The Dark Tower (SPOILERS!)

This was a topic I was going to post on the 4.0 since I just finished the series a few weeks ago. And since I've seen a few people make references to it in other posts, I figure I'd go ahead and bring it up here.

Pretty much anything I say after this is going to relate to content in the series, so stop reading now if you haven't finished it yet. You've been warned.

Ok, I'll start out by saying that I had a really hard time getting through the series. I'm not a big fan of King's style of writing, and so few of his books live up to the hype for me. However, so many people spoke so fondly of The Dark Tower, I had to give it a go.

Anywho, its started out well. I liked the Lone Gunmen feeling to Roland's character in the first 2 books, and his single minded hunt for Walter made for good reading. After that things started to change for me. The sub-characters of Eddie and Susannah never really worked for me, especially with Susannah's disability. It felt like King really spent alot of the series trying too hard to shoehorn that into the story, and it didn't add anything except to her origin, which could easily have been written in another manner. Jake and Oy I liked, with Oy being the one I was saddest to see die, because of my attachment to animals, and his loyalty to Jake and Roland. Jake was perfect as "son-I've-never-had" for Roland, especially because of Roland's initial betrayal. But Jake's Deus Ex Machina, the touch, really just didn't do it for me for some reason.

And as for Roland, while his character started out as the one track minded gunslinger, with no other purpose than to take revenge for his friends and family and set everything right, he soon turned into a know-it-all, almost Obi-Won (with a bad past) figure, which completely went against the type that was set up in his origin story.

I also had a problem with the lack of action. When it was included in the story, it was well plotted and well written, with some of the most visual inducing descriptions I've read. However, for a story about gunslingers who were naturals with any weapon, there were really very few battles IMHO. And the two that were most anticipated, the fight with Mordred and the final duel with the Crimson King, were rushed and, especially in the case of the King, were concluded poorly.

I have other problems with overall arc of the series, mostly I think because as King got older, his motives for writing the story changed, and he really had to backtrack to tie all of his side stories into the main, which left some feelings of being "tacked on" to me.

But never In my literary life has the ending of book completely turned around the entire series for me. Roland's complete horror and soul crushing despair when he gets to the top of the Tower and realizes he has to do it all over again, and that he's done it all before, because he hasn't regained his humanity yet, is so excrutiatingly perfect. I don't think I've ever felt worse for a character in any other book, knowing he would have to live through all of that loss again, and again, and again until he got it right. And the fact that he starts all over with just one minor change almost makes me want to go through all I complained about again just to see what that tiny difference can do for the story.

King saved this series for me with what I consider a stroke of genius. He could have easily just left it with Roland saving the world through his sacrifice, and all the other characters living happily ever after in their new when, but he instantly made it more personal and satisfying with only a few added paragraphs, sending our hero into his own personal hell for our benefit.

Well, thats my two cents. Hope some of you out there have some feelings of your own to add.

 

All 7 of these books and the Lord of the Rings are some of the relatively few hardbacks that I have in my literary collection. That ending did throw me for a serious loop when I first read it. Some of my favourites from Stephen King along with the full print of the stand.
I have thought more than once this needs the 'high quality anime' treatment if ever adapted to anything with voice actors, and keep all of the essential plot details. I really do not see live action ever doing this justice .

 

I LOVED this series. Some of the books did drag on a bit, but like you said Niki, the ending really made it. I actually enjoyed the way he made all the other books tie into it, and having read much of his work, it is something that he's been slowly working on for years. Take the Tommy Knockers, for instance, where he makes a refernce to a couple of the characters seeing a clown pop out of a man hole. The Dark Tower gave him the plot tool to tie all of his work (and his life, kind of) into one larger univers.

 

It took me a long time to come to appreciate the end of Book 7. The series meanders (and meanders and meanders) and there are certainly some sections which are far more coherent and cohesive than others. Re-reading it, it's often hard to believe it was all written by the same person, although given that it was written over the course of some thirty years, I suppose that immense changes in style and focus shouldn't come as a surprise.

When I first finished the books, skipping right past King's warning about the ending with a look of determined glee on my face, I really was upset. I remember throwing the book down and denouncing it as a cheap trick and a waste of my time. A lot of book 7 is kind of a cheap trick and a waste of time, but the end is, despite King's own apparent dislike for the ending he wrote, utterly perfect. While it got lost in many of the subsequent books, the fact remains that Roland was not a good person and did not look far beyond himself. His infinite (or at least nearly so) struggle to fix all of his mistakes and completely regain himself really changes the scope and focus of the entire story. As a writer, King has often struggled with endings, and at first glance I think you could say this is one occasion on which he did, but further reflection has changed my mind.

Definitely a series I'm glad I made it through and, in many ways, glad King decided to finally finish.

 

While I would have been satisfied with a happy ending to the series, I'm not sure if it would have been because of the ending itself, or just the fact that I was finally done with the series. This way, I knew instantly and for sure that King had hit he nail on the head, and really turned me into a fan of the series with the its last few pages. I'm not sure if that's ever happened before with a series. Usually its the other way around: the series starts out strong, then gets lost later on down the line as writer loses focus and starts churning out books for profit instead of for the benefit of the story.

