Quote Originally Posted by pol View Post
I loved The Talisman...it has a great feel of adventure, more epic than Black House which was a much different book.

I don't think that the connections to the Tower in The Talisman were intentional, in fact I have read that it was really King's first attempt at toying with concepts that would later riddle the Tower books. Whereas the connections in Black House were obviously intentional, as this book was written specifically to tie in with the Tower. Both books are great, just different feels and the writing style in Black House, particularly the beginning, is a bit hard to get used to.
I agree completely.

I have always been frustrated that Black House was simply a book to tie Talisman into the Dark Tower series.

I lot of it doesn't make sense to me. For example:

Spoiler:

The introduction of the 'twinners' in the Dark Tower series. Okay, the Tower in our world has a twinner, a rose. That's well and good, except when Jack first visits the Dark Tower universe in Black House he notices it's a different world- it's not a 'territory' in the sense that you don't flip into it, and none of their belongings change. Which makes sense considering Roland and the katet never experienced twinners and their items changing when they went to different worlds.

Not to mention the fact that the Talisman is supposed the be the 'axis' of all the worlds, like Jack. Unique amongst all the different worlds, and existing in each of them...which sounds a lot like the Dark Tower, except, as noted above- it already has a twinner (the rose).

There's also Roland and King himself between twinners. I...I'm still not sure what to say to that exactly.


There were other issues I had. I think you're spot on that the Dark Tower and the Talisman were drawn from the same roots... they share several themes and ideas, but I don't think that makes them compatible.