teenager nor someone who fakes it by dying my hair in blood, so I guess I've saved myself from being a nasty red-headed stepchild and servant of Discordia. Thankee sai. Mauahahahaha

Who is this book for?

Any fan of King's wide universe and especially of the Beams, the Dark Tower, and the Wheel. Period.

It is a great capstone, if you will, and a beautiful tribute to Straub's investment. (Will be missed. 2022.)

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am just stunned. This was classic King. A proper review will follow soon.

[Rok Schlager]

Enough already, throw a contest for an early copy...have to get my hands on this!

[Matthew Lauderdale · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a colossal disappointment. I normally don't purchase new King books because his books over the past 10ish years have been really hit or miss and get them from the library instead, but I enjoyed The Talisman and Black House quite a bit, so I was excited to hop into Other Worlds Than These. I can only hope that it's true that there are other worlds than these, and that there exists a world where King is still able to write high quality works, but so far I've been mostly disappointed.

To preface, I am a massive Stephen King fanboy and have read all of his books at least once but I've also reread many of his books as well, and I consider him to be one of my top three favorite authors.

I am going to go off on what seems like a tangent, but I promise that it's relevant to this book and my experience with it. Reading this book reminded me a lot of watching The Force Awakens or The Matrix Resurrections. Both movies were built on extremely solid foundations with their respective franchises. The original Star Wars and Matrix trilogies had great ideas, characters and character development, worldbuilding, and plots.

With Star Wars, we had the threat of the evil empire who created the Death Star that was capable of destroying entire planets and it was up to our heroes to stop the bad guys. Then The Force Awakens rolls around and the (definitely *not* the Empire) First Order creates (definitely *not* the Death Star) Starkiller Base which is just like the Death Star from the OG trilogy but it shoots FIVE lasers instead of just one, which means it's FIVE times as cool right? For myself, when watching The Force Awakens the predominant thought in my head was "This seems a little familiar..." while the movie was crafted to essentially retell the fundamental story from A New Hope. And meanwhile all of the imagery just keeps reminding you of how awesome the original movie was, making you question why this exists in the first place.

The Matrix Resurrections did all of this in an even more egregious way. Set decades after the conclusion of the final movie of the original trilogy, apparently the peace between the machines and humans has come to an end and, yep, you guessed it, we're going to rehash a lot of fundamentals from the original movies. But where The Force Awakens had completely original images, The Matrix Resurrections literally plays scenes from the originals in the background, constantly reminding the viewer of how awesome things used to be. This, again, forces the question "Why does this even exist?"

Other Worlds Than These follows a similar track in that it is *loaded* with references and callbacks to The Talisman and Black House (which makes sense since this is book three in a trilogy) but also the entire Dark Tower saga. Honestly, this book could even be considered Dark Tower #8 with where the story goes, but that is a massive negative for me. For me, The Dark Tower could be a mixed bag at times, but still one I overall enjoyed and I am rereading. The Dark Tower had this crazy and interesting world (sometimes maybe a little too weird). Roland, Susanna, Eddie, and Jake were great characters because they were built up well in the first three books and so the reader knows them intimately with how they would act or react to situations, and so becomes invested in their journey. The ka-tet's quest was interesting because it involved trying to stop all of reality from unraveling and the mechanics of this quest were pretty out there and off the wall. Because of these, even when the quality dropped in the series, there was at least still enough to carry you through the end.

Which brings me to the question: why does Other Worlds Than These exist? I know King says that he and Peter Straub had the general idea over a decade ago about the roving gangs of marauding teenagers wreaking destruction through the Territories (Mid-World) but that doesn't excuse the plot. In this book, Jack's character is easily the weakest it's been portrayed throughout the trilogy. I just never felt invested in him or cared about him or his quest. A big part of this being that *we* *have* *already* *done* *this* *before*. Jack needs to stop these gangs because, without getting into the nitty gritty, if they continue doing what they're doing it will lead to "the destruction of the world, and all worlds." Wasn't that literally the point of the Dark Tower series? Why are we doing this again? To make it even more blatant, there are a ridiculous amount of callbacks to Roland, Susanna, Eddie, and Jake, with the worst literally making comparisons to Jack's companions to them. Everytime I saw a reference to the Dark Tower series or even the other two books in this series, I was just reminded how much better those were than this. Frequently throughout the story Jack will read an excerpt from his journal that will describe events from The Talisman. When I'd read these I'd think, oh yeah that scene was awesome, etc. And then I'd be yanked back to the sad reality that is this book.

