Excellent review! Well done, sir! IMO, King's strength is his characters. Many of them still live on in my head today..especially those from "It" and The "Stand."

Thanks, and I agree. It's like he uses plot not for its own sake, but as a device to suck you into reading about his characters. Which may explain why he's not so good at endings, but probably also explains why he's so popular...?

Accurate on both counts, I think. I know that I enjoy tales with real and complicated characters. In the end, the genre and the plot are almost secondary.