Sam Reviews "Desperation" by Stephen King

I really enjoyed this story. I found it to be strangely addicting at times, and would have finished it a week early if I hadn't been overwhelmingly busy with real life things. I did think the heavy God stuff was strange and sometimes overwhelming, but I still loved how everything came together.

**some-what spoilers**

I loved that the scary thing in this story wasn't something science fictional and was something more omnipotent. I think that is why God was such a plot point in this story, because Tak was himself a type of God, or at least something equally stronger than man

Quotes:

"He loved the kid, after all, and love stretched to cover a multitude of oddities.  He had an idea that was one of the things love was for."

"Refusing to see the doctor would not cause any of those diseases to pause in their approach or their feeding upon him, but if he stayed away from the doctors ... he wouldn't have to know.  You didn't have to deal with the monster under the bed or lurking in the corner if you never actually turned on the bedroom lights."

"...they were already friends - the way people can become friends, for a little while, when they happen to meet on American back roads that go through the lonely places."

"Perhaps it would sound nutty if spoken aloud, but inside his head, it seemed perfectly logical."

"Sane men and women don't believe in God. ... You can't say it from the pulpit, because the congregation would run you out of town, but it's the truth. God isn't about reason; God is about faith and belief."

"He really was close to blind in the dark...  Had he really crossed the country on a motorcycle?  If so, God must love him a lot more than she ever would."

"She felt guilty about being hungry when Peter would never eat again, but she supposed the feeling would pass. That was the hell of it..."

"The outsider, the one from the earth...That one spoke in the language of the unformed, from the time before, when all animals except for men and the outsider were one."

"He now believed that one of the scariest lessons this nightmare had to offer was how lethally unprepared for survival they all were. Yet they had survived."

"Maybe he would smell [Tak on his skin] to start with,  but he wouldn't smell it for long. ...stink washed off.  Yes indeed it did.   That was one of the few things in life Johnny was entirely sure of."

"He would see her looking at him as she had always looked at him when he fucked up - patient because Johnny Marinville fucking up was the usual course of things,  disillusioned because she was the only one who kept expecting him to do better."

"Do you know how cruel your God can be?   How fantastically cruel?   Sometimes he makes us live."