I’m currently re-reading one of my favourite series - The Dark Tower, by Stephen King. If it seems I’m a bit of a crazy King fan, I’m actually not. I like some of his books, but TDT are the only ones I really love. There is just something about Roland - the gunslinger - and the world he inhabits. It draws you in and makes you feel that same mad passion that he does for his Tower - and also the love he feels for his companions.
I fell in love with these books as a teenager, and waited eagerly as each new book was released. After King had his accident, I, like many others, was distraught - ‘we’ll never learn if Roland reaches the Tower now!!’
But, thankfully, King survived, and so did Roland. To meet an end, such an end… I do believe I cried when I read the final pages of the final book and the conclusion was reached - the only way it could have ended, as King said himself.
Books like these, where the characters come to live in your head, are the most memorable. When a story spans decades, and is full of growing life experience, as these are, they seem to exude a certain truth. Some people bemoan the fact that King wrote himself into these stories - but I personally enjoyed it. To him, these people are real, and he makes them live for us, his readers, too.
Tags: novels, stephen king, the dark tower