The epic of Roland the [last] Gunslinger has outpaced The Stand as my favorite Stephen King work. So far the first four books have been published, the first in 1982, and the fifth is due this fall.

There's a new website dedicated to the series, which looks pretty cool, especially if you have a fast conneciton to watch the flash intro.

Roland is one of the most vital characters I've read in modern fiction - my bet is it willl outpace anything else King's done in the decades to come. As the series progresses, you can see how King wrote himself into a few corners, having to go back in time with flashbacks to explain the origin of the character and how his world spun into dissolution. One of my favorite scenes is how he outsmarted the old gunslinger mentor, Cort, to earn his guns.

I have all four books in the attic and am planning to take them down and reread them in anticipation of the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla. After that, two more books are planned sometime next year.

Also, a note: The first book, The Gunslinger, has apparently been reissued with new material. I haven't seen it myself, but one of the things I liked about the original was its spare quality - a fact which may have something to do with th eparts being originally published serially.