Plum Crazy

Yesterday night I finally finished my quest to read all the Stephen King novels peripherally related to the Dark Tower Series. Those books would be:

• The Stand


• The Talisman (written with Peter Straub)


• Black House (written with Peter Straub)


• Salem's Lot


• Insomnia


• The Eyes of the Dragon


• Two short stories from Everything's Eventual: "The Little Sisters of Eluria" and "Everything's Eventual"


• One short story from Hearts In Atlantis: "Low Men in Yellow Coats"

This sets me up for the fifth Dark Tower book, Wolves of the Calla, slated to be published November 4th. I really enjoyed Salems Lot, which surprised me. For some reason I didn't expect a Stephen King book about vampires to be all that good, given that I am a huge fan of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Nevertheless, although the book was completely different, I still enjoyed it a lot. If anyone is planning on reading the last three Dark Tower novels, I recommend going ahead and reading all the peripheral books you haven't yet read. It's fun, and you'll see the Crimson King and Randall Flagg show up a few times, as well as some tantalizing mentions of Roland and his trio of gunslingers.

But while waiting for Wolves of the Calla to be published, I have broken down and bought Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson's fourth Dune book, The Butlerian Jihad, curse them both. I love the Dune Series. Okay, specifically I love the books Frank Herbert wrote in the Dune Series. I could tell that he was building up to some great reveal at the end of the sixth Dune book, Chapterhouse Dune, but sadly he died prior to completing the seventh.

When I read that his son had found extensive notes regarding Herbert's plans for the seventh book and was planning on collaborating with Kevin Anderson to write it, I was ecstatic. Finally all the pieces would be brought together, although, the two had decided to go back and do a little pre-history first, and so were writing three books that took place shortly before Dune. I dutifully read those three novels, expecting the last novel to be shortly forthcoming.

Alas, no. They decided to go even further back in history to the time of the Butlerian jihad discussed in the Dune series and write three novels about that. At first I was boycotting, but running out of books to read, I relented. I started The Butlerian Jihad last night, and so far am finding it a relatively decent read (more than I can say for the last two books they wrote). I suppose now I'll have to read the next two (but I'm waiting for paperback). After that they better write that final novel, though, or I'll be way pissed off.