What King did for me was open my mind to `What if' situations and that lead me to read The Rogue Warrior, which was way out of my league, and then recently Tom Patire's Persona Protection Handbook which I must say was quite excellent in regards to safety.

If Steven King took some of the Tom Patire's real life stories and added his magic we would have some more good reading.

Overall I love King and his work and look forward to more!

Deb

Since this book was released before Black House, the sequel to Talisman, there is a lot of useful information left out. Black House revealed lots of background on the Dark Tower, the Crimson King, The Breakers and a whole slew of stuff integral to the King universe. You can tell the authors have their own ideas about where the series is going, but to me, Black House was the most important book to the Dark Tower series outside the Dark Tower books themselves.

Stangely enough, I'm probably one of the few people out there that was looking for a book exactly like this, so I'm not disappointed. Having read most of King's books, I was interested in having a handy reference, and now I've got one. I avoid reading any of the synopsis for books I haven't read yet, and for those of you who feel cheated because you read the synopsis before the book: what were you thinking?

The book is far from perfect and far from an encyclopedia. It's more of a thesis that attempts to tie all of King's books into his Dark Tower series in whcih King himself admits is sort of all inclusive. Sometimes it works, someties it doesn't. I would have liked a cyclopedia type section for something other than just characters though, especially for the Dark Tower section, which seems surprisingly thin considering the wealth of information in the books themselves. Outside of making connections to the other books, the authors seem oblivious to lots of details that I would find important, and if I had the patience, foresight and time to make something like this myself, I would have done it a bit differently.

Having said that, this is the best third party source on the King Universe outside of the books themselves, and it does fill a niche. I think about ten years from now we can expect a vast librabry of similar books like the many Tolkien cyclopedias and guides (maybe even a "Roland Lives" trend?). Hopefully when the series is completed in a few years, the authors will go back and create an updated version to include all the new books. If and when they do this they can fix some of the continuity errors, expound where needed and create the ultimate reference which, as of this writing, does not yet exist.

There are a few problems, though: 1)- Die-Hard King fans, like me, already know pretty much everything they have to say in this book. That's ok, though. Sometimes it's nice just to see that someone else agrees with you. 2)- There are some glaring errors, most of which other reviewers have spoken about, so I won't. (Well....just one! It drove me NUTS that they say on one page that Mike Hanlon, from IT, lives in Hemingford Home, Nebraska. A few pages later he lives in Derry. Come on, guys...Where's the Editor? There are a LOT of little things like that.) 3)- Towards the end of the book, the Authors seem to just lose interest in tying all King's work together, and just start summarizing stories. The Richard Bachman chapter especially suffered from this....

King Fans will probably find The Stephen King Universe a pleasant way to spend a few hours, kind of like a trip down memory lane. Everyone else should probably just go right to the source, and pick up one of Mr. King's books. Ain't nothing like the real thing.....