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.