I think when it comes to my beef with Jack's character in this book, my biggest grievance is the stakes of the plot. It's too big, especially considering this has already happened in this universe. The Talisman and Black House worked because they were way more intimate. In The Talisman, Jack is fighting to save his mother. In Black House, Jack is fighting to save children in the town where he lives. There's very little introspection here; I think one of King's greatest strengths as a writer is his character development. I'm currently in the middle of rereading IT and it's almost shocking that these books were written by the same author. There is a noticeable drop in quality here, and it's just sad because I've seen him at the top of his game. This book is very plot driven, tons of action, and because of this I never got attached to any of the side characters. To compare these to the original ka-tet felt almost insulting.

I'll be interested to see how public reception to this is once more time has passed and more people read it. As of right now, I think I'm in the minority opinion here. I just want King to write things that have a deep impact on me, not things that feel like a cash grab for fans of another series.

[Becky · Rating 0.5 out of 5]

Look, I am well aware of the fact that I finished this like 13 seconds ago and am skipping over books that have been sitting on my Currently Reading shelf for months already waiting for me to write a review for them, but, yeah. I got things to say and I need to say them TODAY, OK?

There will be spoilers. If you don't want to see them, turn back now.

First things first: I AM the audience for this book. I grew up reading King. I consider The Talisman one of my favorite books of his. I loved Black House, despite it being QUITE different from The Talisman. I am a huge Dark Tower fan. So huge that I have multiple Dark Tower tattoos. I have read the Dark Tower series, The Talisman, and Black House multiple times each.

This book should have been a piece of cake for me to love. I wanted to love it, despite not having enjoyed anything King has written for several years now. It should have felt like returning home, and seeing beloved friends again after years apart. And I know, I am dead fucking CERTAIN, that this is what King wanted for this book, as hard as he tried to force it into being just that... but it was not that. Instead, it was like returning home after a long absence to discover the your friends redecorated your house in 70's puke-greens and yellows, and then they took your TV before they left town. Yeah, you're home, but it's not the one you recognize, and the people you thought you knew and loved were kinda shitty.

This was just tedious. So fucking boring and tedious. I lost track of the number of times I sighed and rolled my eyes wishing that he would just GET ON WITH THE STORY ALREADY. I'm no fan of Peter Straub's - I have attempted two of his own books, and DNF'd both of them - but I find myself truly wondering whether this would have felt more like the story I had wanted and hoped for had he actually been involved in the writing of it. King wrote this at 78 years old based off of a letter Straub wrote him with a story idea... and honestly, it should have had a statute of limitations. Someone should have taken King's key(board)s away by now. But because he's THE Stephen King, they just keep letting him go on and on, writing nonsense like this because people will buy it. (I am not said people. I borrowed this from the library like the suspicious ass King reader I am now. No more auto-buys for me.)

So let me take my own advice and get on with it. We pick back up with a fifty-seven year old Jack, now living in a Mejis (yes that one) suburb called Dezi. The year America-side is 2026, but the Mid-World TIMELINE is long enough down the road that the events of the Dark Tower have passed into myth and legend, and Roland and his Ka-tet are memorialized in stories and statuary. This is important, you see, because Jack needs to be the second-coming-of-Roland. And he can't be that if the events of the Dark Tower series are too fresh and new (and SOME MIGHT SAY ON-FUCKING-GOING, per Coda, and Ka is a wheel... but I digress). Time moves all weirdlike in Mid-World/Territories/Whatever. I'd say it's like Jeremy Bearimy time, but it's more like it's whatever King needs it to be at the moment. The dot over the I in King is "forever". (Or just feels like it.)

