My nitpick. Sorry if someone mentioned it before. I didn’t pick up on it if so.
Why the hell didn’t Susannah have Patrick draw her without the cancerous lesion, but with legs?
Well, remind me not to put you in charge of munitions when I start my army…
I mean, he may only be able to shoot one at a time, but having a spare could be real useful. And/or he could meet another gunslinger or potential gunslinger who could use it. Besides, if it was forged from the steel of Arthur Eld’s sword (or whatever) then it had some serious value, whether Roland could actually use it or not.
Finally got a chance to finish the book. No, other book has ever made me cry this much.
I find myself leaning more toward this not being Roland’s last go around. I think maybe each time he does a lap he learns or adds something to his gunna but I don’t know if he’s got it all yet.
This book reminded me of a video game: Roland last saved his game at “The man in black fled across the desert…” and when he got to the Tower and his game reset, he went back to the last saved point in the game. Otherwise, wouldn’t ge go back to the Battle of Jericho Hill? Or Mejis? Because that particular point in the desert doesn’t seem like the pivotal moment to which he should return, except that it allows sai King to begin and end his epic with the same sentence.
It bothers hell out of me to think that the tet will have to go through the whole ordeal again with Roland. That seems cruel and unusual, but not impossible if it’s ka. Maybe if he does it right this time, they’ll all be with him at the Tower in the end? Can it be that all their work is undone in Roland’s reset of the game?
I see both sides of this question, actually: yes, Susannah is settling for a version of her ka-mates that isn’t exactly them, but… it is, isn’t it? I mean, in The Talisman, the twinners were all parts of the same entity, right? So Susannah loving them was her just loving a different part of the people she loved. I’m still not sure how that fits with the reset-- will Roland draw the same versions of Eddie and Jake he drew the first time, or will he draw another version of them from a different world (maybe on where Co-op City is in Staten Island)?
Qadgop, I had already typed, “Why didn’t Susannah get Patrick Danville to draw her some legs? I mean, if he can draw and erase The Crimson King and erase cancer, surely he could give her some new gams? That seems like a no-brainer to me.” Then I saw your post…
PAB
This book reminded me of a video game: Roland last saved his game at “The man in black fled across the desert…” and when he got to the Tower and his game reset, he went back to the last saved point in the game. Otherwise, wouldn’t ge go back to the Battle of Jericho Hill? Or Mejis? Because that particular point in the desert doesn’t seem like the pivotal moment to which he should return, except that it allows sai King to begin and end his epic with the same sentence.
It bothers hell out of me to think that the tet will have to go through the whole ordeal again with Roland. That seems cruel and unusual, but not impossible if it’s ka. Maybe if he does it right this time, they’ll all be with him at the Tower in the end? Can it be that all their work is undone in Roland’s reset of the game?
I see both sides of this question, actually: yes, Susannah is settling for a version of her ka-mates that isn’t exactly them, but… it is, isn’t it? I mean, in The Talisman, the twinners were all parts of the same entity, right? So Susannah loving them was her just loving a different part of the people she loved. I’m still not sure how that fits with the reset-- will Roland draw the same versions of Eddie and Jake he drew the first time, or will he draw another version of them from a different world (maybe one where Co-op City is in Staten Island)?
Qadgop, I had already typed, “Why didn’t Susannah get Patrick Danville to draw her some legs? I mean, if he can draw and erase The Crimson King and erase cancer, surely he could give her some new gams? That seems like a no-brainer to me.” Then I saw your post…
PAB
I have read on another board that they think that maybe Robert Brownings poem at the end is meant to tell the story of Roland’s VERY final trip. What do you all think?
Something I’ve been wondering–have we seen Dandelo or his ilk before? I vaguely recall something like him in “The Library Police”, but I wouldn’t even know where to find a copy to check.
ultrafilter, yeah, there was a character – a female librarian – sort of like Dandelo in “The Library Police,” but not exactly the same. If I recall correctly, the librarian would read scary stories to the children and then feed on their fear – she could make it ooze out of their eyes like thick, bloody tears. She had a probiscus that allowed her to suck the tears up.
