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I read this book, possibly in middle school, but I believe it was the earlier, abridged original release. I didn't remember it fondly... But after completing The Dark Tower series and enjoying them, I thought it was a good time to not only revisit the book but read the 'complete' version released in the 90s.

This was a very good book. Despite it's ridiculous length, it didn't feel burdensome. Perhaps I would have felt differently if I read a paper copy (as I often have difficulty with long physical books) but I just kept chugging away at this without any concern for its length. The story engaged me and mostly it didn't seem to have a ton of useless fat.

I'm not sure why I didn't like the book in the past... Perhaps the abridged version was inferior, perhaps I was just immature or not in the right place.. But I really enjoyed it this time.

After I finished the book, I watched the old 90s miniseries... It was.... not great... It started off really good, but ultimately seemed to suffocate under the weight of fitting the entire book into 6 hours. Perhaps the upcoming CBS miniseries will do a better job.

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.