I finished Dark Tower VII yesterday.
Has anyone else read it?
Yes. Some of the events work, some don’t.
A lot of people didn’t like the ending. I did.
I didn’t really care for the first ending. I did like the final one, in spite of King’s browbeating that the first one should have been good enough.
I think the “browbeating” was at least semi-justified. After all, he HAS had to deal with people obsessing about the ending for MANY years. A death-row inmate who wrote him, asking how it ends, promising to take the secret “to the grave.”
He knew that some people want the whole story, and won’t stop until they get it.
But that’s just my $.02
And I liked both endings. I felt the second was a cop-out originally, but how else COULD he end it?
I thought the first one was a cop-out. A little to tidy for my tastes. The second one goes back to what he said many, many times about Ka, and I thought it was effective.
To each their own, mileage varies, yada yada yada.
I see your point, though. I confess to being one of those who wondered “what happened?” after Roland entered the Tower.
But I’m not one of those people King talked about in another book (I forget which on, but I think it was a book ABOUT him) where he commented that people ask what happened to, say, Stu and Fran from The Stand, “…as if I got letters from them from time to time.”
(because I can’t remember which one’s which)
I thought the Roland-ending was fine; I was actually pleasantly surprised and pleased by it (as opposed to my reaction to a lot of the book, for example). I thought the other ending was…well, to be expected, I suppose. I could take it or leave it.
Truth be told, I was so fed up with King’s writing conventions and heavy-handed use of self referencing meta by the end of the last book, I was to a large extent just glad it was over. Sad but twoo.
That was my feelings exactly. Truth be told, I pretty much hated the novel from the death of Jake right up to the point where Roland enters the tower.
Too many loose ends tied up anticlimactically, too many new elements introduced at the last moment, and the metanovel stuff started to wear a bit thin by that point. And Susannah’s fate was so incredibly contrived.
But, although it pissed me off when I read it (and I knew exactly what was going to happen when I came across King’s warning), in retrospect I really, really loved the final ending.
There were two endings?
The one I read was:
Roland opens the door at the top of the tower and it leads to the desert at the beginning of The Gunslinger, except he has the horn on his belt.
One idea I had was to have things go the same right up to when Roland comes to the last door at the top of the Tower. It could say THE CLEARING and rather than Roland being sent back to relive his journey, he could be rewarded at the end of his journey.In fact I think if anyone ever does Dark Tower movies, this ending might work better as a visual shot.
Actually, I was thinking about how the ending would look in a film. I think Roland’s ending would work better as written.
Especially if:
Roland turns around to see a faint outline of a door disappearing in the heat waves coming off the desert floor. He would squint, shake his head, adjust the horn on his belt, and move on.