The Regulators

I read Desperation many years ago and loved it. I knew there was a Richard Bach man novel that was a 'mirror' novel, but had never taken time to get it and read it. There were just too many good Stephen King novels to get through. So here I am, many years later and caught up on most of those novels. So, I felt it was time to read Richard Bachman novels. I started with this one, and it was great. Right on par with Desperation. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did.

Where to begin? Oh, man - I read this book when I was in high school and fell in love with the absurdity of it all. I read Desperation before I first read this and didn't even make the connection between the characters until reading both stories again some 15 years later. I love the parallel storytelling involving the same characters from Desperation and that same quack of a villain, Tak.

I really have no complaints about this story that opens on what appears to be any ordinary day in a suburb of Ohio, except on this day the residents woke up in the Twilight Zone, but I don't think any episode of the Twilight Zone could be this bloody or gory. The way this story opens, King sets the scene so beautifully that you almost hear the birds chirping yourself. That is, until you hear the first gunshot go off...

With that said, if I do have any complaints it's about Tak as a villain. I expressed my low opinion of Tak in my review of Desperation. Compared to the Crimson King of the Dark Tower series or that iconic Randall Flagg from The Stand, I just don't think this villain compares - he was just a little pervert with a craving for chocolate milk and Chef Boyardee ( I personally love the lasagna myself).

But the mayhem the little S.O.B caused...

I felt sorry for everyone involved,especially the children. However I have conflicting emotions about the outcome of this story. The way it ended, it sort of calls to mind why this story went on as long as it did. When the truth was finally revealed about why "little toy vans" were out to get them, the threat was dispatched with relative ease. It was no wonder a certain character only joins the other people almost the last 20 percent of the story. I really saw no other way for this story to end but how it did.

This story is a good read if you love classic King. I read this coming off of Bag of Bones and I felt so nostalgic. This is the stuff I fell in love with The King for. Not that sleepy hollow crap I just read about a man trying to uncover the ghostly past about his cabin in the lake while battling some old coot for the very soul of a child that, in my opinion, he had no business really caring about. I'm sure there's a lot of people who prefer the new King and that's fine. But me - bring on the gore! The Regulators had plenty of it and so long as you don't take this story serious, I think you'll find it very entertaining to say the least.

Having just read Desperation, I was anxious to dive into Stephen King’s (aka Richard Bachman’s) parallel-universe novel, The Regulators. King uses many of the same character names, briefly visits the same setting of Desperation, NV, and spotlights the same villain, a sadistic, murder-hungry entity named Tak (who loves Spaghettios and chocolate milk nearly as much as killing). But the story unfolds on the other side of the country, on a soon-to-be-decimated suburban block in Wentworth, OH. If you’re squeamish about blood and gore, pick another novel. From page 19 on, this one provides more carnage than a slaughterhouse—and very few resting spots along the way. But it’s classic King, and if you’re a fan, The Regulators is a ‘must-read’. Just don’t expect your favorite characters to survive!

That is an indelible image in my mind now! Oh man.

The Moto Kops and the Regulator Vans really came alive in this. Stephen King is the master.

They say you should Desperation first. I'd read both this and Desperation when I was younger. I knew that Tak is in both. Seems like I liked this one better than Desperation and that's why it was what I read first this time.

Love the characters and the images that are created (though some are imaginary). I think the things that don't exist or change from real to imagined in appearance are what makes it such a scary read. The dialogue is really good too.

Enjoyed reading the scenes from the diary. It really creates some interesting backstory to learn more about Seth and Tak and the subtleties of dealing with them both and how she tells them apart.

Even though I had read many books by Stephen King previously, when I started to read The Regulators in 1996, I got a sort of reader's overload. The opening introduces many characters quickly, and turns suddenly brutal. Fast forward to 2017, though, and this is just the kind of book to draw me in.

Right off the bat, the negative, which I mentioned above. No, not the brutal part. I read not only horror currently, but also bizarro. I'm get a kick out of stories in which the stakes are high.

Without giving anything away, I'd like to note some interesting things about the story. It is the "twinner" of "Desperation," which came out the same day in 1996. In both books, the supernatural enemy is the same and comes from the same place. It also features many of the same characters, though in different circumstances. It was as if King started with the idea of an ancient evil at the bottom of a mine shaft, came up with a cast of characters, and decided to write two different stories with the same essential cast. You can also consider it happening in two separate realities within King's multiverse.

