Stephen King. Stephen King.
Ok. So this is an audiobook edition of the novel from 1996 read by the author. All in all aside from professional actors reading memoirs, some poets, and a few rare birds, authors tend to be terrible reading their work. Stephen King is perfectly adequate. Though this is a long one to stay with him. I wonder as he’s reading this one, one that is a) not that good and b) full of a lot of casual sexual references and sexual violence if he starts to think about these as he’s reading. I also think this is a relatively new recording, from the newer series of rerecordings like Michael C Hall reading Pet Semetary.
Anyway, cosmic horror maybe spiritual takes over a small town. But rather than watching the town slowly go over like in It or a few others, we are with a collection of outsiders who have been brought in for ambiguous purposes.
This novel begins with an absolutely terrifying opening section in which a married couple is stopped in the middle fo the desert by a small town cop of otherworldly physical embodiment. He slips small seemingly semi-conscious threats into his conversations with the couple and we can feel an increasing terrory slowly seep over them as they realize a noose is being tightened around their necks. After this scene, we end up seeing several others quite similar.
This is falls into a kind of mire as we could farther into and the sense of dread and fear waters down in the middle for quite a while. But more than most Stephen King novels, this one feels imminently filmmable and cinematic and I could imagine a very scary mini-series or Netflix one-off season being made of this one.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Desperation-Novel-Stephen-King/dp/150119223X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3VXUNB7GT8LLP&keywords=desperation+stephen+king&qid=1558532294&s=gateway&sprefix=desperation%2Caps%2C273&sr=8-1)