The Road to the Dark Tower

It's hard to review this book and not think of it as the end of a ~4000 page journey. But I'll try.

I really enjoyed this journey, and the end of Roland's journey, as well as that of the ka-tet, seemed quite fitting. I must admit that I sort-of saw the direction it was heading in, yet I was still very satisfied by it's conclusion.

Of all the 7 books in the series, this one was the longest in page count yet seemed to move the fastest of all of them. I'm sure some of that was me running downhill towards the end, but I was also fully engaged with the story throughout. In any series such as this, there are going to be some lulls where your attention wanders, but not in this finale.

After this book, King later returned to the Dark Tower for another novel. I'm sure I'll circle back to it at some point, but for now, I'm taking a break from Mid-world.

p.s. I watched the film again after finishing this book, and boy-howdy is it a real turd. What a disappointment.

I really wanted to finish this before the new year, say true, but it was not meant to be.

There's probably something that could be said about the metafictional aspects – perhaps something akin to Heinlein's ideas of "pantheistic solipsism" and "world as myth" – of the later books of the Dark Tower series, but I'm not sure there's much value in saying it. There is too much nodding and winking to one's self (almost literally, in a few spots), and there are far too many words expended in finishing this tale: Their inflationary nature devalues the parts of the story that were worth anything to begin with.

I will begrudgingly admit that I like the ending, the true ending that is, not the several false ones. It doesn't make up for the terribleness of the movie that came out last year, but it does allow for a certain circularity that beckons "many minds and hands," to borrow a Tolkienian phrase.

It was good to have read it, but having read it, I do not anticipate ever wanting to read it again.

Review first appeared on Forest Azuaron.

I am not one of Stephen King's Constant Readers. I picked up The Gunslinger in a Barnes & Noble on a whim and fell in love with the first line: The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed. In the subsequent days, I fell in love with the entire book. To my disappointment, The Gunslinger is the peak of the series.

There have been high points (The Wolves of the Calla) and particularly low points (The Waste Lands) but the series could never match the brutal, elegant, beautiful simplicity of that first book.

And finally, we get to the core of it: The Dark Tower has never been about anything other than Stephen King. He claims to hate the word "metafiction" (which means an author has inserted themself into their book), but he drags the whole series through what is, ultimately, a metafictional narrative and nothing else. The Dark Tower series exists for one reason and one reason alone: to tie together the collective, varied works of Stephen King. Not only that, but he inserts himself into the story as, basically, the prophet of our Lord and Savior Gan, Keeper of the Dark Tower. A fascinating look into the mind of Stephen King? Yes. An engaging story? Not really. The final body blow after you realize you've wasted years of your life reading a story about other stories you haven't read? King literally becomes his own deus ex machina... then lampshades it.

The Dark Tower ends twice, one of which I kind of liked, the other I really didn't. Let's talk about the one I liked first.

What Roland finds at the top of the Dark Tower is... a return to the desert first seen in The Gunslinger, and the beginning of his journey once again. As we've been told oh so many times, ka is a wheel, so a return to the beginning should not surprise anyone. As a reader of Stephen King, an ending that's more than slightly horrific for the protagonist shouldn't surprise anyone, either. Honestly, there's nothing else that should be at the top of the tower.

What Susannah finds in New York, on the other hand, is a cop out. Eddie, Jake, and Oy sacrificed themselves for the mission, for ka, for each other, and for Roland. To find them strolling around New York City in some alternate where so Susannah can find them diminishes their sacrifices. It makes sense, I guess, and it doesn't break any rules of the world... but 11th hour resurrections are always the wrong decision. Always. It takes a clear-cut cause and effect chain and says, "Gotcha! Different effect! Surprise happy ending!" Oh, they don't live happily ever after, they merely live and have happiness? That's a lot different; thanks, I feel better about your cop out now </sarcasm>.

On it's own, I'd give the book The Dark Tower 3 roses out of 5. As a stand-in for the series as a whole, I'd give it 2. Knowing what I know now, I would read The Gunslinger and stop there.