When we reconnect with Jack, he's all morose over the loss of his wife, who passed away a hand-wavy amount of time ago. But, I mean, who cares, she's not relevant, she only exists to function in the story as a reminiscence tool for Jack, and to remind the reader that Jack was Consort to the Shadow Queen. Seriously, not like 10 pages into the book I was annoyed that she was asking him what he wanted for dinner and he was like "it doesn't matter". This was immediately before I realized that he was speaking to her "ghost" in his head, and yet STILL HERE WE ARE with King and his wife as domestic fairy nonsense - despite HER being a freaking Queen (Shadow or no), and he being her common ass husband/consort. Even in his MEMORIES/imaginary conversations she was only there to serve him. Dafuq. (Side note - I actually took a Kindle note after the second or third time of him remembering telling Sophie something "after they made love", because apparently they never talked to each other outside of after sex and what do you want for dinner?. SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.)

ANYWAY - Jack gets sent on this mission to America-side to pick up some goodies for the local bigwig, and this then turns into a Whole Ass Thing (tm). When he gets to America-side, he learns that two teenagers are going on a murder-spree a la Charles Starkweather and Caril Anne Fugate in 1957. (57 and 57... ECHOES! Write that down. It'll be on the test.) (Oh, and if you also wrote down "Black House plot redux", you get extra credit.)

OF COURSE (because OF FREAKING COURSE), Jack's good pal Dale Gilbertson is the one on the case, and he's missing. Blah blah blah, Jack flip-flops a couple times while trying to complete his mission for Bigwig guy and try to figure out what is going on with his friend, generally causing suspicion and weirdness with the locals, and in short order learns that his friend is dead...ish. Somehow, those two crazy kids came through to Mid-World/Territories-side, bringing a kidnapped Dale with them, and left him for the wimpies, excuse me wympies, aka vampires... because... sure? BUT! Do not be confused with the vampires we met in The Dark Tower series, because these are not like them. Neither the Salem's Lot type that Father Callahan met and failed to defeat, NOR the type he is later turned into in the Dark Tower series, NOR the Grandfathers. Dale is turned into a zombie, basically. Mindless, hungry, undead. Jack sends him on to the clearing, and that plotline is done and though they are referenced again a couple times, we never see vampires again. I think we're at like 2.3% of the book? Gotta save room for all that travelling that's to come. They don't call him Travellin' Jack for nothing!

Speaking of travelling. Part of Jack's mission is to investigate the Great Gorge/Gullet/Gash thing. On the first trip there, he just breeeeeeeezes on through. There in 15 minutes, or so it feels. But then later, when he has to get there to STOP it, it takes 1.8 billion years. OR SO IT FEELS. Honestly, this book felt like it was trying to recreate the entire trek from the Beach with the Doors to the Tower in one book... in real time.

And look, I said above that The Talisman is among my favorites of King's books. I truly do love that book. And in it, Jack travels between worlds, and across the entire North American continent from coast to coast, in a single book. He forms a ka-tet, of sorts, he encounters obstacles and challenges and traps, he moves MADDENINGLY SLOWLY at times. But it felt like it made sense for the story it was, and for the characters that we were meeting and learning about and growing to care for.

THIS BOOK stuck the Dark Tower series and The Talisman and Black House in a blender, pureed the shit out of it, strained it out, and all that was left was long stretches of travel time, and Mid-World lingo, and not much else.

Jack mentions his "ka-tet" (of sorts) early on, but we only meet two of them when he initially sets out. This jokester is supposed to be the New Eddie Dean - wisecracking and unserious - except... that's NOT who Eddie Dean was. Eddie cracked jokes and was sarcastic, sure, but it served a purpose. That was part of who he was. It was a tool in his arsenal to help him help his ka-tet. He was also insecure, an addict, and overcame those things to become a Gunslinger with guts and gumption and love and purpose. Payton... wasn't and didn't. He had moments of bravery - like when he stood up to the bar full of men to distract them from Mary, sure. But that's the only time I even remotely felt like I could stand him. Then he died, and everyone who was annoyed by his constant jokes started telling them in his stead. COOOOOOOL.

