Books: Other World Than These by Stephen King and Peter Straub (2026)

“Other Worlds Than These is the story of Jack Sawyer, whom readers first met when he was twelve, crossing America and “the territories” to save his mother’s life, and met again in Black House, where Jack faces a child killer and the Crimson King (among other evils). In Other Worlds Than These, Jack must stop a rampaging gang of infected teenagers from America-side, and the forces of the mysterious Gullet at the edge of Mid-World, before it destroys our world and all worlds. Jack is older now; his Ka-tet (echoing the world of Roland) is fraying; and his task, nearly impossible.” 

Much like Black House, there is lot going on here. Jack Sawyer, 57 a widow, living his life in the Territories –Mid-World by another name- who can still “flip” to the America he was born and grew up, but because of the events in book two, he can’t stay forever. He must find a 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. The book also, once again, uses a real-life spree killers to set everything in motion. But, for a book that had a lot going on, it was sort missing the urgency of that made the last three Dark Towers work so well. 

There is a great idea here, neat hook the late Peter Straub offered years before his death in 2022, was for a third book to feature a murderous teenage couple who gets sucked into Mid-World and starts a cult. But King, known for creating compelling villains, keeps them out ahead of the ka-tet, so all we see is there destructive path. I was surprised when it eventually petered out as the book progressed. 

King also spends an a lot time explaining how the Dark Tower of Mid-World and The Territories are same thing, with return references, like the dialect, and revisiting locations previously seen: Mejis and the Blasted Lands, along with a deep cut nod to certain Army experiment from one of King’s more well-known novella (The Mist). Again, I don’t think the original idea was to tie these two universes together, but now it sort of makes more sense; King does a good job clearing up any confusion. 

In the meantime, we see a more likable Jack here than ever before, one who tired, intelligent and commanding –the reluctant leader he’s always ran away from. He denies he’s a gunslinger, but its clear King is setting him up to be one. 

In the end, a nice capstone to the previous two books along with the many Easter Eggs for Dark Tower fans – and that ending? He’s ended this journey and closed the circle, but Ka is still a wheel. Long days and pleasant nights, as they say. 

A quick addendum: King references the French film The Wages of Fear (1953, based on the 1950’s novel Le Salaire de la peur) and its 1977 remake Sorcerer which starred Roy Scheider. In both films (and here in this novel) there is a bridge-crossing sequence, wherein the two trucks have to separately cross an old wooden suspension bridge that appears completely unstable. In a recent posting I did for Jaws 2, I talk about Scheider’s dilemma of being stuck in a three picture deal with Universal and how they were pressuring him to do a sequel, but ended up doing the William Friedkin remake that ultimately suffered a poor reception and was a financial disaster for the studio. Scheider decided Jaws 2 not a bad idea after all.  

Books: Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect (Ernest Cunningham #2) By Benjamin Stevenson (2023)

“After the overnight success of his first book –the recounting of that tale, which in book is seen as non-fiction than a true whodunit, Ernest Cunningham has been asked, along with five much-better-known authors, to be a panelist aboard the Ghan, a luxury train whose route bisects the Australian desert for the 50th Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival. Soon after the journey starts, one of the writers turns up dead, and each of the train’s other panelists—including Cunningham himself—becomes both suspect and sleuth.”

Much like the first book, Ernest breaks the fourth wall to a talk about what is transpiring here - he reveals that a comma will be a crucial clue, and that there will be more than one victim. There is pretty good dashes of humor, all while poking fun at the publishing industry. There are plenty of red herring’s; including a Misery loving girl who has discovered her favorite mystery author is killing of his main character. While this also no Murder on the Orient Express, it will remind readers –especially those who love the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (roughly, the 1920s to early 1930s) of age when creative and clever writers took the time to create viable locked-room and closed-circle murder mysteries.

Books: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone (Enrest Cunningham #1) by Benjamin Stevenson (2023)

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.

I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that. 

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.

Who was it? 

Let’s get started. 

With the success of the Knives Out series and probably The Thursday Murder Club, publishers are looking for more unique and quirky whodunits that follow the traditional cozy murder tales from the last 150 years and give them an update for the modern reader. 

Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone by Australian writer Benjamin Stevenson, our narrator is Ernest Cunningham, who writes books about how to write books – or more specifically on how write murder fiction. As the informal, reliable narrator, he assures us that the title is not a lie— everyone really has killed someone, including himself. 

The early part of the book sets up the different family members who come to snowy resort area in Australian mountains (I’m today years old finding out it snows in Australia) for a family reunion. It takes a bit as Ern has to explain some of the back story on his family members. 

I did enjoy the book, as it has a dark sense of humor (and I liked the bingo card game between Ernst and Sofia) and while it took a bit to like the narrator, in the end I found his voice a bit irreverent. There were some parts I found hard to follow, if only because Ernst was sort of asking you to read between the lines, but for fans of modern whodunits that also tries to pay homage to the Golden Age of Murder Mysteries, should enjoy this take on the classic genre.

 

 

Books: Black House (Book Two) by Peter Straub and Stephen King (2001)

 

“Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer traveled to a parallel universe called The Territories to save his mother and her Territories "twinner" from a premature and agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, WI. A few years earlier, Jack cooperated with the local cops in French Landing (a fictionalized version of Trempealeau, Wisconsin) involving a farm insurance salesman who was also a killer. While in Wisconsin, Jack is irresistibly enraptured by the natural beauty of the Coulee Country, echoing his reaction to The Territories as a child. 

