I finally picked it up in hardback for 8 bucks at a used-book store a few days ago and finished it yesterday. I certainly enjoyed the book, although it reminded me a lot of Roland’s adventures in Mejis: A bunch of people who are in conflict waiting for the time of the conflict to come to afront. But, I suppose the parallels are purposeful, since both have to do with aquiring one of the Wizard’s Rainbow balls.
Some of the plot elements were fairly predictable, especially who/what the wolves were. It was so obvious (especially after the ka-tet’s discussion of how odd it was that there could be dozens of uniform gray horses in a world were threaded stock was extremely rare) that it was almost irritating at how long that information was held back after Eddie’s talk with Grand-pere. However, I didn’t have any clue why they’d take twins and then only one of the twins, until Eddie had his flash of inspiration. I wonder if Roland’s ka-tet will have to deal with the Wolves’ masters in the next book.
Quite frankly, I did enjoy the surreal element of Father Callahan trying to convince himself that he’s not a fictional character, although I’m not fond of all the references to other books in King’s works (The Stand, Hearts in Atlantis, Salem’s Lot, etc.), since I’ve only read the Dark Tower series (and the Green Mile) and have no real urge to read the others.
I didn’t find the battle anti-climatic. It was just one of those amazing times where things actually went according to plan, which is rare in books. I thought Roland’s idea to decieve basically the entire Calla was a stroke of genius. And I loved the irony that what’s-his-name’s overriding desire to save his son, lead to his loss.
There were many elements that further strengthened the hypothesis that the Dark Tower is Stephen King, and that the reason that everything has “moved on” is because he’s retired. It’s an interesting idea, but in the back of my mind, I constantly wonder how much of this was in King’s head when he started and how much he’s been making up as he goes along, since he wrote about a world that had moved on very early in his career. Did he forsee the end of it way back then? Did he have the Crimson King in mind or did he only add him after writing The Stand?
The whole nineteen thing was entertaining, but at the same time, it also gave me an impression that the reason that “19” was happening was because King was writing it and, as Eddie felt, that they were just characters in a book who’s author wanted to emphasize something by having that number re-occur way too many times to be just coincidence. 99.
Adding things like “sneetches” and references to Harry Potter are kind of distracting, like they don’t belong in the world and even if they did, who the hell would turn what would probably be a kid’s toy into a flying explosive? I didn’t feel that Dr. Doom references were out of place, though, since his character’s been around for a while and had been in Jake’s and Eddie’s when.
Anyway, I did enjoy it a lot and read through it pretty fast. I eagerly await the Song of Susanna.