Mary, who, and I cannot believe that this shit made it to print, stated outright: "I'm Susannah now, Detta before. Just a white gal instead of a black one, and not crippled."

Whut. Let me count the fucking ways that is problematic - and for the record, I don't fault the character of Mary for saying it, I fault the PRIVILEGED ASS WHITE FUCKING MALE WHO WROTE IT.
1) First of all - Mary COULD NEVER. Susannah's path along the beam was long, and hard, and the attempts to stop her from her Ka were many. With "random acts" of violence as a child with a brick to her head, causing her split personalities, then with a push in front of a subway train, which took her legs, then kidnapped her from her own world and when to a strange place where she was given no choice but to continue on, or die. But even before all of that, Odetta/Detta, "crippled" as she was, faced the SAME CHOICE in her own world as she was fighting for Civil Rights in a Jim Crow segregated south that she CHOSE to do. She CHOSE to go to the South with the Freedom Riders and side with them and risk arrest and beatings and dog attacks and fire-hoses. Susannah's life was trauma after trauma. She was not only a Black person living in a society specifically built to keep them down, but a Black WOMAN, who was disabled mentally, emotionally, and physically. Mary was an alcoholic sometimes psychic who got embarrassed on TV one time.
2) Re-read all of the above about Susannah/Odetta/Detta's life experience as a disabled Black woman, and then tell me who the FUCK signed off on King having a white woman appropriate Susannah's "persona" in Ka-tet 2.0? White privilege is fucking WILD. And I say that AS A WHITE WOMAN. GAH!

While I'm on the topic of Mary, I want to mention her habit of interruption (well, everyone's really, but hers is most prominent in my mind). Every time this book tried to just tell a story, there had to be some sort of interruption. Either a character would interrupt, or the events would, or the chapter would end. Even characters telling what happened to them offscreen were interrupted, usually by themselves. Here's an example, from right after Jack rescues Mary. (I'm going to skip filler shit and condense, because sanity. Let's count along - I'll bold to make it easy.)
Jack: When did you last eat?
Mary: A real meal? Can't say. At first I was so hungover I couldn't. I don't know what those cowboys were giving me to drink, but it must have been ninety proof. At least. Look at him! Is he [Billy Bumbler] cute, or what? Where did you get him? I'm betting it wasn't in a Territories pet store.
J: It's a long story. I'm more interested in yours. Last time I saw you, you were locked in a jail cell. You--
M: Pay's dead isn't he?
J: Yes. I'm sorry. (explanation)
M: Getting cokes for Youngblood, I suppose
(this conversation continues for a few more lines, then Jack thinks about some stuff, then Mary asks Jack how the killers got to the Territories - all still interruption of her story, remember. Jack says he'll tell her in time, but he wants to know her story. 2nd ask.)
M: I was locked up when you and Pay left for Reevin right?
J: Yes
M: I screamed at Pay. I remember that much. I called him Freddy F*****t from F****tville. (my slur removal) He was really good to me, and that's the way I said goodbye.
J: You didn't know.
M: I don't think that excuses it. [...] I like him [Billy Bumbler]. Is it a him?
J: Yes, a him.
M: He's soothing.
J: If you say so. What happened Mary? Tell me (3rd ask)
M: I slept most of the day you left. Jack, did I bite the constable? Tell me that didn't happen.
J: It did.
M: Oh. My. God.
Me: DITTO! OMG LET'S GET ON WITH IT.
Then the chapter ends. Because... sure. Pages of dialogue, and of Mary's story we know: She was drunk, then hungover, and slept a lot, and bit a guy.

