I’m not a huge King fan. I’ve read some of his books and enjoyed them but I’ve left others by the wayside. So realistically I know that I’m probably never going to read the seven books of his Dark Tower series.
But I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the ending of the series. Apparently many readers feel that King’s ending was almost contempuous to his readers. Can somebody outline to me what exactly this ending was? Feel free to provide context from the earlier parts of the series as necessary.
I would like to have the entire series spoiled for me, please. I am a Stephen King fan, generally, but I have never been able to make it more than halfway through The Gunslinger before having to put it down in exasperation. Why does the Hero in a post-apocalyptic wasteland need to be modeled after a chintzy Hollywood western?
So I’m never going to read the whole thing, so someone might as well tell me what happens, and then I’ll know.
I am not going to spoil the series, because I don’t get the whole spoiler box thing yet. But… I also could barely choke down The Gunslinger and only read the rest of the series because I was bored one day and had The Drawing of The Three at hand. If you don’t want to read the whole series, I do think both The Drawing of the Three and The Wastelands were very good. I also liked The Wizard and the Glass but I noticed people either love that one or hate it. I do plan on trying to read Gunslinger again, but its style is VERY different from the rest of the series and not necessary to enjoy at least the next two books.
And I did hate the ending of the series, but not sure how else it could have ended. I think it may have been better to find a way to end it on the 3rd or 4th book and the whole tie ins with King’s world/person mostly flew over my head or just didn’t work for me.
It’s not modeled after a “chintzy Hollywood western.” The Gunslinger is modeled after the Man with No Name trilogy, which is about as far from Hollywood as you can get. I mean, if you don’t like Italian westerns, or think they’re “chintzy” than fair enough, but still.
All right. The Dark Tower in a nutshell. You’re sure about this, right?
Roland meets three people, all from an alternate New York, along with a “dog.” They out-think a suicidal monorail; listen to an overly-long flashback from Roland that goes on for several hundred pages or probably 20 hours if you’re listening to the audiobook; and then watch as King rips off the Wizard of Oz, several of his earlier books, and Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven/A Bug’s Life (take your pick). King then inserts a massive Mary Sue (or whatever the male equivalent is) in book 6, and reboots the whole damn thing at the end of book 7.
Seven freaking books and, in my opinion, only 2 and 3 are really any good.
An aside, I thought the *Wizard and Glass * was one of my favorite King books ever.
And even though people get angry at the end, Throughout 7 books you really grow a strong literary relationship with the characters. The Dark Tower book was one of the only books that has ever made me cry. I think it was when Roland was finally marching toward the tower and he said something like “I come in the name of Jake Chambers, my son.”
One major reason that people feel King was contemptuous of his readers is that, about three pages before the end of the final book, he suddenly interrupts the story to go on a ranting, raving editorial fit in which he basically indicts the reader as some sort of horrible asshole for actually wanting an ending to the story. He insults and mocks the reader, says "I guess some people just don’t understand that stories are more about the journey than the destination, and then sighs (paraphrased), “Fine, if you can’t control yourself, go ahead and turn the page and read the ending,” and then follows it with a complete cop-out non-ending.
If you haven’t read them, don’t start. That’s my opinion these days. Why? Because The Gunslinger was almost a good book, and seemed to promise better things to come. Unfortunately, those better things never materialized.
As far as I’m concerned, King only wrote the rest of the books because he told himself he would finish the story. I commend him for writing six more books in his futile effort to finish it, but I do not commend him for allowing those books to be published.
Yeah, that was totally jerkish. The whole “you’ve read my books for twenty years but if you want to know the ending you’re a fucking idiot and have only yourself to blame if you choose to turn the page and actually read what happens when we reach the point we’ve been trying to get to for all this time” vibe made me want to punch the guy in the mouth. And then he follows it up with an afterword saying basically “Don’t bother to write me letters 'cause I’m the author and I don’t care what you think”.
The exact ending was this: Roland spends seven books trying to get to the Dark Tower, which is the hub of all worlds. There he hopes to be able to stop the deterioration that’s taking place in his world and all others. When he gets there, he finds a door at the very top and realises too late that he’s done this loads of times before, and the door puts him right back where the series started. The last sentence is the same as the first: The man in black fled through the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
And that is it.
EDIT: Oh, and the whole “King as a character” thing read like self-insertion fanfiction. Complete crap. Incorporating his accident was self-indulgent and boring. I think the last three books were basically written as therapy.
That summary could fit almost every Stephen King book that I have read. There are a few exceptions (such as “The Dead Zone” or “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”) where he seemed to know where he was going from the beginning, but most of his books read as if he just typed ahead with no clear idea of a story arc, and then threw in an ending when it got too long. By the time he gets to that point, he’s written himself into a corner, and clearly has no intention of self editing or rewriting to make it work.
