I finished “The Project” last night: the reading of all seven volumes of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. I don’t have time to write a full review right now, but I found the final volume very satisfying indeed. King feels the need to defend his use of metafictional elements, but from my perspective no defense is necessary: they are wholly natural in this many-worlds context. The penultimate truth – that art is our defence against chaos – was nicely capped in the Coda.
This was a most enjoyable project. The last time I did this (read all of a long series of novels in order) was when I was a student in 1970; I decided to read every novel by Thomas Hardy during one summer. Exhausting and exhilarating.