I never got into the Dark Tower series although some have told me it's his masterpiece. I know it's supposed to link to a lot of his other works, including The Talisman, The Stand, Salem's Lot and so on. One of these days I'll have to give it a shot.
If you start it, Lilo, you won't want to stop until you're finished. It's an undertaking, for sure, but by the time you get to the final chapter of Book 7, you'll wonder where the time went, and be saddened by the fact that it's really over. You'll come to care a great deal about the characters (especially Roland).
SB, I picked up "Under the Dome" a few weeks before Christmas, but put off starting it until after New Years because my in-laws were up from Florida for the holidays. Anyway, I'm a little more than 2/3rds of the way through it as we speak, er, type
. It's a bit like "The Stand," in that it's very apocalyptic, and it creates a real "us versus them" attitude with the survivors (those living "Under the Dome"). The good guys are likable and the bad guys, well, you just can't wait for them to be dead.
So typical King, I guess. But in a good way, because it's not formulaic in the least (like so many other writers who publish 20, 30 or 40+ novels).
