My sister and I were having this EXACT conversation this morning ... trying to remember the last thing of King's we read that made us say, "Wow!" It's been a LONG time. We are (were?) both huge SK fans ... and it's been very depressing lately.
I just finished "The Dark Tower" yesterday ... seventh and last in the Gunslinger series. I used to LOVE that series (as I suppose you can see from my avatar), but I'll tell you (without any spoilers, I promise), if you are not immensely and totally devoted to the fate of Roland and ka-tet, you may not want to bother plowing through three 900 pages books. He got WAY out of league with those books, way over his head, IMO ... and it shows. Wolves of the Calla is tolerable, Song of Susannah is deplorable, and The Dark Tower is well .... somewhere in between, with a bad, bad ending. But endings have never really been his best quality.
Plus, the fact that he blatantly copied the entire idea of the series from Tolkien does NOT suit well with me, either. 
Have to say, my loyalty to Tolkien will always far, far outweigh mine to SK. I used to adamantly defend SK when people called him nothing more than a mediocre writer of mushy pulp. Now .... I'm rethinking that a bit.
Sad. It's a bit like getting a divorce.
"We give dogs the time we can spare, the space we can spare and the love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made" - M. Facklam
"We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams."- P.S. Beagle
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king." - J.R.R. Tolkien
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