Look, if you haven't read the "Dark Tower" series, get off your ass. Anyone who knows me knows that I can just barely read at all, but I'm tearing through these books like John Candy through a Shoney's breakfast buffet. It's tough to say what's even so GOOD about them. In fact, for their length, you could say that hardly anything even happens in the first two, This guy walks through a desert for 500 pages, then a group of folks walk up a beach for 500 pages. But...I don't know Stephen King has done it, but when I put one of these books down and try to go about my business, all I can think about are his characters. I'm driving to the post office, and it's like Roland is in my head (this sensation gets especially weird after you've read the second book. If you have, you know what I mean.)
I also just like the idea of this saga just pouring out of a person. The author's introduction to the third book talks about how at the time he was writing it he had know idea how it would end, what would happen when and if Roland finally made it to the dark tower, or even what the tower is. These characters, and the rich world they live in seems to just be using King as a vehicle to get their story told. To me this is art in all it's cliche'd glory. The painter doesn't paint the painting, it paints itself and so on and so forth.
Plus there's such a thoughtful peppering of ephemeral clues and surreal imagery that it's difficult to say what's real, what's imagined, what's dreamed, and what's just good ol' fashioned madness in this world that has "moved on."
Go get these books, and then read them and then lets talk about how good they are. I'm more or less at the halfway point of the saga and the thought of how much more there is to go boggles my mind. I can't even begin to imagine this quest ever being completed, but I can't wait to find out.