The king of horror has done it again.

So maybe it’s not his most recently published book, but it’s the one I just finished.

It’s called Black House, and I guess technically it’s not truly a Stephen King book. In all actuality, it is another collaboration between heavyweight authors Stephen King and Peter Straub. The other collaboration was The Talisman, which is actually the prequel to Black House.

Before I go on, let me tell you about the book for a moment. The Talisman was about a young boy named Jack Sawyer who traveled across the country from the East Coast to California. He was searching for a magic orb (the talisman) that would allow him to save his dying mother’s life and the life of a queen in the Territories, a world parallel to the world we know.

Black House takes place 20 years later in the middle of Wisconsin. As Sawyer calls himself, he is a “coppiceman.” He has worked hard to forget his experiences as a child, but now they are coming back to haunt him as a serial killer/cannibal who is killing children in the small town in which he resides. He must now journey back to the Territories to save a powerful child, take on a new fiend, and basically save all of the infinite number of worlds from an unimaginable horror. Sound like a lot? Well, remember that this is a character in a Stephen King book, and don’t they always exhibit a huge amount of power?

OK, this was an awesome book. While it somewhat stands on its own, you really might want to consider reading The Talisman before you pick this one up. While you might be able to understand what is going on, the novel keeps referring back to past events in the other book, so it might help you to understand what they’re talking about.

Whatever you do, though, don’t read Black House and then read The Talisman. Black House would completely ruin the first book for you.

Also, what really makes this book even better (as if it needs any help considering the magnitude of the writers), is the fact that this book helps to explain some things that are going on in the Dark Tower series of books.In fact, this book seems to tie in rather closely to those books. If you enjoy the Dark Tower books at all, you really want to read these two books.

And speaking of the Dark Tower, King is planning on publishing three more books in the series, and then he is retiring from writing.

As Henry Leyden would say in the novel, “Case closed, game over, zip up your fly!” Stephen King’s writings will really be missed.