Lost in Midworld

Goodness. I just finished reading the first five Dark Tower comic books more or less back-to-back. And... wow.

As always, possible spoilers behind the cut.

There are other worlds than these

I finished rereading The Waste Lands yesterday.

I don't know if I can properly describe the place this book has in my life - as a reader, and as a writer. As a reader, technically speaking, it's probably the book I have reread the most.  It's a book where I think the illustrations (I have a big old color-picture copy) really add something, isntad of just being a nice bonus. I think its a story that's fed my appetite throughout my life with the travelogue story, and with mashing westerns into jsut about anything you can think of.

I KNOW it's where my tendency to read books out of order came from. This was my first ever not only Dark Tower book, but Stephen King book as well. I was a little lost a the beginning - no matter how well an author tries to present the actions of previous books, there's always a lot of detail and nuance missing that makes for confusion -  but I quickly figured out how to compartmentalize things that were too confusing and to figure the rest out enough to enable me to go forward.

This is also, as a writer, a book that I look to when I want to study characterization. I've long been a fan of how King writes people - the diversity and the way he's more than happy to paint the bad along with the good in equal measures. Mental arguments? detailed alien-world description? this is the place I go to see how it's done. :)

I keep hoping I'll find another book that moves me as much and means so much to me, but I guess it's true what they say, your first is special...

Revisiting Mid-world

I try to reread at least one or two of my favorite series each year. I know some people are forever going ahead, reading new books, but for me, there's a sort of wonderful joy in returning to these old series. So the first series revisit this year is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. There will be spoilers. You have been warned.

I'm going slow, sprinkling these books in between book club selections and other reading. But I finished the first book, The Gunslinger, today (review at Goodreads) and had a few thoughts about Roland, Jake and the concept of Ka.