It took me the better part of a year to make it through all seven books, but this afternoon I turned the final page of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
Like I have heard many others say, this would have been much better and much tighter if the series had run three or four books instead of seven. Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands were my favorites; Wizards and Glass I could have happily skipped and turned to Wikipedia for summation.
Jake was my favorite character and, in my opinion, the most well developed. He was a killer and a little boy and King did an excellent job of placing the two conflicting characteristics in one body.
I thought Stephen King placing himself as a character in the series was interesting, if not always well done. I did enjoy how **furious **Roland, Susannah and Jake were with their author.
The ending. I had had the ending spoiled for me before I reached the last book, so I had time to wrap my head around it and piece it into the overall themes of the book. Ka is circular, so of course, Roland will be made to take the journey again and again. I imagine if I hadn’t had that preparation time, I would have been mighty, mighty pissed off. I’m hoping that each time he reaches the Tower, Roland will get a little closer to happiness and the completion of his quest.
I finished it late last year (or earlier this year? Can’t quite remember) for the first time on audiobook. I agree with pretty much what you said, Drawing of the Three and Waste Lands were the best two, as well as the beginning of Wizard & Glass before the flashback. I found the flashback fascinating but entirely too long, and the fatalistic dread of knowing how it had to turn out was gut-wrenching enough not to want to read through it again.
Funnily enough, the reason I got interested enough to read the series was because the last line was spoiled for me; I wanted to know why it went in a circle. I still got a surprise, because the hint at the end about the horn indicates it’s not a closed circle. Does he keep going until he gets it right? Does he keep going in alternate universes until all the Beams are restored? The Crimson King wasn’t the end goal, after all, and the Tower was only Roland’s goal; the Tower’s goal is to restore the beams. Will his next journey wind up restoring the third to last Beam, whereas the one chronicled restored the second to last? There’s some other theories, such as having to repeat the journey until he manages to finish it with Jake, Eddie, and Susannah alive at the end, but I like the Beam quest the best.
(Eddie’s easily my favorite character. Frank Muller, bless him, was wonderfully entertaining when he voiced Eddie, and lent so much more to the character than any of the others.)
My personal theory is that he has to repeat until he re-discovers his humanity. It is Roland’s fanaticism, by which he was willing to see his comrades die rather than lose the Tower, which betrays him.
My hope is that he has to repeat the journey until he decides to give up on the Tower entirely, choosing “normal life” and his ka-tet instead. Sure, that doesn’t save the Beams and it doesn’t really fit, but I like saccharine-happy endings.
I found the series facinating and I have read the whole series 4 times now. Every time I read it I discover something that I missed the first time around.
I loved the ending and thought it was brilliant on King’s part. It left me craving more, hence going back and reading them several times over. Many readers were really ticked off at King and he even received hate mail over it. My guess is they were expecting a happy ending? Do they not understand Ka?
Anyone who is a devout fan of King’s should know that he’s not very fond of a rosy (hehe) everyone is happy ending. That’s one of the things I love about him.
The Author’s Note cracked me up. “Stop here. No, seriously, stop. This is where it ends. I’ve got more, but you don’t want to read it. Really. Take the happy ending and run.”
When I first read the ending, I did feel it was a sort of let down. Upon further reflection, I felt that it actually fit very well with Roland’s character. I do wonder how much of his single-minded determination would abate with constant repetition, though. I think he gradually did gain some humanity across the course of the series, but how much of a wash and repeat would he have to go through to be completely cleansed of the fanatic obsessiveness with the Tower that cost him so much?
Here’s an (probably) unpopular opinion: I really liked Wolves of the Calla. It’s probably my third favorite book in the series after the awesomeness that was The Wastelands and the incredible (and incredibly depressing) love story/bildungsroman that was Wizard and Glass.
I got nothing against the ending. The book that came in front of it, that I don’t like. Seriously, we get to the end, the thing, itself, and what? There’s a boss battle?
I haven’t read any of the books, TheMerchandise, but you are now required to read over my shoulder when I play my daily online trivia tournament because 80% of the “Literature” category questions are ridiculously detailed Dark Towers plot questions. :dubious:
Ah, my favorite book series ever. (I’m not entirely delusional; the Tolkien books are levels above for literary talent, but I literally spent my whole life reading this series up until the last book came out, so it’s far more deeply embedded in me.)
While I wasn’t blown away by Book 6, I also wasn’t as vastlt disappointed as most readers seemed to be. I understand that age and a devastating accident left King a changed man, and it is reflected in the quality of his work. I’m just glad that he made as much of a recovery as he did, and that he was able to finish this series he has been working on for so many years.
Roland is a beautiful and terrifying protagonist, simultaneously making me want to punch the air and punch him in the face. Ka is a wheel, but it’s also an emotional rollercoaster; I’ve never felt so drained after completing a journey.
