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Fantasy. Fiction. HTML:Creating "true narrative magic" (The Washington Post) at every revelatory turn, Stephen King surpasses all expectation in the stunning final volume of his seven-part epic masterwork. Entwining stories and worlds from a vast and complex canvas, here is the conclusion readers have long awaited�??breathtakingly imaginative, boldly visionary, and wholly entertaining. Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own endings and beginnings...and into a maelstrom of emotion, violence, and discove… (more)
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I used to rate The Dark Tower among my favorite SF/fantasy stories right up through book 4 (Wizard and Glass), despite the early warning signs even back then. The "Captain Trips"-devastated Kansas that our heroes found themselves in after debarking from Blaine the
And then we come to the final part of the series. Issue one: Ubervillains like The Ageless Stranger (oftimes known as Flagg, Marten, and a whole legion of other names) and Modred, and even The Crimson King, turn out to be laughable as threats after the buildup they've been given. Two: From almost the very beginning we've been told that there is something wrong with the continuum of all the worlds, and that they face total destruction, and that the only way to save existence is to go to the Tower -- and in this book it turns out that destroying the breaker community at Algul Siento is all that is needed to halt the decay; the remaining beams will heal themselves, and Roland does not have to proceed to the Tower. This basically means Roland's quest was never really what we thought it was, and there should have been no need for the ending we got ... which brings me to ..... Three: I don't know how I would have written the end of the story. It's not my job -- it was King's, and he fell down on the job. After the build-up of the Tower being the linch-pin of all worlds, and the lecture about scale and size in "The Gunslinger and the Dark Man" way back in book 1, the cop-out of the "here we go again" ending is an insult to the Constant Readers, and the preemptiveness of King's defensive "stop reading here if you don't want to be disappointed" admonition is just rubbing salt in the wound. A series as good as this one has been for over half of its run deserved better than this.
I don't even know where to start with the smarmy, contrived situation that Susannah ends up in, with Eddie, Jake, and even Oy returned to her. It's like saying "it's okay that all the people she loved were killed, because here they are again, almost as good as before!" The replacements cheapen the deaths of their predecessors. And King's presence as a character in the last two books was every kind of suck.
I still love this series, and I can see myself rereading it -- but I don't think I can bring myself to go past book 4 any more.
This
Aside from the story, King actually changed his style of writing in some respects, and unfortunately the changes are not for the better. One of his writing changes is he now addresses the reader, and refers to the reader in his tale. For example, "We have reached that point...and all I can do now is point here and there and hope you can bring your own order out of the general chaos" (370), or "This was quite a bit more than Roland actually said (as we should know, having been there)" (623), among others. This is either new to the seventh volume, or very unnoticeable in the previous volumes and the change takes away from the story, ever so slightly.
Another unfortunate change in his writing style is that King reveals what is going to happen well before it happens. When a particular happenstance takes place that affects one of the many characters (not necessarily the main characters, and for better or worse), King reveals it is going to happen well before it is able to unfold. Examples include (names are omitted to protect anything from being given away) "little did he know that he stepped on the glass that will eventually kill him", or "this is the last time _____ would ever be together", and many more instances take place in the book. Again, this deviates from the previous volumes, and is an unwelcome change in his writing style.
Another issue, this time in the story itself as opposed to King's writing style, is how King handled the character of Randall Flagg in this final volume. (If you've yet to read this volume, perhaps you should skip this brief section). Throughout the series, Flagg is the antithesis of Roland. He is Roland's mortal enemy, one he has encountered many times (and appears in several of King's books). His death is very unsatisfying. It seems as if King merely remembered he had to do something about him and decided "oh shoot, I'll just take care of him here, on this one page."
All in all, the series was a blast. King did a marvelous job with his story telling, and brought to life some very memorable characters and developed them very nicely. The growth of Roland is exceptional throughout the series and his change is dramatic from the pages of The Gunslinger to The Dark Tower. This is easily the best epic tale, spanning several books, since Lord of the Rings and should not be bypassed by any curious reader looking for a wonderful tale full of many stories that are sad, happy, exciting, thrilling, and will leave the reader with a sense of wonder unrivaled in modern fiction. While the length of the series (roughly 4,000 pages worth) may deter some readers, King had a particular quote in the final volume regarding such a concern:
I hope you came to hear the tale, and not just munch your way through the pages to the ending. For an ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man (or Manni) can open.
And that sentiment echos in the heart of the series, as the true glory and wonder is the tale that takes place, not the ending itself.