Eh, they’re both insectoid creatures that feed on the emotions of others. Good enough for me, I think.
Well, it’s done. I doubt I’ll ever read a new offering by Stephen King again (provided he doesn’t retire as he’s been threatening to).
Roland’s quest has been finished (in one way or another, depending on which ending you stoppped at). Friends are gone and mourned (I think I can accept the coda, but I’m not sure about the epilog), enemies defeated, and the tower has been gained.
I was disappointed at some remaining loose threds I had been wishing to see tied up:
[ol]
[li]Roland mentions meeting Dennis and Thomas from “Eyes of the Dragon” (I think in “Drawing of the Three”), I had been hoping to hear what happened to them.[/li][li]I may have to re-read it, but wasn’t the events of “Black House” supposed to have more of an impact on the ka-tet? I didn’t get any reminders of Jack Sawyer going through DT7 (or 6 or 5 for that matter).[/li][li] At the end of “Hearts of Atlantis”, Bobby gets a note from Ted that includes rose petals. Will Ted make a trip out to the base of the tower? I was actually thinking that he would travel with the ka-tet, or maybe one of them would come to the Calla after leaving Roland at the Tower.[/li][/ol]
As for the “reboot”, I think that Roland did get pushed back to a time earlier than his trip through the desert. When his actual “save point” was is probably up for debate, but it’s likely after he loses Susan (maybe even after killing his mother). It’s obviously before the battle of Jericho Hill since he now has the horn. It’s just the delirium of the desert that brings his previous iteration to consciousness.
Finally, I think I may have thought of something that would keep the tone consistent regarding Susannah’s trip back to New York. In Ted’s recordings, he said that Sheemie was able to make a “balcony” on the Tower that included his Gingerbread house. What if the door Patrick drew for her connected up to that same kind of world? For any Star Trek: Next Generation fans, she ends up like Moriarty at the end of “Ship in a Bottle”: living her life in a contained simulation…
And now that all seven books (eight counting both versions of “The Gunslinger”) are sitting on my shelf, I may have to set aside a month or so to go through them all in order to see how things hook up. Though I’ll need a while to mourn Father Callahan, Eddie, Jake, Oy, Susannah, Cuthbert, Alain, Mordred (yes, I mainly just felt sorry for him at the end) and the rest.
Just popping in to recommend The Road to the Dark Tower by Bev Vincent. The book includes synopses of each DT book, and brief explanations of connections with several of King’s other books. (There are also timelines and a glossary.)
I’d been thinking that King pretty much made things up as he went along – maybe because there was just too much information for me to keep straight. But reading Bev’s book, I can see that King did have a plan for the series, and things tie together nicely.
There were hints that King would become a character as early as The Drawing of the Three.
Anyway, I’m more impressed with the books after reading this. It’s much more helpful than the Concordance was.
Great minds think alike!
So, anyone willing to speculate why she didn’t get new legs out of the deal?
Because she’s been missing them long enough that she identifies as a legless woman. The cancerous sore was new.
Qadgop, I have been discussing this book from a friend of mine, and he suggested that maybe Patrick can only do magical drawings of things that he sees, not only things that he imagines. However, he did draw a door he couldn’t see, plucking it from memory. Thus, I don’t really know. Seems to be a plot hole to me.
It feels weird to have finished this series. I had a really hard time putting this book down… I didn’t enjoy 6 that much, but I flew through 7.
