I'm glad I'm not alone in reading these. >.> Now if you people would read The Malazan Book of the Fallen...
Anyway! These books are perhaps some of the best literary work by King out of his entire career (I still stand that The Green Mile is his greatest). However, the development of the characters is terriffic and he shows his genius by even having a non-human character devlop (Oy). Furthermore the plot, while nothing that I would call, overly original, the plot elements and how he uses his characters in his plot make it seem so.
Roland of Gilead is perhaps his greatest creation in the sense of a character. Roland represents the truth of humanity, in that we are not the knights in shining armour of righteousness that we claim to be. He is the sole embodiment of the anti hero and how, despite our good intentions, the truth of who we really are will always come to the surface. King wrote that Roland was a "dark romantic". And we see this ever more clearly as the novels continue, however, it begs the question "How deep is the darkness in him?" Despite his romantic notions of friendship and comradiery that we see near the end, it is the darkness of his nature that wins out as he struggles onward despite all guilt and regret.
