Stephen King has been hard at work on The Talisman 3, the third book in the Talisman series, and here’s what we know about it so far. The Talisman 3 has the potential to be Stephen King’s most exciting book of the 2020s, thanks to a return to a world and a character that have been sorely missed.
In the past decade, King has turned his hand to crime novels, with his Holly Gibney interconnected universe taking up the lion’s share of his page count. It’s been rare in the modern era that he’s returned to the sprawling, country criss-crossing epics of his early years, but The Talisman 3 is set to change that as King has confirmed he’s returning to The Territories – and Mid-World.
Here’s everything we know so far about the upcoming Stephen King release.
Potential Release Window For Stephen King’s The Talisman 3
There’s no official release date yet for the book, but Stephen King gave a writing update on The Talisman 3 back in July, stating simply, “TALISMAN 3 is almost done.” Considering it was only back in October 2024 that he first revealed that he was kicking around the idea of writing a third book, King clearly found momentum.
Currently, finishing The Talisman 3 appears to be his priority. There are no other publicly announced upcoming Stephen King books, and he has stated that he’s been occupied with the writing of the third book, unsurprising to anyone who has followed his career for a while – when a story gets its hooks into King, he has to keep at it until he’s written it out of himself.
Factoring in the pace of his writing and usual publishing schedule of releasing one to two new books a year, it’s likely that The Talisman 3 will be released in 2026. Depending on how many revisions it undergoes, it could perhaps even be released in the first half of next year.
The Talisman 3’s Story: What We Know About The Upcoming Book’s Plot & Setting So Far
With the tidbits Stephen King has been dropping since last year, we may know more about The Talisman 3‘s potential story than we realized. When he first revealed he’d dusted off the idea for the third Talisman book, King shared that, before Peter Straub, his co-author of the first two books, had passed, he’d given King a great idea for the next book.
According to King, Straub’s idea revolved around the real-life serial (or spree) killer, Charles Starkweather, who murdered 11 people in Wyoming and Nebraska in the span of three months, from November 1957 to January 1958. Black House featured protagonist Jack Sawyer chasing a serial killer known as The Fisherman, based on serial killer, child rapist, and cannibal Albert Fish, who, like Starkweather, was a real person.
Thematically, using Charles Starkweather as the antagonist would tie Black House and The Talisman 3 together, a natural evolution from a fictional serial killer based on a real one to a fictionalized version of a real one. Starkweather’s chilling words in one of his last letters to his parents from prison are ripe to be plucked by King and spun into a memorably twisted villain: “[B]ut dad I’m not real sorry for what I did cause for the first time me and Caril have (sic) more fun.”
Jack Sawyer Will Be 57 Years Old In The Talisman 3
As expected, the protagonist of The Talisman 3 will be Jack Sawyer. Ole’ Travelin’ Jack is a little older and a lot wiser in this one: King revealed that Jack will be 57 in the third book. For context, he was 12 during the events of The Talisman and 42 in the sequel, Black House.
Three decades were between the first and second book, and Jack had changed considerably from the little boy he was. In the sequel, he was a retired LAPD detective living in the small town of French Landing, Wisconsin. Though the 13 years between books 2 and 3 aren’t nearly as long as the 30 years between the first two, we can expect Jack to have experienced a lot in that time, which will reflect in his characterization.
As King has said of Jack, “It’s been an interesting life.” We’ll find out how interesting, and what Jack has been up to, when The Talisman 3 is released.
The Talisman 3 Will Finally Reconcile Continuity Inconsistencies With The Dark Tower
When it was published way back in 1984, it was firmly established that the fictional Territories of The Talisman and the Mid-World of The Dark Tower series were two wholly separate places existing in separate universes. For 17 years, that was canon.
And then, in 2001, Black House came out and upended canon continuity by including overt references to and characters from The Dark Tower series. In the 24 years since, it’s been a lingering source of consternation for many readers that the now-connected universes created some continuity errors.
With The Talisman 3, King intends to clean up those inconsistencies. In a recent interview with USA Today, King confirmed that it was made “pretty clear” in Black House that The Territories and Mid-World are one and the same, so his plan is to “button up” both series with the third Talisman book. With Stephen King, a story is never really over, but as of now, it would seem that the third book will bring the worlds of The Dark Tower, The Talisman, and Jack Sawyer to a proper and final close.
- Birthdate
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September 21, 1947
- Birthplace
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Portland, Maine, USA
- Professions
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Author, Screenwriter, Producer, Director, Actor
- Height
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6 feet 4 inches
