The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>It was great, and like all good books in any series, it leaves you wanting more. Luckily it appears it wont be too long until the others come out. The Forward in the beginning claims that the next one will be out early in 2004 and the last will be late 2004, cant wait.

As for the book itself, i was pleased with it overall but felt like i was let down a bit with the fight against the wolves. The whole books builds up quite nicely to that battle, only for it to last a few chapters. Also, the fight seemed easy, which was opposite to what the book wanted you to believe it would be. After the fight there was not much closure with regard to Calla Bryn Sturgis, which i would have liked to read about.

The ending was pretty cool. I've read a lot of King but I havent read Salem's Lot and now i feel like i should before the next book comes out. Mia going through the door was an odd twist. The story never lead you to believe that she wanted to go anywhere special to have her chap, i always assumed that she would have in the middle of the night in a barn while believing she was in a hospital or something. It seems like Mia now knows what she is doing (instead of the hallucinations) and i really have no idea where she could have gone and how they will get her back. I'm not sure what to think about Callahan yet. His story is full of holes, he descibed it while saying there was always the looming darkness that sounds like todash, but he knows he wasnt in todash. Plus, people responded to him in his world so it is obviously not like the todash that Roland's tet go to while sleeping. Out of the tet he is also the only one that flipped to different versions of the US regularly... he could be a fictional character that somehow ended up in Roland's world. I think it is unlikely and it is probably just coincidence that there is a book about his life. Although it could be interesting if he is just a fictional character, then his version of the US doesnt really exist and vampires, in turn, dont exist either. This probably wont be the case because he described thew low-men simarlily to the way Hearts in Atlantic did, which was a real world.

You can see that King is finally tying up everything that you hear about in his other works. Hes now mentioned Breakers which he talked about in Heats in Atlantis and The Black House. I'm hoping that the next book will be more about Flagg, it is high time for him to stick his nose back into Roland's business.

All in all, it rocked. Roland is still as bad ass as ever and still my favorite book character of all time. Its nice that Eddit and Jake are finally coming into their own gunslinger roles as well. Once they all get to that point the tet will be unstoppable.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>The part at the end that really threw me off was Callahan reading that passage in the book about himself. That brings up all kinds of questions, namely what exactly can be considered "real". Somehow I don't think coincidence is at fault here, since throughout the whole DT series things have been more a matter of ka than not.

Yeah, definetly read Salem's Lot. It's a damned cool book, and it'll give you a lot of insight into Callahan and the whole mess with the vampires.

I agree about the battle with the Wolves. I was kind of disappointed at how easy it was, but then again they were little more than mindless zombies so I guess I can understand why it became easy to take them down once everyone was prepared for them.

Agreed about Flagg, it's been too long since we've last heard from him. I wonder if it'd be possible to do some sort of flashback on him as to what he was up to after the events of The Stand took place. I'm also curious as to when Roland and co. are going to come across Patrick Danville. If you remember Insomnia he's this kid who has a really important part to play in the grand scheme of things, which supposedly is saving Roland's life at a critical point in time. And of course at the end they'll have to fight with the Crimson King, which will no doubt be a battle to end all battles.</div>