And remember, ka is a wheel - Say thankya.
There is nothing original in the last book. Every device was telegraphed, so there were no surprises in the plot. I fully anticipated the arrival of characters from previous stories, arriving deus ex mechina, to save the day. Even the trite ending of the book was exactly as expected. It was almost as if the author felt compelled to fill his unwritten contract with his "constant reader" and deliver a final installment, even though his heart had gone out of the project.
What kept me slogging trough the pages was King's rich descriptions and wonderful dialog. What is really sad is that even when Stephen King is writing a mediocre story, he is way better than a lot of his contemporaries. If I were rating this on plot alone, it would be a sad two star rating.
At points in my reading journey with Roland and friends, I waited several years between installments for the next book to be delivered. I was satisfied with installments when they finally did arrive. Each was a well crafted story, carrying the plot further along, filling in background to Roland's world. I almost wish that King had not delivered the last installments and the we were either forced to wait for a return of the inspiration that gave us the first three volumes or this forever remained an unfinished masterpiece.
I read the first three books (THE GUNSLINGER, THE DRAWING OF THE THREE, and THE
In April, Dan of Dantastic Reviews, posted on Booklikes that he would be rereading the series, one book a month, and asked if anyone wanted to join him. Since it'd been a decade since I finished Roland's quest, I jumped at the chance, hoping that this time I'd enjoy it more. Overall, I did. WOLVES was far better the second time around, as was TOWER, but I actually hated WIZARD AND GLASS even more this go around, and found my feelings hadn't changed whatsoever where SONG OF SUSANNAH was concerned. I also reread THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE between WIZARD AND GLASS and WOLVES OF THE CALLA, as King intended. In the end, I laughed, I cried, I mourned the loss of close friends, and would still recommend the series to anyone who enjoys epic quests, crazy-original monsters, meta-fiction, and amazing world building.
With the Dark Tower series, King does here what King does best: character development. You come to love every member of Roland's ka-tet, and, even when the series starts going down hill at the rate of a cinderblock dropped from the tippy-top of the Empire State Building, you're compelled to continue reading because you have to know how everything character's story ends. In fact, their fates are the best part of the entire series, and the most touching material King has ever written. Come the halfway mark of THE DARK TOWER, the tears begin, and do not let up until the final page. Strangely enough, the last sentence of the final book makes me want to start reading the entire thing all over again, but I won't, at least not for another decade, probably when my daughter's old enough to enjoy reading through it with her old man.
Highlights of the series include: All the fantastic set pieces throughout the series, the battle of Tull, Jakes fall (only because it's so well done), the incomparable originality of THE DRAWING OF THE THREE, the shoot out at Balazar's place, the end of Jack Mort, Shardik's attack, every bit of the mad dash through Lud, Blaine's riddling (even though I'm one of the few who loved that insane train), the end of WIZARD AND GLASS (because, you know, it does finally end, and that's a great feeling, the fact that it's over), the titular part of THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, the return of Father Donald Callahan (the disgraced priest from the tragic town of `Salem's Lot), the slaughter of the Wolves, the return of Sheemie (the only good part of WIZARD), Roland, Susannah, and Oy's time on Odd Lane, the thing under Castle Discordia, the final fates of Eddie Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, and Roland, the circle completed.
Low points of the series include: the lackluster ending of THE GUNSLINGER, the insta-love between Eddie and Susannah, WIZARD AND GLASS (the entire book, plus the plagiarism of THE WIZARD OF OZ), the bloated nature of WOLVES OF THE CALLA (seriously, that book could have been at least two hundred pages shorter, but that can be said of all King's book since FIRESTARTER), Stephen King writing himself into the series, 95% of SONG OF SUSANNAH, Walter/Flagg's disappointing death, part one of THE DARK TOWER (which should have been the end of SONG, and I still have no idea why it wasn't), the anti-climactic fate of Mordred, the description of the Crimson King (Santa Claus... fucking really!?), the dickhead move of complaining about how readers don't understand that storytelling should be about the journey and not the destination, and how King basically says he only wrote about what Roland finds inside the dark tower because he didn't want to hear people's shit, and, finally, the fact that the series is over, that Roland's quest is finished... kind of.
Important bits that are missing from the series: Roland and the last of the gunslingers' final fight against Farson's army (my rage boner throbs epically because we get every single boring detail of Susan and Roland's bullshit love story, but King only mentions the fight with the Good Man in a brief flashback in WOLVES), the period of time when Jake becomes a complete and utter badass (he goes from being a scared kid in THE WASTE LANDS to taking on the Wolves as if his spine were made of iron and his sack roughly the size of a bowling ball, the fate of Ted Brautigan (he of HEARTS IN ATLANTIS).
