King

I am currently reading The Wastelands, the third in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series and, with certain caveats, I am finding it very enjoyable. The hopping between worlds and time periods is something I find very appealing, as is the mashing together of genres, and King is a terrific storyteller with an effortless talent for hooking the reader and keeping them hooked over even the longest of his books. As was the case with The Walking Dead, the characters are so well written and likeable that I could quite happily read about them taking a trip to the launderette or getting their cars serviced. What is less appealing is the ghoulish relish with which King lingers on gruesome details, occasionally sinking to schoolboy levels of disgusting-just-for-the-sake-of-it, and sometimes I wish an editor had taken some scissors to the more revolting passages. However, this is a Stephen King book, and I imagine that this carries certain privileges, not least of which is the right to write whatever he damn well wants to without any editor or publisher telling him what to do.
The other problem I have with these books is the flip side of what I find appealing about them; the mashing together of genres and disparate story elements - robots, mutants, dragons and wizards - occasionally cause the whole thing to feel a little overstuffed, as if the author just threw whatever he wanted to into the story without any particular rhyme or reason. The existence of seemingly contradictory elements in the same world is only vaguely explained with some waffle about the "beams" which support reality having been partially destroyed, causing time and distance to distort and the wall separating worlds having become "thinner" in places. Personally I think that if King had excised the magical elements and set the story in a post-apocalyptic version of our world (which he seems to be hinting that his books' setting is in the earlier instalments) it would have been a much stronger series, and would certainly come across as less self-indulgent.