As much as I enjoyed and felt everything though, the rewriting to combine Walter and Marten and Farson/Flagg into one character still bugs me. Okay, I can see Marten and Farson/Flagg being the same character, except for the fact that that would mean that at the same time Marten/Farson is seducing Roland’s mother, he’s also leading the army that was conquering Gilead and surrounding kingdoms
But Walter? I thought Walter worked great as his own character. Combining him and Marten in the end did nothing for the plot except to force King to come up with a lame excuse of how Walter survived his palaver with Roland. I thoroughly loved the idea that here was a man who served… well, originally, he served Maerlyn, but knew he had his own destiny to fulfill in Roland’s story and was willing to do it. Instead, in talking with Mordred, he comes across as a coward who had pulled out every trick in the book he could think of and was basically using the palaver as a stall tactic. In the end, I was both satisified by his death (since he hadn’t been a threat as any of his guises since book four and I had pretty much forgotten about him anyway) and unsatisfied (I wouldn’t think Walter that dumb).
Oh, and weren’t there supposed to be more guardians at the Tower? Or was Walter also the Ageless Stranger? (I guess the Beast or whatever was removed in the revised edition.)
Oddly enough, the local paper descrives DT7 as a book about time travel. Just thought I’d mention that.
Okay, I confess, I’m not yet finished reading the book, but I couldn’t stand it any longer, and came into the thread here. Very bad, I know … !
I do have a question, one that probably can’t be answered, but hopefully others will be willing to speculate on: what the heck ever happened to Jack Sawyer from the King-Straub collaboration books?! I thought he was going to show up in the DT books, but he didn’t, to my knowledge. It seems fairly certain that the world that Jackie kept going into and out of was one of Roland’s worlds and there are plenty of references to places, etc. from Black House, yet no sighting of Jack. Any ideas?!
I’m still going to finish the book and enjoy it as well, btw. Well, enjoy is probably a relative term! I’d love to have a billy bumbler like Oy. 
At the end of Black House, Jack was pretty much consigned to a life in his lover’s world. He could no longer go back and forth between worlds, or so I gleaned. There is no way to know if the world Jack is in is the same one where Roland is. Clearly he is in Midworld, but I’m not sure we could narrow it down any further. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
Hit send too soon: I meant to add that I got the impression that the important Talisman/Black House connection to Dark Tower was the destruction of Mr. Munshun’s Broken Feets Factory. I don’t recall which Beam was in jeopardy (maybe it didn’t actually say), but once that was dealt with, Jack was essentially in retirement, in his new life.
I finished it.
Wow. Just wow.
I have a slightly different take on the Roland Reboot…Roland had to keep repeating his Quest because King hadn’t finished the series. Now that the meta-King has finished the novels, Roland can finally end his quest.
I kind of knew after Eddie died that Roland would finish the quest alone. He started alone, so he would have to end alone.
I wonder about Jake being buried in the woods in Keystone World. Since that is the only “real” world, do you think his body will be found, and chalked up as another missing child’s death?
I didn’t get the Odd Lane/Dandelo connection until Susannah went into the bathroom, although when Patrick erased her sore I realized how they were going to get rid of the Crimson King.
The Sept 11 references just hurt my heart, especially when Nancy is describing the plot of Insomnia, and how Deepnau flies a small-engine plane into a building, and Daddy Mose stares out at the New York skyline and hopes it never happens “here.”
It was nice to see Dinky again. I really liked Everything’s Eventual.
I guess King could get away with cariacturing Smith, since Smith killed himself some time after the accident. And what is up with all the Harry Potter references? Does he have to pay a royalty to J.K. Rowling’s for that? I understand it was to illustrate how different things have different meanings in the different worlds, but it was still a little weird.
I think the ending was perfect. Certainly I didn’t see it coming, but it fit.
Long days and pleasant nights, Roland. Maybe your next trip to the Tower be your last, if it please ka.
Sai King, I say thankee.
I was so pissed when Eddie died. I cried so hard. I put the book down. i walked away for about 15 minutes. Then on the heels of that, poor Jake goes to the clearing at the end of the path. I was absolutely sobbing. I felt so sorry for Oy., and Roland, too, of course.
But oh! Discordia! When Oy died like that, saving Roland, and the sound of his back breaking! And then he licked Roland’s face, while impaled on the tree branch. OMG. Then Roland stroking his fur, as he lay on his lap, lifeless. I’m almost in tears again as I write this.
I liked the ending. King did good.