I just started this one, but so far so good.

I like King, and saw this half price in a local bookshop closing down the other day. I got it, then not realising it was the fourth of a series. Will it be possible to read it individually, or will I really need to read the first three?

Peter.

Peter - I think there's a summary of the story so far at the beginning, but you'd really need to read the other three books first if you're going to fully understand what's gone on.

A lot of King's books are tied into the DT series in some way. The kid from Insomnia is supposed to help Roland and company somewhere along the way, and Hearts in Atlantis has a group attempting to break the Beams. I can't wait to see how it all turns out in the end.

Does anyone else have the concern that I have: that Stephen might never finish the series? IIRC, when he introduced the series he suspected that it could run to as many as eight books - personally I'm worried that he might never get inspired to complete it. Having been very disappointed by Wizard and Glass, considering it the weakest of the four books so far, I'd hate to think that this could be where it ends.

My imprssion was that the odd numbered Dark Tower books are good, and the even ones aren't. The first one was great, the second, one was the weakest, the thirst was great, and the fourth was just ok.

I was really disappointed by this book, and annoyed that I’d had to wait so long only to be disappointed. The build-up at the end of The Waste Lands had led me to believe that the next episode would revolve around the Walkin’ Dude, but far too quickly it went onto the Roland/Susan story. At this point I wasn’t interested in that story. It may well become relevant in the future (if Stephen ever gets round to finishing the saga) but I just couldn’t get into it – throughout the vast bulk of the book I wanted to get back to the present and what was going to happen to the people I cared about.

When we finally did get back to the present, I was left wondering whether Fannin/Flagg (why did he change his name back to Flagg?) really had been Marten or not. At first it seemed that he had been, when Roland said something like, “Marten at last, in my gunsights,” but a bit later that certainty seemed to go again.

I lost a lot of respect for King on reading The Tommyknockers when, in a story all about UFOs, he had one of his characters say or think something along the lines of ‘no self-respecting author could get away with writing about UFOs these days.’ It felt to me as if he was arrogantly saying, ‘but I, the great Stephen King, can get away with anything and you mugs will fall for it’. Largely as a result of that, it was one of the last books of his that I bought except for the Dark Tower sequence (although I made the huge mistake of later buying Nightmares and Dreamscapes because his earlier short stories had been brilliant. I’ve never been so angry at an author in my life – he really seemed to think that because he was so famous he could dig out and publish all his early rubbish which would never have seen the light of day – and rightly so – if he hadn’t become famous. What’s even more irritating is that he got away with it because by the time you realised that it was rubbish, it was too late to demand a refund!).

I had the same sense of King’s arrogance here. As someone who has read The Stand, the arrival of our heroes in a world blighted by Captain Trips was fascinating but I wondered whether anyone who hasn’t read it would be a little puzzled by what was going on. I also noted that in his Afterword he says that more characters from other books are going to appear in future episodes. Why does he automatically and arrogantly assumes that anyone reading this must have also read all his previous books, and does it even dawn on him that readers who haven’t met such characters before have great difficulty in coping with them? For me there’s nothing more annoying than finding characters in a book who have clearly been developed in other stories, because you never quite catch up and you know that you’re missing half of the ‘in-jokes’ and subtle references back to situations they’ve been in before now.

I just finished this one the other night. I lsot sleep finsihing it. I was a little upset with the Roland/Susan plot when it started but as I went along I BECAME interested, and when it ended I was heart-broken. That's the sign of a good writer for ya'.

Callie Sullivan: ***I lost a lot of respect for King on reading The Tommyknockers when, in a story all about UFOs, he had one of his characters say or think something along the lines of ‘no self-respecting author could get away with writing about UFOs these days.’ It felt to me as if he was arrogantly saying, ‘but I, the great Stephen King, can get away with anything and you mugs will fall for it’. ***

And, gee, here I thought I hated Tommyknockers because it was BAD.

Honestly, though, I think you're taking it too seriously. If anything, King was mocking himself not his audience. Other examples of King's self-deprecating humor abound in his books. In fact, isn't it in Tommyknockers where one of the characters thinks about how much she likes Paul Sheldon's (King's fictional author from Misery) books over that dark, creepy guy in Maine?

Well, King always addresses either the Forwards, or Afterwards to The Constant Reader. It could be that he is rewarding those who have been reading his books. That, and giving incentive to the non-constant reader to read the rest of his books.

NOVEMBER?!!!!! They're not releasing Wolves of the Calla (Book 5) until November!!!

Mind you, at least we should then get both of the final two books within a year.

Details here.