Well, that and that there was ANOTHER GIANT SPIDER. I hadn’t forgiven him from It and he did it again? Dude cannot write an ending.
As to the series…
It was pretty good for three books. The fourth was not great, five was a very good 300-page book packed into 800 pages, and the sixth and seventh books were just terrible.
Picky, picky. Maybe it was the drugs!
People would have bitched about that too. “Nothing?! WTF?” or “Why did King make God look just like Dumbledore?”
Since they all came after his accident, it’s not too surprising. He had a bit of a spaz attack about it that lasted for four books.
Dark Tower was the first of King’s works that I seriously read, as I have little taste for horror. (Since then, I’ve also read Talisman and Black House, and Black House only because I enjoyed the hell out of Talisman. I’m not one for gruesomeness.) Even then, I could tell that Flagg’s death was bullshit. Throughout the Tower series, Flagg was constantly portrayed at a level of power well above the mere charlatan he was portrayed as in his final moments, to the point where there are actual inconsistencies in the reality as King wrote it and not just inconsistencies in perspective. I don’t really know what he was thinking beyond “Mordred needs to eat, and I need to get rid of Flagg.”
ETA: As for the Tower, my opinion is that the modern day New York Tower, with the Tet Corporation, was what people really wanted to see in the central Dark Tower. Roland entered it and found hope and love and strength and life; by contrast, the central Dark Tower was hollow and anticlimactic. It’s my opinion that the story could have been written with a much more satisfying conclusion if the Tet Corporation Tower had been the Tower he’d been searching for all his life.
I forgot something else that really sucked: The way Susanah exited the story. It just didn’t ring true that she’d happily go off to live in alternate NY with alternate Eddie and alternate Jake. King should have given her a gunslinger’s death as he did for Jake and Eddie.
Overall, the first book was best. The next two were quite good. From there, quality boarded a rocketsled to Hell.
I haven’t read the revised edition of the first book, nor do I care to do so. I also haven’t read the authorized comic book, which I understand is considered canon. As much as I loved the series at first, the way King handled everything from book four on has left me with no desire to hear anything further he has to say about life in Midworld.
Agree that this death seemed so… happenstance.
Roland didn’t get to confront him, didn’t get to resolve anything.
Come to think of it, Roland didn’t really have the primary role in killing ANY of the three major baddies in the last book. Patrick took out the Crimson King, Oy and a poisoned horse helped in the easy offing of Mordred, and Roland wasn’t even THERE when Flagg was eaten.
I actually liked the Stephen King character in the book. Some people see it has King writing himself into the story, but I just saw it as a fictional character that happens to share the same name and roughly the same life story as the real King.
When you look it at like that it ceases to be a jarring break in the forth wall and just another character that you already feel familiar with.
Agreed. There’s strong implications that our world is not the Keystone World, so the Stephen King in the Keystone World is not the Stephen King that wrote the books we read.
Also, just so this thread doesn’t turn into nothing but ragging on King :D, I was really taken with his ability to create memorable phrases. He knows the value of cadence in speech.
“I cry your pardon, gunslinger.”
“You have forgotten the face of your father!”
The whole “I kill with my heart” catechism.
I suspect on paper these would have sounded hokey, but in the audiobook Frank Muller delivered the dialogue with such strength that they became believable and natural. And oh my lord, some of Roland’s speeches just gripped at the heart and wouldn’t let go.
Yeah, to be fair, even the weakest of the books have good moments and were interesting enough to finish.
Agreed. When the books were good (and each book had it’s moments) they were some of the best stuff King has written and when they were bad they only reached mediocre. King has churned out some real crap over the years and the worst moments in these books are much better than anything in, say, The Langoleers. (sp?) Anyway, Song of Susana was painful to get through and the ending pissed me off, but if the whole story wasn’t so good I wouldn’t have reacted so strongly to those off moments. On the whole I really do love the series and am glad that it was finished and that I finished it.
I hate time loops. HATE! HATE! HATE!
I hate time loops. HATE! HATE! HATE!
Still I have to hope that Roland gets it right eventually.
I liked all the books, except for the ending.
I hate time loops. HATE! HATE! HATE!
Tell us how you feel about time loops. It’s a wee bit unclear. 
Ah, but he had the lost horn when he was sent back to the desert! It’s not so much a time loop as a time slinky.
You’re lucky. It took me over 20 years! Of course, only two of the books had been written when I started. (Just finished last night).
