SOURCE: "The Titans of Terror," in Newsweek, Vol. 104, No. 27, December 24, 1984, pp. 51-52.

Below, Leerhsen favorably reviews The Talisman.

Stephen King has given us spooky stories like Pet Sematary and The Shining and taken meetings with, trust me, Hollywood film moguls, so he's obviously a man not easily frightened. Still, not long ago the 37-year-old writer found himself feeling as creepy as, say, a kid reading Stephen King's Christine. What worried him was the impending publication of The Talisman, an epic quest yarn on which he'd collaborated with Peter Straub, the best-selling author of such spinetinglers as Ghost Story and Floating Dragon. Would this experiment in terror be remembered, King wondered, as a kind of literary Reese's cup—"You know, where you've got the peanut butter, I've got the chocolate and, hey, this—ain't bad"? Or would it be the prose equivalent of "Rhinestone"—"a movie that bombed because...