Anyway, good to hear other opinions, hope some others chime in as well.

 

My initial feelings on the series ending were that it was some kind of cop-out, similar to my reaction to Lore having all of Data's memories rather than completely burying the character after his very human sacrifice.
But looking back, it does fit with the character and the life that Roland lead.

 

I could definitely see that point of view. I first thought King was going to end it without telling you what was at the top of the tower. If he had taken that cop-out, I would have been the second guy to do a hit and run on him.

 

Personally, I loved the first 3 books, 4th was meh, I hated 5 & 6, then couldn't wait to burn through the last one. I was immensely pissed with the ending, but after some time to cool off, I came to appreciate it more and more. But what King says about the journey being more important than the destination really hit home after I rolled back mentally and thought about everything that happens over the course of the series. It still ranks as probably my favorite of all time, just because I read it over the course of 15 years or so, and felt like as the story developed, so did I.

I have this habit of listening to music as I read, and inevitably, when I listen to the album later, I recall the book. For Wizard & Glass, The Wall was on repeat, and it was just the perfect music for the story, especially towards the end of the story, and something I'll never forget.

I'm actually glad the movie/TV deal fell through, because I'm absolutely sure that it wouldn't do it justice. An animated show on HBO, ala Spawn, on the other hand....

 

This my next read - looking forward to it

 

It is a series I have never finished. I loved the first few books. I hated the wait, Wizards and Glass did not make me want to continue to read.

I do plan to read the series from start to end again when I have nothing else to read. That has yet to happen, it is just low priority for me.

 

Definitely a great series overall, though W&G and WotC were clearly King stalling because he didn't know where to take the story.

I know that most Dark Tower fans love W&G, but I found it a total bore. I found Roland far more interesting as a mysterious character, and fleshing out his back story ruined that to a degree

 

I always wanted to read this series, but I never did. I am putting this on the list.

 

Honestly I'd just say don't bother.
I love The Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, The Wastelands, and Wizard and Glass.
Wolves of the Calla was... okay. Not at all worth the wait, but okay.
Song of Susannah was worse.
The Dark Tower... well yes the end was good. Very good in fact. However the rest was crap. The only reason I got to that end was because I had been reading the series for so long I basically forced myself to finish it. Yeah, I disliked it that much. Had it not been for how long I'd been reading the series, I would have stopped and never looked back.

 

I similarly liked the first three books, suffered through most of the rest, actually liked the Song of Susannah, and wanted to punch SK in the mouth after I finished The Dark Tower. To be fair to him, he warned me to stop reading. He was right...

 

Actually that's the only part of the end I thought he got right. The rest was crap.

 

I liked the ending, but thought the final battle with the Crimson King was 100 kinds of disappointing

 

Same here, that was the most disappointing part of the series. A battle that he set up over the course of 7 books, and it comes down to an almost cartoonish finally.

 

Guess who scored Parking Decal #19?

 

This is a portion of the farm where Grancey and I live. What you're looking at is an easement maintained by El Paso Gas to run natural gas pipelines underground, and it has the effect of looking like a giant natural highway through the woods. If you look down the "path," you'll notice the last hilltop where the grass is green before turning yellow. If you were to turn sharply left at this last green area, you would be at our house. The yellow area beyond is ours, too - it's just where the farmer sprayed Roundup on a hay field so he can grow cotton there instead.

The whole point of this is to show that we live beside The Beam.

 

I concur, pretty much verbatim, with SpeedGibson's point. If there ever were to be a cinematic adaptation, live action could not possibly do justice to a story like this. Even in my own mind, I can manage (and have at one point) to cast almost everyone within the story; but no single actor can capture Roland. It will have to be animated.

I agree so much with so many points already raised, I hardly feel I can add anything of any substance to the conversation. One can almost watch the author grow and evolve, as the earlier stories have the surreal, I'm-terrified-but-at-the-same-time-I-can't-wait-to-find-out-what's-coming-at-me feeling, while later it starts to feel more forced, sometimes like it's just trying to get to the end. And that's how I ended up going through the series, too. At the outset, I hung on every word. I could see every line of Roland's form though I could never see his face. I slept wondering if the Man in Black was walking down my street. Even now, I can see in my mind the endless desert and alkali flats stretched forever before me. Then later, it felt a bit more tedious, until by the end, I consciously knew I was just trying to get through it because I had committed myself to do so.

But then the end came. I felt some sadness when Susanna and Eddie were gone. I believe I shed a few actual tears along with Roland at Jake's burial in the woods. I felt a measure of outrage at Oy's death. And I felt such a depth of honest despair when our Gunslinger was forced through that final door at the top of the tower. I even felt a twinge of guilt when I was reminded in no uncertain terms that the journey is far more significant than the destination.
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Quite literally, wouldn't you say? Le Roi Russe, evil incarnate, that which is supposed to be the ultimate adversary, bested by an eraser.
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Off-topic, that wasn't Lore. It was "B4", an even earlier prototype. And I think we can all agree that it was bunk.