Has anybody here read The Dark Tower by Stephen King?
I had sort of given up on Stephen King some years ago, after being a big fan of his work through my teens, and maybe early twenties. He started to go haywire a bit, in my opinion, around The Tommyknockers.
I've never bothered with The Dark Tower before, despite having been recommended the series many times, until recently my fabulous wife finished the series and assured me that it was very different from King's other work. So, I'm part of the way into book 3, and I would have to agree. There are times in these books when I'm aware of some of the weaknesses of Stephen King as a writer, but overall they're more serious, abstract and bizarre (in a dreamy, metaphysical way, not in a horror story way) than I'd have expected.
Now that I'm into this series I've done a little investigating about it and there seem to be a lot of extremely devoted fans of the series. I've tried to avoid spoilers but I gather that generally people feel this is King's big "epic," with mythic elements and an over-arching set of themes that occasionally cross over into his previous works, and even touch upon events in the author's real life.
I wonder if anyone here on the Hypnos Forum has any thoughts on The Dark Tower, or has enjoyed reading it in the past.