You don't know me, but I saw this post on my network page and wanted to chime in. Hope that's okay!
Book 1 is definitely the weak link in the series. I only got into it about 20 pages from the end, and only because it started hitting on a bulletproof (for me) trope. Books 2-5 I consider excellent, by far better than the first book; imo, they're absolutely worth reading if you're a fan of King's other work.
Books 6-7 have their moments, but don't match up to the rest of the series - and some large aspects of them are weird, even for Stephen King. He's never exactly been shy about gift wrapping his personal issues and presenting them in novel form, but it's really overt in these and I'm still not sure how well I think it worked.
I did not care for the ending - saw what King was going for, didn't think it worked in practice...but I've only read the series through once and might change my mind after a reread - but there is a very clear stopping place toward the end of the last book that would allow you to avoid the part of the ending that people objected to the most.
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Book 1 is definitely the weak link in the series. I only got into it about 20 pages from the end, and only because it started hitting on a bulletproof (for me) trope. Books 2-5 I consider excellent, by far better than the first book; imo, they're absolutely worth reading if you're a fan of King's other work.
Books 6-7 have their moments, but don't match up to the rest of the series - and some large aspects of them are weird, even for Stephen King. He's never exactly been shy about gift wrapping his personal issues and presenting them in novel form, but it's really overt in these and I'm still not sure how well I think it worked.
I did not care for the ending - saw what King was going for, didn't think it worked in practice...but I've only read the series through once and might change my mind after a reread - but there is a very clear stopping place toward the end of the last book that would allow you to avoid the part of the ending that people objected to the most.