It's also really annoying, because we have two versions of Mary here. (AND IF YOU SAY ODETTA/DETTA ECHOES I WILL FAIL YOUR FINAL ON PRINCIPLE.) Before this scene, she was loud and abrasive and constantly cursing and yelling, and then now she's a meek little mouse who feels.... cringy to read? Like I see her as literally cringing while she's talking. And never does she mesh into one person. We're TOLD she does, but it doesn't feel real or true to her character. With Susannah, we saw her growth, there was room for it. We were with her. We WATCHED her become whole. We could see all aspects of her parts in the whole. We don't see the growth, or the change in Mary. We don't see her emotional journey, we're just showed the loss and the travel and time passing, and then she's just different - but not a fully REALIZED character... just different. And it's the same with all of them. They all change, but it's not GROWTH. And it doesn't feel legit or real because there isn't time to SHOW us. Well, there could be, but it's misused time.

Anyway, I won't even go into the other members of the Ka-tet. Cannon fodder, basically. Except Richard, who was Oy 2.0. He was actually my favorite character in this book. And that's saying something because he mostly... didn't do anything but be a Billy Bumbler. I mean, he chose Mary as his person, which is points off his score, obviously, but he's a BILLY BUMBLER, so he still passes. And if any of you care, he does live, unlike Oy, but it's because they send him away, which made me actually sad. Especially after they tried to drive him away very shortly before and he CLEARLY chose to stay with them. They should have respected his choice to go to their fate with them. HE WAS KA-TET. Unlike King, apparently, that does mean something to me. I swear, King just didn't want to get emails or reviews with people sad about the Bumbler dying, so he exiled him instead. Which to me is WORSE. Cruel.

Anyway, so after the 14 gajillion travel days, 7,000 interruptions, 900 "I see what you did theres" and a partridge in a pear tree, they FINALLY make it to their goal, and do the thing and the book ends.

Before I get to that though, I have to talk about the Ginleys. The fatties. Because King can't go a whole book without fat shaming someone. And making it sexual and gross. The mayor of a little hamlet/town helps Jack when he needs it. He gives him transportation, and food, and shelter, and provisions to take along with him. But these things are far less important to note than the fact that Ginley is fat and his wife is fat, and his daughter is fat, and they eat a lot, and have "elephantine thighs" and need to be pushed up the steps of a bus because they can't heft their own weight alone. Ginley's wife shows Jack up to a room upstairs, and "she's preceding him up the stairs, extremely large buttocks flexing, and he can only hope that if she has a seizure or a heart attack, she'll fall forward; if she tumbled backward, he'd be crushed." I truly don't know why he went this direction? To justify the amount of food they provide him with to take with him? So unbelievably unnecessary and gross, and I wish I could say that I'm surprised, but I'm not.

OK Finally, let's talk about the ending because I'm running out of space - and I have SO MUCH MORE I COULD talk about but I'm tired and jetlagged and just want to be done with this already so I will make this my last point. The magical THING that has to be dumped into the Great Gorge/Gash/Gullet... is the concept? I guess? of Generative AI. I would hide that as a spoiler, but I honestly kind of feel like I'm doing a service to NOT hide it.

That is honestly the stupidest thing I've ever heard. This thing that the Old Ones split up and hid away as wayyyyyy too powerful is a blob, that sleep-talks, heals wounds, and knows all your innermost secrets and shames and everything else too, why not? And it is... the hero? The anti-hero? Too dangerous to allow to exist, so throw it in the GGGG and... then what? We fade to black on that and then have epilogue stuff. So... what's the point? Demonizing generative AI? In the literal last paragraph of the main story of the whole book? It was NEVER mentioned, not something that we even see Jack know to EXIST (and it could be argued that he still doesn't know what it is even as he's using it to do the.... thing? he's been told to do? By ANOTHER AI/Robot/thing, I should mention! The Dark Tower series has had many Artificial Intelligences - machines that grow and learn and behave WELL outside of the scope of their initial intent and design - Blaine the Mono, Patricia, Andy. In this book we have several AI-powered vehicles that are treated as helpmeets and beneficial assistances. And the LEAST AI thing we've seen in the course of the entire Dark Tower series, AND this entire book, turns out to be the demonized "concept" of it as the "too powerful to exist" morality sacrifice??

Someone take away grandpa's phone, please.

