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The Song of Roland

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:40 pm
by Pardot Kynes

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:05 am
by Star Dust
This isn't the same Roland that The Gunslinger was based on, was it?

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:16 am
by Pardot Kynes
I wouldn't know :P

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:26 am
by Omphalos
Perhaps. The main inspiration came from a poem by Robert Browning called "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. At least for the first book. But I have not read this epic poem before, so there may very well be that King took some inspiration from this.

EDIT: I meant to say "Perhaps" instead of "Partly."

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:27 am
by Pardot Kynes
Nice to know. Now I just need to actually read the Dark Tower. Hehe.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 11:38 am
by Star Dust
Surprisingly good. I've never been a King fan, but nor have I ever been a King hater. After hearing so much about it, I finally read Dark Tower. Very good, very refreshing King-esque take on the genre.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:27 pm
by Omphalos
The first book was incredibly good. I loved the mixture of fantasy, SF, wild west, all wrapped up in a great end-of-the-universe/entropy story. And later books are readable, but the quality goes down after the first book. The second to last was virtually unreadable, and I never even opened the last one before I chickened out and sold it.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 2:23 pm
by Pardot Kynes
The main reason I haven't read it is because his writing quality has gone down a ton recently- the past decade or so.
There are tons of rumors why, but I think my favorite is that his nightmares are finally so horrific he cannot put them onto paper without driving himself mad, and so his writing is a recycling process of things he has done in the past that soothe him. Pretty neat idea, actually.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:30 pm
by Omphalos
Exactly. He has gotten so self-indulgent in his later years. Actually, I cant stand much from him that came out after The Stand.