Interestingly, based on my previous reading experience of this, 28 years back, I fully expected this one to be a five-star read.

It was good, and it was actually interesting to see Stephen King tackle the subject of the Christian God, pitting Him against a demonic evil force, Tak.

And I will say, King's version of God is an interesting take. Still not enough to ever sway me to believe in him, but he does make some interesting points.

As for the story itself, for a simple story, King truly does stretch out and take his time with this one. I've criticized a few of his works as being a couple of hundred pages overlong, but I think this is the first where I've literally been reading something and thinking, "hmm, this could have be left on the cutting room floor."

For all of that, while it may have been a touch self-indulgent—especially with the Johnny Marinville character—it was still an engaging, if overstuffed, story. Both this and it's "mirror novel" THE REGULATORS would have benefited with a smaller cast, in my opinion.

Definitely the stronger of the two novels, but not without its flaws. ( )

* All reviews pulled from web comments *
Once you start, you won’t be able to stop. “Desperation” by Stephen King will take you on such a rollercoaster to the very end that you’ll genuinely be unable to put this novel down once you begin. From incredible characters to truly horrific scenes that will make you look away, everything you’d expect from King is here and then some.

I read The Regulators first and didn’t care for it at all. I trusted in the reviews of other readers that Desperation was much better. I really enjoyed Desperation; a creepy cop randomly apprehends people in a desert, in the middle of nowhere. Then, in true King fashion, the story becomes even more bizarre. We’re talking possessed animals, abandoned mines, and a town with a strange history. The Regulators was quite forgettable, but I will remember Desperation. ( )

Ci ho provato per l'ennesima volta, per l'ennesima volta non sono riuscita a farmelo piacere. Non saprei dire il motivo, eccetto forse per il tema dei vecchi dei - visto, rivisto, stravisto. La trama è buona, lo stile impeccabile, ma non è scattata la scintilla. Riproveremo tra qualche anno, si sa mai. ( )

Sturdy, decent mid-period King (1996), and better than pretty much anything he's written since. This is a book for a lazy summer weekend: fun, not too demanding, with a premise that works just fine as long as you don't eyeball it critically. King presents the reader with a motley, likable band of humans who must face down a literally unearthly menace in the deserted Nevada mining town of Desperation. Reminiscent of Robert McCammon's Stinger, in other words, but with a much smaller cast of characters and fewer bells and whistles. There are a couple of scenes in which King appears to have made a conscious effort to evoke the truly dark atmosphere of his early stories and novels (a quality that had been almost completely sanitized out of his work by this time), and it's appreciated.

Desperation is nowhere near as compelling as 'Salem's Lot or Pet Sematary (or Stinger, for that matter), but it ain't bad. I haven't read the companion novel, The Regulators. ( )