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The Regulators
by Stephen King (Contributor: Richard Bachman)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Dutton Adult (1996-10-01)
ISBN: 0525941908
EAN: 9780525941903
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Hardcover: 480 pages
Edition: First Trade Printing
SKU: 03301
Condition: Collectible: Very Go
Comments: First Trade Printing October 1996. Full number line. Hardback with dust jacket in great condition
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
On a perfect summer afternoon in Wentworth, Ohio, many of the citizens who live on Poplar Street are killed mysteriously, and at the center of the mystery is a young boy named Seth Garon, whose supernatural powers are just awakening. 1,250,000 first printing. Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.
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Amazon.com Review
An evil creature called Tak uses the imagination of an autistic boy to shift a residential street in small-town Ohio into a world so bizarre and brutal that only a child could think it up. It's as two-dimensional and gaudy as a kid's comic book, but for this reviewer, The Regulators is a gripping adventure tale about what happens when a mind fixated on TV (especially old Westerns and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200) runs amok. As Michael Collins writes in Necrofile, "[Stephen] King offers his readers a glimpse of the true evil of popular culture ... which has no design or intent, only an empty need to sustain itself. King is, I think, about the canniest observer of what America is, and that he generally writes horror ought to give us pause from time to time."
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Customer Reviews
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Meh
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-10-24
I just reread this work, the strange companion novel to Stephen King's release "Desperation". Certainly not my favourite Stephen King/Bachman book, but not my least favourite, either.
In high school, we actually read a Stephen King novel in AP English class. My professor's theory is that in the future, King may be an actually famous author, not so much for his works per se, but for the introspection into late 20th-Century life that his characters offer. King's characters are real, normal, human people tossed into unimaginable situations by powers outside their will, and react to them in a typical, mortal way. Cabot (the teacher) maintained it was this fundamental humanity that would eventually lead to King's immortality as a writer: his glimpses into the banal of everyday life, punctuated with the insane.
"The Regulators" is no different in that sense; most of the main characters in this work are indistinguishable from people you could find in any city or town in the United States today, placed in a development beyond what any of us are capable of imagining. Personally, I found some of the side pieces; the scripts and such tossed in between chapters-- more distracting than enlightening, but other than that, the work is solid. My overall rating, in one word, is "meh."
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Unique even for SK
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-10-15
I read this a few years back when I wasn't reading very often and this one was a pure joy as I recall. I know nothing about the sister novel or whatever, just that this one I found intriguing and entertaining and highly imaginative in the best sense of the word. It's one of King's very unsubtle novels as I remember, not quite as sledgehammer like as Cell but still...
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King Satirizes Himself through Bachman
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-05-28
I think this King satirizing his own writing style.
All of the things for which the haters criticize him are in this book: gore, ultra-violence, pop references, TV sensibility, shallow characterizations and literally 2D stage sets are here on display.
It's a blast watching King flatten and toy with his own style.
After reading The Regulators, the companion novel Desperation shows what King's full writing is capable of evoking. Together they create a wonderful juxtaposition of styles.
Reading The Regulators and Desperation back to back offers a commentary on two very different perspectives of horror story writing that is entertaining and illuminating.
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Desperation Lite
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-05-22
The lesser evil twin of "Desperation," a novel I deeply enjoyed in spite of the bad rap it gets from other King fans. Since both novels are steeped in the same mythos, right down to the cast of heroes and villains, they're best enjoyed in close succession. "Desperation" should probably be read first; this novel, although compelling enough in its own right, depends heavily on its twin brother for the unsettling poignancy King's readers expect.
With that said..."Tak!"
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The Tense
Rating (4)
Date: 2007-10-29
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have not yet read Desperation, but am going to soon seeing as how everyone says it's better than this novel. I happened to like this one though. I thought it was clever how he wrote the action as it was happening in the present progressive tense, yet reverted to the present perfect and simple past tense when the characters began interacting. While the novel was action packed, I disagree with some of the reviews that the characters weren't developed. Perhaps some of them weren't, but the ones who drove the story were. I think that a lot of people didn't like the book because it didn't turn out the way they wanted it to. Not every story can have a happy ending. I still grew to care about the characters and what happened to them. There was a lot of gore, but I felt he wanted to describe everything that was happening in horrid detail and just what Tak was capable of. All in all, I thought it was a good read.
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