I am not saying that AI isn't a problem or a concern. There are many aspects of it that I find VERY concerning. My issue is with shoehorning it in as the deus ex machina, corner-getter-outer (The Stand's Hand of God, anyone? At least god had been mentioned previously in that book though, TBF) that makes ZERO sense story-wise, series precedent-wise, or even conceptually as a foil to this GGGG that's supposedly swallowing ALL OF THE WORLDS. HOW? WHAT? WHY? It's just a hot mess of an ending and honestly, I can't even understand what he was TRYING to do.

So. Here we are. This book was overdue, overlong, uneventful, nonsensical, messy, annoying, recycled trash. It ruined a series that I have very much enjoyed previously, and unfortunately validated my prior decision to just... not read King anymore.

[Debbie Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to believe, but I read The Talisman at 15, a senior in high school, Black House in my 30s, and finally reading this at [redacted.] He is really starting to bring Dark Tower lore in with The Talisman and several of his other novels. Knocked it out of the park.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know there are going to be some mixed reviews on this, but I thought it was great. It has a deeply familiar complexity which constant readers will either immediately be drawn to…or they won’t.

As a conclusion for Jack Sawyer’s long and storied tale, it definitely filled the bill.

[Greg Van Vorhis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible. Predictable. Falls into all of the traps of your typical sequels: new characters who intentionally remind you of old characters, callbacks to the readers’ favorite past parts, family of dead characters appear.

Add to that an extended desert trip that could have been condensed to half its length and you get this unforgivable mess.

King has been letting me down a lot it the last 10 years. I went from buying all of his books to not buying any of them, choosing instead to borrow them from the library or (as in this case, read an Advanced Reader Copy.

With today’s announcement of the release of still another Holly book, I may just be done reading everything he has released as well. So far, I have read them all. After this one, I will probably start being more selective.

[Justin Gerber · Rating 3 out of 5]

🤐

[Sjgomzi · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Was it perfect? No. Did I have a blast returning to Mid-World? HELL YES!!! The most fun I’ve had reading a King book in at least a decade.

[Hugo · Rating 1.5 out of 5]

A book of two halves, both of them woeful, lazy, and uninspired.

For a mission to halt a killing spree in two worlds (one which endangers an old friend), there's fuck-all sense of pace here, with all major events happening off-page—this breaks the rules of Show, Don't Tell and also removes Jack as an active protagonist, more a passive, after-the-fact observer trudging along behind the plot of his own novel, led by happenstance and what really must be called authorial string-pulling. The story's antagonists aren't even seen until the middle of the book, at which point they're written out of the narrative.

(A note here about Gabriel Rodríguez's chapter illustrations, which are striking. But the designs of vehicles, weapons, etc., look like something out of a comic book toy line, which doesn't suit the story at all, cheapening each chapter before it's begun.)

(Also: later attempts to make Jack's ragtag group of cartoon nobodies somehow a 'Ka-Tet' of heroes are unwelcome and intrusive, but nowhere near as bad as the vacillating 'Is he... or isn't he?" suggestion that Jack is a reincarnation of Roland of Gilead, who in this book is a character of legend whose stories are told as myth. Which begs the question, who—since no one who witnessed Roland's adventures lived to tell the tale—is telling these fucking myths?!)

For a quest to save not only two worlds, but possibly also all worlds, there's fuck-all sense of pace in the second half of the book, which decides to try—and fails—to replicate the tension and drama of the classic Clouzot film The Wages of Fear, but over hundreds of pages, accruing King's now-trademark writing tics of characters doing things out of intuition, dreams, voices in their heads, or simply because the author would like them to, along with WTF MacGuffins to wrap up the narrative neatly in time for the saccharine One Size Pleases All ending.

[Vanessa Kiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Talisman has been one of my very favorite books for years. I was very much looking forward to this unexpected third book but ended up being disappointed. It was very slow and plodding with not a whole lot happening. The ending was anticlimactic and such a let down. I did not enjoy this story. The characters, including Jack, for me were flat and overall annoying except for Richard.