Blaze - Richard Bachman

You know a book is in trouble when the first line of the author's foreword is "This is a trunk book". It was written by Stephen King (under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) in 1973, not considered good enough for publication, and has languished in a box ever since. Sometimes, even completed books deserve to remain unpublished and unread. This is definitely one of them. Blaze is a little different from King's normal "horror" style books, which may be an issue for some. Although he has been branching out recently, long term readers expect monsters, blood, guts and terror. Instead, Blaze gives them a tale of a baby being kidnapped by a ...  Read the complete review

Clayton Blasdell Jnr was born with all his faculties. In fact he was pretty brainy for his age and read books with a passion. However one Saturday morning, not long after Clayton Jnr had started school, his father threw him down the stairs three times for eating biscuits in the living room. He was comatose and the doctors said he wouldn't wake up - but he did! This was not new behaviour for little Clayton to endure but was the worst of his life so far, and he subsequently ended up living in the State's protection in Hetton House Boys Home. Things never improved much for Clayton, who after the "accident" was nowhere near as bright as he once had ...  Read the complete review

For years now, it has been fairly common knowledge that Richard Bachman and Stephen King are the same man. Recently, however, it has seemed more and more that the person most reluctant to accept this is King himself. That can be the only reason that “Blaze” has been published under the Bachman name, but “with a foreword by Stephen King” all over it. After all, that message isn’t going to attract any new readers; if you’re a King fan, you’ll already know this is his writing; if you’re not, that message is going to make you walk away. There is a warning in the foreword, in that King readily admits that this is a thirty year old novel and that he thought it ...  Read the complete review

Somebody gave this book to my boyfriend over a year ago and it's just been lying around ever since. I was bored one day and had nothing to read so thought I'd give it ago. I'm so very glad that I did. I can't understand why some people have given it a low rating and why King himself says it's not that great. I was absolutely hooked; I read it in about 7 hours straight and was desperate to know what happened next. Each to their own I guess! I haven't read many of Stephen Kings other books so I can't really compare the writing style but I found this really easy to read once I got past the first chapter. What's the story ...  Read the complete review

I'm not a diehard fan of Stephen King and there are some books he has written I've enjoyed immensely and others I couldn't get into at all so recently while shopping for a couple of new books in a discount store I wasn't that impressed to find nothing appealed to me except a Stephen King book. I bought it anyway, it cost me a £1, and figured at least it would give me something to read. Blaze was written in late 1972-73 under Stephen King's pen name of the time Richard Bachman. He put it away because he didn't consider it good enough to be published and it hasn't seen the light of day until recently when Stephen King revised it a little and published it. ...  Read the complete review