You're spot-on, Crono. His early stuff is good (Salem's lot is very good) but now it's the same, stale old characters wheeled out time and time again in ever more ludicrous storylines.

Has anyone read any of his Fantasy stuff? What's it like?

i am not a Steven King fan as far as reading goes, BUT i do highly recommend two of his works to everyone i meet.

"Eyes of the Dragon" and "bag of bones" is perfection IMO..

my wife reads anything with his name on it as if its a god send, but i am not of such a mindset.

To be honest I don't read much. To be honest I don't like reading very much, maybe because I've never found something that really suits me.

But I have read Salems lot and that book was quite good. There's just one thing I wanna know: in the end of the book, when he throws the cigarette in the woods, he read something on the packet of cigarettes: in hoc signo vinces. I dunno if it's latin. Does anyone know what it means?

Mostly socio/political/historical based accounts on events in history, although I do enjoy novels which touch on the socio-political theme as well - 1984, farenheit 451, animal farm, of mice and men.. etc.
also various "comics" v for vendetta, transmetropolitan series.. anything my DC enabled buddies throw my way in an attempt to turn me subversive

I agree ... Stephen King cannot write any book different from a psychological horror-fest ... but what if you w?nt to read such kind of book ... in that genre, he is one of the top writers.

"Stephen King cannot write any book different from a psychological horror-fest"

Not true. The Dark Tower series of books, (all of which I have read), are much closer to sci-fi/fantastical, than horror. This story really takes its time developing the main characters, and end up being a really great, mysterious, strange tale. The story is finished (7 books I think), with the last 2 books being released this within the next year.

At first glance King seems to have a cookie cutter style of writing, but I do beleive there is a little more depth to his abilites and imagination, than that. I very much enjoyed his books as a kid, and look forward to completing the Dark Tower series. I will admit though, I feel I have somewhat outgrown his horror stories.

Tom Clancy has devloped the same sort of cookie-cutter syndrome in his later work. I stopped reading after "the bear and the dragon" because it was such a lame recreation of his earlier work. it was like he decided to rewrite "Executive Orders", which might have been okay, but he did a terrible job of it. I don't know if there is a similar degradation in Kings work with time, since the only one I have ever read is Dark Tower: Book 1