Ep. 197 Black House, Part 2, chapters 5-14
episode
Two Guys to the Dark Tower Came: A Podcast about Stephen King and His Books
36 min
2 speakers
5 chapters
transcribed 12 hours ago
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What is the main focus of Black House Part 2 “The Taking of Tyler Marshall”?
Welcome, everyone, to Two Guys to the Dark Tower King, a podcast where we discuss the characters and connections in the ever-expanding universe that revolves around Stephen King's Dark Tower. I'm Jay Russo. And I'm Sean McGurr. You can email us at twoguysdarktower at gmail.com. To support the show, spread the word with a podcast review on your favorite podcast app. And you can buy merch at store.2guystothedarktowercame.com. In this episode, we'll cover Black House, Part 2, The Taking of Tyler Marshall, which is chapters 5 through 14.
Let's start the show. The probable identity of the fisherman is revealed as we see Charles Burnside seemingly teleport and kidnap Tyler Marshall. The fisherman also taunts the police of French Landing and Jack Sawyer by pointing them to the location of another victim's body and dropping a clue in the territories for Jack to find. The town is on edge as we see the fiasco that is the attempt to secure the latest crime scene. And this section ends with Jack Sawyer meeting Judy Marshall and realizing they have something in common that may determine the fate of Tyler. Jay, this is the longest section of the book. So far. I think, yeah. I think, and indeed too, and this actually takes us to the halfway point of the book.
I think we're just past like 52 or 54% of the way through this book. We had talked in our first episode on Black House about how a lot of part one was sort of throat clearing and introductions and Straub and King introducing a bunch of characters in the town and this unique way of narrating the book that gives us sort of an immediate look at what's happening around town, this bird's eye view. And we were interested to see how that was going to translate into part two, now that the introduction is out of the way, that here we're probably going to get to the meat of the story. And with this section being called The Taking of Tyler Marshall, it seems like some action is going to take place. We did get
to the meat of the story, Sean. We got to it in the last pages
of
part two. Yeah, we are 300 pages into this book and we're only just getting started with the plot. And as you said, this section is called The Taking of Tyler Marshall. That does happen early in section two. And then the book spends 180 pages not really getting anywhere. It's kind of, let me just say, this book is inefficient in its storytelling. How's that for a polite way of putting it?
I think that that's a fair way of saying
it. I think that this book suffers from a little bit of a combination of two problems. I suspect that the struggle or perhaps just the choices that King and Straub have made in how they collaborate, but I think that that introduces extra and I think that produces inefficiency in the story itself. And that might be fine for anybody else. But that leads to the other problem, which is, I'll just call it Stephen King-itis. Stephen King always writes too much. And he has long been in the zone of his career where he doesn't have to bow to his editor. So that's why his books always feel a little bit bloated. Between these two things, if it weren't King and his King-itis bloating this story and not having an editorial team who were willing to slash this down to what it should have been, we end up with an overlong, overcomplex, and inefficient story that
is still kind of dragged down additionally by the two author dynamic that we kind of struggled with a lot in The Talisman. It's still here. And I just feel like this book could be a lot further along by now. And I don't think this book needs to be as long as it is. It feels like it's sort of wasting my time. I'm enjoying the parts that I enjoy, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But there's a bit of a frustration that's ongoing for me here.
Yes. I want to be clear that you and I don't just not like books that are long. Oh, no. That's not the issue. It's the length without any forward progress that's really the problem with this. Tyler Marshall gets taken and there is some urgency there, right?
How does the recap set up the events leading to Tyler Marshall’s kidnapping?
Like to figure out what happened to him.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main focus of Black House Part 2 “The Taking of Tyler Marshall”?
0:13–4:49
2
How does the recap set up the events leading to Tyler Marshall’s kidnapping?
4:49–7:33
3
Why do the hosts describe the storytelling style as “less is more”?
7:33–12:44
4
What other worlds are hinted at in chapters 5‑14 and how do they connect to the Dark Tower?
12:44–19:47
5
How do the multiple crime‑scene perspectives affect the pacing of the story?
19:47–36:44