In summation: Yes, there are a lot of craptastic parts about this series, and plenty of unanswered questions, but, other than THE LORD OF THE RINGS, this is the only fantasy series I've ever been able to finish. I've attempted A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, THE WHEEL OF TIME doorstops, Moorcock's Elric Saga, and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (a.k.a The Bible featuring Greek Mythology) and couldn't finish more than two books of each. If nothing else, read the first three books in the Dark Tower series and skip the rest. WIZARD is a complete bore, SONG is incomplete, TOWER is a rushed train wreck, and WOLVES is filled with loads of superfluous information, yet the Dark Tower tale as a whole is a definite five-star read, if for no other reason than my unfaltering love for every character. Some of the best friends I've ever known in life live between the pages of these books, and I miss them already. Say thankya, sai King.
Some of the cons:
-I wasn't thrilled with how several characters exited the
-Kings character of himself played way too big of a role for my liking
-The excessive fast pace of the story- a whole lot was thrown into this book that easily could have spread out to 2 books but maybe that was just Ka speeding up time.
Some of the Pros:
-I liked the twist with the "Chap"- nice additional element
-I liked the circle of Ka concept
-I liked the new character that was introduced in the latter half
HERE BE SPOILERS (NOT RECOMMENDED TO READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVENT READ YET)
I was very annoyed with not only how quickly but how unnecessarily Jake and Eddie were forcibly removed from the story, not to mention it was one right after the other- I barely had enough time to get used to the first one before the second whammy. And then it was pretty much Susannah that was left with Roland since Oy's role was almost nonexistent at that point(and she is my least favorite character). Susannah's exit was pretty lackluster as well. Even though I was very sad to say goodbye to Oy (as I would love to have my own little Oy around), his exit was at least a brave finale fitting for the little warrior that he was.
Mordred's finale was a bit pathetic really. I was expecting more from this line. It was practically over as soon as it started. The new character of the artist was a great addition especially since what he could do was pretty cool. The final showdown was shorter than expected and while not wonderful it wasn't really the ending.
The actual ending was perfect for the series. I love how Roland's personality forced this aspect; after-all "there are other worlds than this" and the wheel of Ka will continue whether Roland wants it to or not.
Several aspects of the story border on the ridiculous: Roland’s were-spider son, who dies an ignominous and rather disgusting death after eating a sick horse; the Lovecraftian creature that chases Roland and company through the tunnels under Castle Discordia; the fairy-tale troll that awaits them in a little cabin and the note from King himself that saves them. You may find King inserting himself into his own novel as a mighty important linchpin in the universe to be a shocking bit of hubris, but his characterization of himself is frankly so unflattering as to take away all accusations of ego. At some point, though, you’re ready for the Dungeons and Dragons escapades to stop and the serious story to resume.
But the ending makes up for it. Our favorite characters get the promise of a life they deserve, and Roland – well, I won’t give it away, but I imagine I’m one of the few readers who didn’t howl in frustration and throw the book against the wall when we find out what happens to Roland. It seems that King was toying with us all along, and it will take a bit of musing to unravel the tangled web of story upon story, world interconnected with world, that King has created in this epic. That’s just the way I like it. I won’t say Volume VII is my favorite in the series – the first three are far better, and King’s gaffes concerning Susannah’s occasional standing or walking when she has no legs are almost unforgivable – but I will say that he wrote an ending I never saw coming, and that’s why I liked it so much.
Well, I didn't get to the end. I made it to 200 pages of this book and stopped. I tried several
For one thing, writing himself (Stephen King)into the book I think was a bad idea, it is a trick that falls flat. Revealing the Deus ex
Which opens up all sorts of questions when it comes to the many endings in the book. I can't really go into them for fear of spoilers. The biggest disappointment, however, comes not from the Deus ex Machina, but from the end of Modred's story line. It builds up and up and then is pretty anticlimactic.
If you've made your way through the series you'll probably end up reading this book no matter what I say, but be prepared for a series of let downs, and writing that is not up to par with several of the other books.
I think it was a fitting ending to the series. It's not often that King makes me cry. The series as a whole is truly a masterpiece, however you feel about the rest of
Yet as frustrating as the climactic volume is to me, I still continue to rec the series. That says something...about King's storytelling, my own level of masochism, or both.