Oh, and tangentially related: I went to my mom’s this past weekend to pull the books out of storage so I could reread them again, only to find that someone had stolen my Wizard and Glass with the brilliant Dave McKean illustrations. Talk about a bummer. :mad:
I’ve read it before, and am re-listening to it now as an audiobook. I’m nearly up to the Dandelo part now, and I’m bracing myself to like it better than before (but I’m not gonna).
I always liked the ending. It’s just…right.
On another board, I was reading a discussion of who people would like to see cast in a Dark Tower movie, and while I think a movie would be an awful idea and I hope they never do it, I did come up with one idea I really liked: casting Steve Buscemi as Eddie. He could play a junkie and a tough guy and a comedian beautifully, I think.
My favorite book is The Drawing of the Three. I’ve probably read it ten times more than any of the others. This is only the second time I’ve gone through the later books in the series, and the flaws are glaring.
Funny, I just re-read “The Little Sisters of Eluria,” and it reminded me of all the years I spent hungry for news of Mid-World, and how aggravated I felt (and still feel, a little) about how King squandered it.
I have no beefs with the ending – I agree with the theory that Roland will keep going through his journey until he gets it right (though I like the idea of restoring the beams – that’s neat!).
What bothered me about the last 3 books was that King, to my mind, clearly rushed through them. Perhaps because he was sick of this story hanging over his head, waiting to be finished. Perhaps out of fear of his own mortality. I don’t know. But I think he owed it to the story, and certainly owed it to his readers, not to use those books as yet another avenue to heap coals if distain and hatred on the schmuck that hit him. That left a bad taste in my mouth, even moreso than inserting himself into the story (which he did better than a lot of authors could manage, but still annoyed the holy living shit out of me).
Man, I love this series. I feel like I’ve spent the better part of my life on it. (I realized, creepily, that I was about the same age as Jake when I started reading.) I’ve read the first three books countless times. Wizard and Glass I’m sort of meh on, and I enjoyed the last books in the series well enough, although I agree they felt a little rushed.
I didn’t mind the general concept of him adding himself as a character at the end there, but I think it went on a bit long. WE GET IT, you know?
That was the bit that pissed me off actually. As a fan I felt that the “and the it starts over” ending was a bit of a cop out but I would have been fine with it without that note. The note showed a contempt for his readers that made me feel as though the hackneyed ending he added afterward was done as a deliberate insult to his fans.
That being said, I really did love the series. I didn’t like King adding himself into it, and I didn’t like the placement of Wizard and Glass but of anything about Song of Susanna, but I really did like the series otherwise.
Also, for as much as I don’t like Wizard coming where it did, I have to say Wizard and Glass is my favorite of the books and the one that has stuck with me the most vividly. I think as a stand alone book it is one of the best things King has written, up there with The Stand and The Shining. If you take it out of the context of the series. In the context of the series I wish it hadn’t been there. I started reading the series right before Wizard was released and was VERY dissapointed at the time.
I can totally see how it could have been construed so, but I think it was meant to be a more earnest plea. The same sort of note appears in Black House, and may well appear in others of his books. “If you want to end on a happy note, stop here. If you want the real ending, then continue, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I think it is a little arrogant, but I do believe he means those notes with the best of intentions.
Personally, I was seriously pissed off when I finally reached the ending. I had waited 22 freaking years following the series, seeing books that King wrote in the interm and wishing I could shake the man like a British nanny and tell him to get back to the dammed series.
So I get to the final book, lock myself in my room, read it in two sittings, and–nothing.
We find out that Roland has made this trip countless times, forgets all about it and has to start all over again, this time with some unknown voice in his head telling him that “This is your promise that things may be different, Roland–that there may yet be rest. Even salvation. If you stand. If you are true.”
What kind of BS is that? What do they mean by “True?” He had a goal and a purpose and, despite all he went through, he completed it–apparently multiple times. What is Ka trying to prove by having him repeat the journey all over again? If he had found something (or nothing at all) at the tower, the quest would be over. Maybe then he could find peace since he was no longer driven to find the bloody dammed tower.
So–22 years of waiting, and what happens? We go right back to the beginning–a cheap, shoddy, easy out “just get it done” kind of ending.
Also, putting himself in the last book to such an extent was the most obvious “Mary Jane” I’ve seen in a long time. You had an accident–I’m not unsympathetic, but I bought the book to follow the gunslinger–not to read about how King was hit by a car.
All in all, a series that was just dripping with potential to be King’s masterwork, and completely destroyed by shoddy writing, pointless and rambling plot development, and a cheap lazy ending.
So much that could have improved the story, so little done by the author.
Wolves of the Calla was some of King’s weakest work.
Song of Susanah wasn’t much better.
The much despised ending, I actually didn’t mind. We’d been told repeatedly, after all, that Ka is a wheel.
Writing himself into the story made me want to kick King in the nuts really, really hard.
Lastly, Randall Flagg deserved a better exit from the story. He’s the best villain King ever wrote. King knows that and also knows that Flagg is far and away the fan-favorite among his villains. Flagg’s death, more than the ending, more than writing himself into the story, more than the rushed shoddy job he did on the last several books, is King’s big Fuck You to his readers.
:mad: