Stephen King's Lord of the Rings

jOHN rODRIGUEZ · #1 03-23-2006, 11:03 PM

The Dark Tower Series.

I was given a set with I, II, III & IV for Xmas and have just got around to the beginning of my journey. MINDBLOWING. Truely the next generation's "Lord of the Rings", which according to his forward(interesting in & of itself, the man is genius) is what he set out to achieve. I swear King must be a medium channeling Tolken.

Other than The Stand and The Shinning, I could never finish any of his other full novels to the end. I have always loved his short story sets, Nightshift, Four Past Mindnight, & his best & most recent Everything's Eventual. If you've never cared for him either, but hard up for reading, def. give Everything's Eventual a try I'd bet it will win you over. Not all horror either, but the horror IS horror. "1408" has always reminded me of Aphex Twin while I read it(three reads and everytime it scares the shit out of me!)

Professor · #2 03-24-2006, 07:46 AM

blackhouse is part of that series too...sort of a side character...from the talisman.

adam · #3 03-24-2006, 08:04 AM

Stephen King is an idiot. In my honest opinion. Can't say I've read Dark Tower to be honest, but nothing would incline me to do so. If you enjoy 'em, power to you, though. Don't mean to rain on your parade, just throwing in my two bits.

darktrain · #4 03-24-2006, 11:19 AM

I tore through books 1-3 and then got stalled mid-way through 4...and have been there for well over a year. I've heard from friends that it picks up again but I just haven't had the will to dive in again. The first third of book 2 is my fav.

Dark Tower comic series is coming from Marvel next year with art by Jae Lee.

adam · #5 03-24-2006, 11:54 AM

Is Jim Lee still drawing anything?

BeautifulBurnout · #6 03-24-2006, 12:02 PM

Well, I love Stephen King. For me he is the perfect escape from reality, and I seem to fall into the pages of his books almost without realising it and re-surface hours later.

Haven't read a lot of fiction lately, unfortunately, and haven't read any of this series, so I shall look forward to it.

Malt Refund · #7 03-24-2006, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adam

Is Jim Lee still drawing anything?

Jae Lee is different then Jim Lee, but yeah he's been doing alot of Batman lately (Hush, Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder). Not doing nearly as much has he did in the 90's.

Jae Lee drawing Stephen King would be perfect, he's a crazy dude but his art style really fits so little in the ways of comics. I have a few Captain America's that he drew and they are just.. weird.

adam · #8 03-24-2006, 01:57 PM

I knew they weren't the same person, but I thought they were brothers...did I just assume that because I'm an idiot?

Jim Lee was one of my favorite mainstream artists. Whilce Portacio or whatever his name is, too. Mark Silvestri? Who did Wetworks?

Malt Refund · #9 03-24-2006, 02:42 PM

No relation.. same with Stan Lee. Just alot of Lees in the business. ^__^

lloyd · #10 03-28-2006, 01:00 AM

As some people might know, I'm a big fan of stephen king. I read all he writes. Last book by him is Cell, kind of The Stand with another source for humanity to wipepout by a large %, and a lot shorter.
While his plots and ideas and the different layers in his books and short stories are always good, it often lacks them just 'that little more' for him to be a great writer.
I think that the Dark Tower series, 7 books in total, is indeed discribing a journey like in the Lord of the Rings. It has a lot of the dept of it too, the mytical world(s), the (semi)religious like meaning of it all, discribing the different psychological types of people etc. But Lord of the Rings is far better written. You'll find in both series of books that the writers in the later parts hurry writing towards the end and it's there that King looses points from Tolkien (for me that is). The Dark Tower will never be as influencial at writing then Lord of the Rings has been, first because it's by King, lots of people don't like him because he writes horror, and second because it's only good, not great.
As for cross references in the books.. King dos that all the time and that is fun to puzzle with. The Dark Tower connects with Salem's Lot, Regulators, Black House and The Talisman, Insomnia (his best book I think), IT and The Stand amongst others (they find the wheelchair for susan in 'The Stands world') .The wizzard of OZ is in there too and I think that The Lord of the Rings is ever present and that it has been a BIG insperation for King for this serie of books.
The use of himself as a caracter in 2 of the DT books is really interesting and shows his power, thinking out plots.
King said once, I believe in Dans Macabre, that writing is hard work. The fun part thinking out plots, constructing the story, playing with words and language etc but mainly hard work filling pages and that's showing in most of his books. He has his great moments, and DT has lots of them, but he isn't the greatest writer out there.