His books tend to make better movies, even in the examples that I gave. The screenwriters, working within the restrictions of the medium, tighten up the story lines and keep things on track.
It’s a shame, in my opinion. I think he has it in him to write a truly great novel, but he sells too well for any editor to ever send back his work as too self indulgent and unfocused.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall there was a slight difference. This time he had the horn with him, I knwo it’s not much, but it indicated to me that eventually Roland would redeem himself over his mother’s death and succeed. The reset was because he hadn’t yet learned his lesson. Kind of like the reincarnation/wheel of life myth.
In addition to what **VC03 **and **Priceguy **said, I was really pissed off because King wrote a decent ending, but didn’t have the courage to leave it at that, and then tried to turn any blame he might get for it on the reader.
The “false ending” is just this: after seven books of struggle, sacrifice, and growth, all in pursuit of the Tower, the be all and end all not just of Roland’s life, but of all worlds, in his quest to enter the Tower and save existence itself, Roland reaches the tower, and enters.
That’s it. That’s where is should end. I understand you can’t tie up everything in a nice little bow at the end of a story like this. Leaving it with him reaching his goal, but open as to what exactly happens after, is a perfectly valid and true-to-the-story ending.
But I suppose some people would have been annoyed with that, and written King nasty letters, so he tried to duck it by writing a big “fuck you” to everyone who had followed him on this journey, not just through seven books, but in many cases for decades. It was really low.
I think the series is well worth reading; unfortunately he could not adequately tie up the threads, so the series is all build up - but it was a fine ride up 'till he blows it.
My favourite books are the second and third in the series. Fun stuff, even moving in parts.
My judgment: a good work, had the potential to be a great one, but written in the way it was obviously written - in bits and pieces over decades - it lacked the coherence required for greatness. The ending was a cop-out and the author knew it, and knew he hadn’t the stuff to really finish what he’d started.
The “Eternal Return” ending I could accept on its own merits, tho it’s been done elsewhere to much better effect. And another Nay vote on King’s little rant right before the ending, as well as the Mary Sue.
What I couldn’t accept was the steadily downward spiral that comprised the last 3 books, with the final tome being the most unbearable. Since the Big Kahuna has already been spoiled above, I’ll just say that they completely wasted Roland’s son, who was more pitiable than villianous. Most of the rest of Book 7 was just fiction by the numbers-it was obvious King no longer gave a shit about his characters or his audience (and that was before his little rant I referenced above). At one time the series absolutely captivated me (and I also didn’t mind the flashback Book 4), as each character grew and changed (even Roland) after being thrown into this surreal nightmare-esp. the fusion of Detta and Odetta. After all that though the characters became static, rushing from one plot point to the next. I have basically given up on all fantasy after Book 7 (tho I do plan to check out at least one in that thread I made on naval fantasy). To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.
Not quite, though I know I’ll never convince you to rethink your position on the matter. You have forgotten the face of your father.
The story ended with a ray of hope, in that Roland remembered this time to hold onto the horn, that he would need when he made it back to the tower to finally complete the quest in the correct and complete way.
And I’m sorry, but I completely disagree that this series is a waste of time. The characters drawn in the pages of those books are as real as anything ever put to paper in the history of literature, and this is precisely where King shines above every other author out there. It was never about how well he writes horror but about how he writes about the mundane that makes him the most successful author in history. His characters have always been deeper and richer than anything else in print, despite his shortcomings in other areas of the craft.
It was difficult for me to get through the first, small, book in this series and it took me several times over many years, but I am so glad I committed to doing it, for the rest is magic.
Yeah, he got the horn. We’re not sure what that means, but we hope it means he’ll be able to do whatever it is he wants to do within the Tower, the next time he’s spent seven books getting there. And we still don’t get to see it. Hurrah.
The first book was excellent, and I can see why King would get hung up on that story and want to continue it, but he couldn’t sustain the mood. Books two and three were good, I would probably have liked book four if I hadn’t spent it waiting for the plot to start again, and the last three books were pretty bad.
EDIT: What is up with this:
That’s a pretty rude and presumptuous thing to say, isn’t it?
That line goes with the next, as if to say that you didn’t like it because you have forgotten the face of your father. It was just a harmless poke.
I know there are problems with King’s books, but even at his worst he’s certainly worthy of reading, and far better than the majority of authors I’ve read. I honestly cannot find an author out there who can write characters as well as King, and be damned for mentioning it, but I’m including Dickens in that bunch as well!
Didn’t the main character first appear in a short story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, back in the early 1980s? I remember reading that, and it was pretty good, but I couldn’t get into the first novel. Did the dialogue ever get better? I remember it sounding like a really awkward attempt at pseudo-folksiness.
