The End of an Era?

I have been reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series for over a year now, on and off. All the books have come from the library, and I’ve had to wait for them to come in, so in between I’ve been reading other books. But for the majority of that time, Roland and his Ka-Tet have been a major part of my life. However, I’m now about 2/3 of the way through the final book, and as much as I want to be finished, to see how he fares, I don’t want them to be gone from my life. It may sound really silly, but I get so into books that I often wonder what the characters are doing when I’m not reading it. I’ll sit at work and find myself thinking about Eddie and Susannah, wondering what they’re up to, and how they’re doing. Then I have to have a reality check and remind myself that they are in fact just characters. But for those who have read the series, you’ll know that the characters turn up in New England to pay Steven King a visit. It is very strange, and quite hard to explain to people, but it grounds the whole story, and makes me wonder if in fact Steven King did have a vision of the protagonist and his friend.

I really can’t wait to finish and for the past few nights I’ve been up until stupid o’clock in the morning, because I just can’t book the brick of a book down. But then what do I do when I’m finished? I have a whole pile of books to read, but they won’t be about Jake, Oy and the gang. I’ve read books before where I wonder about the characters when I’m not reading, but never to this extent. It’s never taken me a whole year to read a series pretty much non-stop. They are just the most amazing books. I was reading a passage last night about 2 of the characters (I won’t mention too much in case there are people reading them!) travelling through a very dark tunnel. There are lightbulbs overhead that turn on as you approach and dim as you walk away. King mentions the shapes that their shadows make on the floor, as they walk. This adds nothing to the story line, and as I read it I thought it quite a pointless sentence, but then the description added a great amount the whole atmosphere of the passage. I’m afraid of the dark…I’ll admit it, I’m 22 and afraid of the dark, and the way King describes this tunnel absolutely terrified me. It was almost as if they could touch the dark, and as for me, well I was right there with them, in the pitch dark, just running.

I guess that once I’m done I’ll just have to move on the next book that I have in my list, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I started to read it while waiting for The Dark Tower to come into the library, but I had to stop. So I’ll start that one again, and move from Out-World to Hogwarts. That’s the wonderful thing about books, the constant changing scenery.