I loved the Dark Tower series in my younger years. It rocked for about 5 books, and then King fucked it all up. He even went back and fucked up the first book even more. I am an unrepentant King fan. He’s been a huge influence on my fiction, ranking up there with Ray Bradbury. But god damn him for that stupid fucking ending to a saga I’d spent 15 years of my life reading. Son of a bitch.
Here’s Piers Morgan being an unbelievable douchebag, since you all seem to like him as much as I do.
Fucker.
If this fucking twerp is stunned by an AR, we need to drag his lily-white arse out for some Enfield and Nagant schooling.
“Unbelievable Power”? So this doucher comes over from the UK where they’re not allowed to have spitwads and people are supposed to think he’s an “objective journalist” about a firearm?
oh god, the world is dumber than I thought. I do wish they had set him up with a bigger caliber though. Would have been interesting to see his reaction going from the .223 to say a .30-06….
I liked older Stephen King books and stories. I loved the original The Gunslinger. I was on board with the next two. But then King lost me with Wizards and Glass. I never finished the Dark Tower series. I cautiously hung in there for a few other books. And after a few more bad books, I was done with King. Seriously, Dreamcatcher was my limit.
Also, I hated how he started making all of his writings into an interconnected multiverse.
I read that entire series in a couple of months*. To this day I impatiently twirl my finger at people. That is however about the only thing I actually remember from the series. Perhaps I should read it again.
I didn’t read too many of Kings other books, after the dark tower series they all seemed derivative.
*(it was nearly finished when I discovered it)
Wait… 900 RPM from a Ma Deuce? Though they were around 500 RPM.
Also, IMHO a shotgun with pistol grip and no buttstock is 1/3rd less effective. Don´t know why people keep insisting on them. A folding stock i can understand, but missing one all together…
I think we need to bring Piers to the Big Sandy shoot. I don’t think his head would explode watching all the people having fun but I’d pay to see him twitch at the thought that people are actually having fun with these firearms
I’ll let you know as soon as I read something decent by Stephen King. After going through two books, I am done. Seems like just another hack.
Of course, there’s no accounting for taste. People also gush about Phillip Roth, but two chapters into “The Human Stain”, I was seriously contemplating sending the guy a copy of “The Basic Elements of Style”. That impulse did not retreat for the rest of the novel.
I’d say give him one more chance with 11/22/63, one of his most recent works. It’s possibly the finest thing he’s ever written, and engrossing enough that I’ve read it three times already. This comes from someone who hasn’t liked anything else he’s done in the last 6 years, but loved his earlier work.
I’ll allow that. Tom Clancy was good, too. For his first four novels. Then he went to crap. He should’ve stayed in the Cold War.
The two novels I read were Under the Dome (which I committed to read for a book club — oh, god, make it stop, please make it end,) and Misery–yes, interesting story concept, but the only part that held my interest was the amputation scene, which was absolutely riveting. But everything else? Just felt tedious. One of the few times I’ll say it: the movie was better.
Wait, is 11/22/63 another hagiography about the Kennedy son who lost Cuba, got into a war in Vietnam, hired his brother as AG, nearly started a nuclear war, and didn’t do jack about civil rights?
Uh, no. Not at all.
I read the original printing of the first three books. Never got round to reading the whole series. I never got into any of his other writings, unlike Bradbury. I’ve got most of his on my shelves and have read everything he wrote.
You’re welcome to Piers Morgan. When he’s fire larger calibre (at the very least 7.62NATO), and spent a full day on the ranges, including woodland and house-to-house, he can start muttering about power. Until then he’s talking BS.
Yeah, that resolution was a bit of a copout. I really liked Wolves of the Calla, mainly b/c of the reappearance of Father Callahan. After that it did seem to go off the rails a bit, but I tend to cut him a bit of slack. I mean, he could’ve just quit writing altogether after getting pulverized by that van, so I rolled what he did with the last four books inserting himself into the storyline. If that’s what he needed to do to rationalize and get some resolution to what happened, then so be it. The books and stories he’s written since The Dark Tower (The Wind Through the Keyhole, The Little Sisters of Eluria) are nice fillers that help to satisfy the frustration of the series being over for me.
The best stuff Stephen King does is his short stories. He’s one of those writers with pretty interesting ideas, but he’s not great if he has to go above 50 pages or so. I genuinely enjoyed the Dark Tower series, but if I enjoy a set of characters and a world enough I’ll forgive a lot if I’m being entertained. I did get really peeved when discovering Wizard and Glass was in essence a prequel.
The problem with King’s fiction is that he’s the type of guy who writes by the seat of his pants. It makes him enormously prolific, but it also means he never has the ending planned out, meaning he builds the suspense up too high to be able to give a decent pay off to his own hype. The ride, on the other hand, is usually pretty good since he knows how to modulate suspense better than any writer I’ve ever come across.
Love the dark tower reference man! you just got that much cooler
The first three Dark Tower books rocked. The self-insertion fanfic-y-ness made me roll my eyes, and the ending literally made me scream so that my roomie at the time shouted “Are you ok??” from a few rooms over, haha.
Also, I KNEW I caught the Dark Tower influence in “On the Banks of Lethe”! Nice to see it confirmed. (:
The only Steven King novel I ever finish was “The Stand”. That was my start into the Prepper world. However, the King’s paranormal bent never interested me.
Mick’s a lefty?
Good eye!
Jeremy Alcede did another interview today…on this one he mentioned letting piers shoot up to a .50, though I can’t remember if that’s bmg from a sniper rifle or 50 ae from a desert eagle…also he was asked by the host to give him all the surveillance footage from inside the range to show what he *really* said. Guess which host…
Agreed, regarding Dark Tower (which I only started reading, finally, sometime last year I think)
(Done now, and still agreed)
IMO King is notorious for the going back and re-writing a formerly successful work: look what he did with The Shining movie.
Stephen King wrote The Shawshank Redemption, though, right?
Surprised me to learn that. And restored my esteem of him. (Which never was as high as yours. But he’s..well, he’s somethin [Jayne])
I got a kick out of the series, but #6 seemed more like filler to me than anything else, along with most of 5.
Also, you got the first part backwards. He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.