King on Rowling

I admit to not having read much Stephen King. In fact, until Mr. Hanberg gave me a book of his short stories a couple of years ago I hadn't read any of his writing at all. But since then I've read a little, enough anyway to disabuse me of the totally uninformed notion that he is a horror writer. Instead, I would say that Mr. King (much like Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors whose work I'm much more familiar with) is a writer: someone who loves to write and will do so at almost every opportunity, no matter what the topic.

All this is by way of introducing an excellent article that King wrote for Entertainment Weekly on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He talks about the last book, but much more about Rowling, the series as a whole and what it's done for books in the 21st century. It's thoughtful and insightful, but beware of major spoilers, since King assumes that pretty much everyone who cares has finished the book by this point.