Stephen King's The Colorado Kid

[cwoy2j]

You might want to spoiler tag those last two sentences as well.

[J.T.]

Wizards and Glass is the fucking best.   Blaine the Mono is the best antagonist that King has ever created.  FACT~!

[cwoy2j]

Wizards and Glass is the fucking best.   Blaine the Mono is the best antagonist that King has ever created.  FACT~!

 

Wouldn't go that far but he's up there. He actually got a better death than Flagg did.

[cwoy2j]

Yeah, I'll second Wizard & Glass.  I would say it was the last great book in the series.  I think the series went off the rails when King decided he had to hurry up and finish it.  The first four books each had between 4 - 6 years between them.  The last three came out in a two year span. 

 

That ending --

Roland opens the door and realizes he has to do it all again but maybe learned a little bit and will do better next time

-- bugged the shit out of me because I started reading the series when I was like 14.  I read the last book when I was 30.  So I essentially had 16 years invested in this only to get a horrible finish.  I'm surprised Roland's big lesson was "don't forget to drink your Ovaltine."

 

The whole philosophical thing of the hero constantly reincarnated until he gets it right is fine if it's a single book.  Not so much if it's the ending to a decades-spanning saga that linked an entire universe of books and short stories.

 

One of my big pet peeves was that Susannah survived. If anyone deserved to live, it was Jake. Susannah was by far the most annoying member of the ka-tet. They either all should've died or Jake should've been the one to have that ending. He goes through the door to New York and instead of going back to his shitty parents, he finds alternate versions of Eddie and Susannah who adopt him. How heart wrenching of a scene would it have been to have Jake realize that he'd have to leave his true father? I just didn't feel anything when Susannah left.

[bobholly138]

 

Yeah, but Wizard & Glass is still fucking awesome.

 

Agreed. I think the series jumped the shark with #5 when they had everyone speaking in that stupid Calla Bryn Sturgis dialect. I still finished out the series and enjoyed parts of it but once you had Roland saying commala and say thankya and everyone blathering about 19 every two seconds it felt like a different story.

 

And I think Book 4 is the worst in the series. Followed by book 6. Also did not hate the ending. But before book 5 came out someone on a forum theorized it would end the way it did.

[Brian Fowler]

You think book 4 is the worst...

I... I can't process that.

[bobholly138]

You think book 4 is the worst...

I... I can't process that.

 

 

A big part of it is this, I started reading the Dark Tower series when book 2 came out. Waited what 5 years for part 3. Got a great book with a great cliffhanger ending. Waited 5 or so years for book 4. Got maybe 100 pages of the main storyline. The rest of the book was a flashback that could have been trimmed down majorly and not effected the main storyline.

 

I know that lots of people love book 4. I just never have. All the rest of the books in the series I have read at least 6 times. Book 4 only gets re-read when I am re-reading the entire series.

[WholeFnMachine]

http://litreactor.com/columns/every-stephen-king-novel-summarized-in-140-characters-or-less

[cwoy2j]

http://litreactor.com/columns/every-stephen-king-novel-summarized-in-140-characters-or-less

 

Pretty funny but they got a couple of things wrong. King didn't write Fear Nothing or Odd Thomas.

[WholeFnMachine]

 

http://litreactor.com/columns/every-stephen-king-novel-summarized-in-140-characters-or-less

 

Pretty funny but they got a couple of things wrong. King didn't write Fear Nothing or Odd Thomas.

 

 

I love Odd Thomas, the final book is coming out in January. 

[Brian Fowler]

There is a long standing (and almost certainly bullshit) rumor/legend that King ghost-wrote some of Koontz's novels, and I think that's the joke...