When a series of gruesome murders begin occurring that are reminiscent of those committed several decades earlier by a real-life madman named Albert Fish, the killer is dubbed "The Fisherman" Jack's buddy, the local chief of police, begs Jack to help his inexperienced force find him. But is this merely the work of a disturbed individual, or has a mysterious and malignant force been unleashed in this quiet town? What causes Jack's inexplicable waking dreams –if that is what they are- of robins' eggs and red feathers? Is there a connection, as well, to the events that forced him leave Los Angeles? Quickly it becomes clear there is more to these cases than murder, and Jack must retrieve his childhood memories to rescue the latest victim, someone who is coveted by the killer's evil overlord, a powerful entity from End-World, in the Dark Tower continuity. And someone King’s Constant Reader has encountered before.” 

As I mentioned in The Talisman re-read review, that 1984 book was never intended to include the Dark Tower, mostly because King really had not started to connect the dots (and he would recton some stuff, like Pennywise the Clown in IT). The Black House does work as a standalone sequel, though, but in the seventeen years between them, the Dark Tower universe began thread its way through King’s book regular titles, most notably 1994’s Insomnia (here is the unseen overreaching antagonist in 1982s The Gunslinger, Wizard and Glass, The Song Susannah, as well as the novella Low Men in Yellow Coats in The Hearts in Atlantis collection). What makes this work as standalone sequel is that the Territories has very minor role in this book, serving as both a Red Herring to Jack before the larger the full plot is revealed, with the Fisherman's significance is explained to him. The authors’ drop enough information so reading The Talisman is not a huge necessity (though is highly recommended).

While I remembered some of this books actions – especially the motorcycle club and the connections to the Dark Tower- I forgot the ending. It’ll be interesting to see how this now plays out in the upcoming third and final book, Other Worlds Than These. 

Beyond the Crimson King –spoken about, but not seen and the Territories -the books other DT references include Little Sisters (Little Sisters of Eluria) The Beams, Ka, Gilead, Ted Brautigan, Roland Deschain, and Roland's ka-tet are all explicitly mentioned. How Black House is connected to the Dark Tower universe is that The Furnace Lands are located in End-World, possibly implying that the Territories (also called the Borderlands) may exist on the same level of the Tower as Mid-World. The Territories are said to be in the Inner Baronies, suggesting it is part of In-World. The Big Combination is the Forge of the King that Susannah sees glowing red in the sky from the ramparts of Castle Discordia. When Susannah and Roland and Oy near the Tower, they see that the glow from the Forge has gone out now Finally In The Dark Tower, Walter/Flagg dons the same metal cap as he one the Fisherman puts on Tyler Marshall. Flagg describes the cap as having been "borrowed from a certain deserted house in the town of French Landing, Wisconsin."

Books: The Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King (Book One) 1984

“On a brisk autumn day, a thirteen-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey back across America–and into another realm.” 

The Territories, for the few who’ve not read this book in the last forty-two years, is a parallel world physically smaller than the world from which Jack comes. Throughout the novel, Jack uses the size differential to travel quickly across the country. The eastern region, corresponding to the Eastern Seaboard, is the most densely populated and is governed under a feudal system headed by the Queen. The central regions, roughly corresponding to the American plains, are a grain growing area known as "the Outposts." Beyond them, the western region of the Territories is a destroyed area known as "the Blasted Lands" (analogous to the American Southwest – primarily New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was tested). It was apparently wrecked by radioactivity and has dangerous mutants and occasional fireballs. 

Jack begins his quest at the New Hampshire hotel called the Alhambra (a notable location in King's novel The Tommyknockers), where he meets Speedy Parker who tells him he must go on this quest to save both his mother and Queen Laura. So Jack sets off to seek the mystical Talisman in this parallel world, with help and encouragement from Speedy Parker. Parker warns young Jack that Morgan of Orris, the enemy of the free people of the Territories, will be after him, as will his uncle in the real world, Morgan Sloat, the business partner who probably caused Jack's father's death, who wants Jack dead. So both versions of Morgan are hunting for Jack, and both are aware of his nature, as well as their own.  

Back when King and Straub wrote The Talisman, I do not think King intentionally connected this book to the wider DTU. The Gunslinger had been released in 1982 (which was a combination of five short stories he wrote between 1978 and 1981 and The Drawing of the Three was still five years away). However, there are many things within this book that would be revisited in many of King’s other books, just not the Dark Tower (the idea of the train and the blasted lands would be reused in King’s fourth Dark Tower Universe book Wizard and Glass). 

Consciously or not, there are many references throughout the book that make rereading this novel feel like The Territories is just a small part of some bigger multiple universes. 

Even Jack’s Dad notes to his brother-in-law Morgan Sloat: 

“And should I tell you another crazy thing?”

“Why not?” Sloat answered.

“That’s (the Territories) are not the only world out there.” 

Another example comes from Wizard and Glass book again; where Roland’s ka-tet visits a version of the world has been depopulated by the influenza from the novel The Stand. As Jake points out in that book, in his version of 1980’s New York from which he comes from, they never encountered Captain Trips (this is also a clever way to explain the differences between King’s original version of the book, which is set in the late 1970s and the updated, extended version, which moved the dates up to 1986). Roland ponders that Jake’s universe is "another when. Then adds, “There are other worlds than these.”