Though King doesn't state it directly in "The Regulators," it is connected to "The Dark Tower," as are all of his books, to some degree. The evil entity, Tak, uses the same language as the can-toi in "The Dark Tower," for one thing. I also believe that a location described at the end is the manifestation of the Tower on that particular Earth, and there's a strong indication that Tak comes from the same place outside the universe as Pennywise/It and the Crimson King. The end of "The Regulators" made something at the end of "The Dark Tower" clearer to me, in fact. I wish I could ask Stephen King if my guesses, regarding these connections, are right!

"The Regulators" is imaginative, vibrant, and brutal throughout. I loved it.

I did say that Desperation is my favorite book, and I do know this book is better out of the two. Yes, Stephen King did write this book and Desperation in conjunction with one another. The story of this one has a slightly better flow to it, and it actually scared me more than Desperation. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but evil kids in horror movies or books is what gets me. Only dolls scare me more.

The Ugly: Even though this book is a decent one out of all his books, there are flaws. The biggest flaw that came with this book was changing Johnny. His don’t care attitude from Desperation really carried the book. Making him a sentimental person didn’t really help this book at all.

The Bad: Confining the story to a single street. What made Desperation good was that it was in a small town. There were more places for the characters to go. In this one, they were confined to a small street that had maybe eight houses and a convenience store on it. King limited himself to what the people could do. Yes, he has written other stories that are confined to one spot like in The Shinning, but that worked because of the story there. It may be that I am comparing this to Desperation too much, but that is just how I feel.

The Good: I mentioned it above. Kids scare me in books like this. Not only that, but the backstory for everyone, with exception to Johnny’s, was much better here. Going into detail on why everyone was there and how the Seth become Tak worked so well together.

Final Thoughts: The contrast between what Tak to Collie and what it did to Seth was so different that it worked so well together. That alone, making it so much more of a wider universe and what the entities of the worlds are capable of doing. I guess you could say that is the reason I think this book is better than the connected one, even though I like the other one more. Still though, this is just a book everyone needs to read.

Or maybe it is for fans of the "Dark Tower" series? Personally, much to my regret, I have never been able to get into that series. I have bought and read the first couple of books but just can't get into them the way I do with "regular" Stephen King books. Back to "The Regulators", this is a good story but not great, 3.5 stars. Typical ordinary SK characters, believable and in very disturbing circumstances. You bond with several of them, pull for them and then suffer with and for them. Slightly different SK ending that leaves you with tears in your eyes. Worth the time spent and leaves you ready to read another SK book.

Once again, evil befalls a select group of innocent people. In this case, it takes place in the suburbs of Wentworth, Ohio. The entity, Tak, who was granted new life from an old abandoned mine in Desperation Nevada, is back. And, when Tak is back, there is hell on earth. So is the reality, displaced and altered to accommodate the visuals of an autistic boy named Seth. In the course of a few hours, Tak strives to act out a western movie and "wipe this town off the map." As Tak plans and begins to act out his strategy, the neighbors on the block of Poplar Street watch in horror as everything around them turns into an old desert mining town, complete with the chinese laundry, log cabins and hitching posts. Then the life size toy vans drive through and unleash their barrage at the stricken neighborhood. Remarkably, oddly constructed animals and signs sprout up and it reminds everyone of a first grader's attempt at drawings come alive. How to stop it, how to confine Tak? Tak literally feeds off the souls of dead, sucking their life energy and making him stronger. Yet he is trapped in the body of a 7 year old, and can only physically accomplish what the 7 year old can do. In his frustration, he attempts to move on, but finds that Seth, the 7 year old autistic child has reached deep inside his own malfunctioning brain to change Tak's course forever.

Stephen King is hands-down my favorite author. This is the only work of King/Bachman fiction I couldn't force myself to at least finish. There was a period in the mid-90's where Mr King started to draw out suspense to almost unbearable lengths, ruining the fast pacing for which his best (earlier) work was known. This novella is the worst example of that. Page after page of prose will pass by the readers eyes with only a few seconds in the book's universe having passed, and very little having happened in the way of advancing the story. More plainly stated, King manages to take a great story concept and a series of plot developments violent enough to rival a 1950's true crime novel, and makes them pretty boring. Even worse, the tendency toward the verbose and seemingly endless self examination is taking place not in some 1000 page masterpiece novel, but in what is basically an inflated short story. I couldn't get through it. Having said that, the book still gets 3 stars, because the worst work of one of the best occult/horror authors of our time is still not that bad. There are no unforgivable sins here. This story just needed an editor to prune it down into the kind of short story found in Night Shift or Skeleton Crew.