Stephen King

I am not a Stephen King lover. The only reason I say this is because I have been reading his work of late.

There is a story cycle some of you may have heard of called The Dark Tower. It is a seven-novel sequence comprising The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard and Glass, then there was a multi year lull, then he was nearly run down and killed, then he's come out with the last three in a burst: Wolves of the Calla and Song Of Susannah, which are out now, and very soon now (and at long freakin' last) the eponymous last novel in the series.

I have often found it amusing that an author who, in the main, has pretty much produced hack work (it probably helps little that I am decidedly not a horror fan) has come up with a complex and acutally quite surrealistically beautiful series.

The Dark Tower is not the most popular work King has done, and so may require some explanation. It details the quest of Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, for the Dark Tower, which seems to sit at the center of multiple universes, somehwat in the manner of Roger Zelazny's Amber. The world Roland makes his way is a world that is very very very old and fading and unraveling is surreal ways, kind of like an old, once-beautiful Oriental rug. The gunslingers were a caste of men very much like European-medieval-style knights, with thier codes of honor and of service, but instead of dealing in sharp steel and armor, they deal in Cowboy style and in six-shooters.

Along the way the reader is introduced to glances of a world that lays in ruin. Roland gives us hints of the world he grew up and came of age in-a finer time. These surreal and sometimes horrific vistas are presented with no explanation but many hints as well, and we are left to ponder the world as it may have been and wonder about the paths taken to get there.

It is also a mixture of parallel-universes, technology approaching the level of "wierd science", and fantasy-style sorcery.
Many times, emblems and objects from our own world are seen. They seem at once as though they should naturally be there, and also have somehow 'leaked through' from our world.

The characters are more than prop-ups, with intriguing and beguiling customs, manners, and ways of speech. I never tire of reading them.

There are some places where King's mythos comes close to jumping the shark, but they pull back just before they become too silly. And his reliance on giving the Susannah character a new split personality to advance the tale grates just a bit. Though I haven't read Song of Susannah yet, I am wary; in Wolves we begin to see parts of King's own Maine, and I understand that the author himself makes an appearance. This is perhaps the ultimate act of the evolving story, since, as the tale has continued, King has woven more references...and even characters (the Father Callahan character from 'Salem's Lot plays a major supporting role here). It will be interesting to see how King handles putting himself into the story. I can't quite articulate why, but that seems a major risk-one of the most winning qualities of the series is its otherworldliness, and having King show up as a character could potentially rob it of that.

But, like most Tower watchers, I've followed the story though the more-than-decade of its release. I want to be there for the end, if only to see how it turns out; I want to see how Roland's quest for the Dark Tower ends up saving the many universes which it is said to tie together.

Moreover, I want to see how the finishing of this tale finishes KIng's personal vision of a great work outside his normal oeurve, one that will probably survive the fame of his mainstream horror novels. Yes, it is that good.