I never did figure out what Rolands’s “thankee sai” and “cry pardon”-isms were supposed to sound like. I kind of imagine Clint Eastwood from the old Sergio Leone films speaking like Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribbean.
I thought that seemed contrived at first, but actually it makes sense. If Susanah continued in Roland’s mad quest for the Tower, she most likely would have died a horrible gunslingers death, either at the hands of Mordred or the Crimson King or whoever. Or at best be stuck in an endless loop like Roland. The Tower was basically safe. They stopped the Breakers, the other beams would have gradually healed themselves and the Crimson King was trapped on a balcony outside the Tower. That was pretty much the time to call it quits. Susanah saw that and lived happily ever after with alternate Eddie and Jake. Since Roland had the arrogance to continue on to see what was at the top of the Tower, he gets stuck in his endless time loop.
Addiction and obsession is a reoccuring theme in the series. Eddie and his Heroin. Calvin Tower and his books. Mia and her “chap”. The Breakers and their beam breaking. Flagg and the Crimson Kings quest for power. Especially Roland and his Tower. Whenever a character is unable to get past their obsession, it ends very badly for them. That’s why Susannah ultimately had to leave Roland.
I don’t understand the mechanics of Rolands time loop though. Does he litterally go back however many years to where we first meet him chasing Flagg/Walter across the desert? If so, doesn’t time in the “Keystone” universe just keep moving forward anyway? Or does the whole thing reset?
It wasn’t “his” Tower. Roland wasn’t full of “hope and love and strength (for anything other than Tower questing) and life”. Moses Carver, John Cullum and Aaron Deepneau were so 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza reflected that. While Roland did find love again through his “ka-tet” always the Tower came first. So when he finally reached it, it was as hollow and empty as he was. So basically, the Dark Tower has whatever you bring to it. Roland’s life consisted of nothing but finding the Tower so all it had in it was a bunch of rooms filled with the people who died along his quest and more Tower questing at the top. Towers all the way down, so to speak.
Didn’t like the ending much. Wasn’t going to hurl the book across the room over it, but to me it seemed like a cop-out, literarilly-speaking. I think after all the build-up, King wrote himself into a corner and just grabbed what he could. shrug.
This being said, Wolves of the Calla is one of the most absorbing books I’ve ever read. Loved it a lot.
Don’t remember which book it’s in, but the showdown between Jake and the club full of vampires, with him instructing the Father in gunplay, was just friggin’ amazing. I’d pay to see a movie of just that scene! (And I wouldn’t even go to a matinee!)
The one part that absolutely stuck in my craw, though, was the death of the Walkin’ Dude. It seemed to me that they did it just to prove what a ‘badass’ Roland’s child was supposed to be. I love the Walkin’ Dude as an iconic figure. The idea that this sniveling thing (and in the rest of the book, that’s exactly what he is) can just snuff out, PERMENANTLY, the Dude, felt insulting to me.
I think a better ending (while still keeping the great last line of the book) would have been to have Roland enter that room and have a choice laid out before him. One door leading to the mystery of the tower finally revealed, or another door giving him the chance to right every wrong where his ka-tet was concerned. To make it his struggling choice, with hope of returning to the tower another time, with his ka-tet intact.
Roland makes his choice (it isn’t revealed to the reader) and steps through a door. That chapter ends, and when the reader turns the page, the next chapter contains only one line:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Sounds a bit cliched, but honestly… I kinda like that ending. It makes Roland much less of a victim of his Ka and more a willing participant. I know that’s not the way the book goes a lot of the time, but I think I like Euth’s idea better.
That would pretty much shit on all the sacrifices everyone made on Roland’s behalf and alliviate him of any guilt or responsibility for all the death and destruction he caused in his search for the Tower.
I have to say, having read the series over a period of about 20 years really does give you a feel of how epic his journey is. When I realized he has to do it over again I’m like “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! DUDE That SUCKS!!”
I personally love the books. Like many of you, I spent most of my life reading them and they’ve become a part of me. There are parts that bug me, but I let it slide because of the pure awesome-ness of the story as a whole…
My tattoo artist used to work in Los Angeles as a free lance animator. He was comissioned by HBO and Dreamworks years ago to create some character sketchs for an animated series based on the Dark Tower books. King wouldn’t let go of the rights and the project never came to be. But I hear JJ Abrams bought the rights from King for $19. Hmmm… an animated series on HBO produced by Abrams??? Could be interesting…
And yes, I do have a Dark Tower inspired tattoo…