I'm just going to use this space as a general review of the series. I loved the first three books. I have read them several times and I love their atmosphere and...I suppose you could call it "grittiness." My enthusiasm started to wane around book 4, but I probably would not have been so down on the series if not for one thing - King deciding to insert himself into the story. (hopefully not too much of a spoiler - they introduced it in previous books and I believe it's part of the summary blurb thingy) Perhaps I am just unnecessarily biased against it, but I found it to be overly narcissistic and not particularly necessary to the story. I'm sure there's other ways that it could have been handled.
Mind you, even before King's introduction into the story had meandered quite a bit and I really felt that the magic of the earlier books was gone. Shame.