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The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
by Authors:
Stephen King, Michael Whelan
Hardcover
At one point in this final book of the Dark Tower series, the character Stephen King (added to the plot in Song of Susannah) looks back at the preceding pages and says "when this last book is published, the readers are going to be just wild." And he's not kidding.
After a journey through seven books and over 20 years, King's Constant Readers finally have the conclusion they've been both eagerly awaiting and silently dreading. The tension in the Dark Tower series has built steadily from the beginning and, like in the best of King's novels, explodes into a violent, heart-tugging climax as Roland and his ka-tet finally near their goal. The body count in The Dark Tower is high. The gunslingers come out shooting and face a host of enemies, including low men, mutants, vampires, Roland's hideous quasi-offspring Mordred, and the fearsome Crimson King himself. King pushes the gross-out factor at times--Roland's lesson on tanning (no, not sun tanning) is brutal--but the magic of the series remains strong and readers will feel the pull of the Tower as strongly as ever as the story draws to a close. During this sentimental journey, King ties up loose ends left hanging from the 15 non-series novels and stories that are deeply entwined in the fabric of Mid-World through characters like Randall Flagg (The Stand and others) or Father Callahan (Salem's Lot). When it finally arrives, the long awaited conclusion will leave King's myriad fans satisfied but wishing there were still more to come.
In King's memoir On Writing, he tells of an old woman who wrote him after reading the early books in the Dark Tower series. She was dying, she said, and didn't expect to see the end of Roland's quest. Could King tell her? Does he reach the Tower? Does he save it? Sadly, King said he did not know himself, that the story was creating itself as it went along. Wherever that woman is now (the clearing at the end of the path, perhaps?), let's hope she has a copy of The Dark Tower. Surely she would agree it's been worth the wait.
Average Customer Rating:
i won't lie to you...
...i skimmed over the last half of this book and so don't really have a coherent grasp of the plot, but at some point the book, the series, the writing just became trite, anticlimatic and repetitive.
SPOILERS******
So King unceremoniously killed off my favorites, Eddie and Jake, halfway through the book. That's fine. Roland needs to see the Tower alone, he's forever condemned to wretched solitude, yada yada yada. So i was waiting for Susannah to go. I waited for King to FINALLY kill off this weird, half-baked, BLAND character for over 400 pages. And yes, this is petty, but what REALLY irked me about this book wasn't the ending, or the lame dispatch of the villains, or King writing himself into the novel, it was the fact that out of all of them, Susannah was the one who got off clean, complete with the perfect cheesy happy ending. That really pissed me off. It's ironic how, for such a consistently grating, underdeveloped character, she managed to hang on and on and on and on.
END SPOILER*****
If it's not too late, i would recommend for anyone to check out books 4-7 at the library. they're not worth spending money on.
Series shows King's Strengths and Weaknesses
For me, Stephen King has written many great journeys, but few great endings. He often seems to build the tension and suspense to the point that even he doesen't know how to end things, so he comes up with a Deus Ex Machina to do it for him. The giant spider at the end of It, the hand of God at the end of the Stand, and now the artist at the end of The Dark Tower. King tries to lecture the reader, saying we shouldn't be concerned with the end, but it seems like a very talented author trying to blame his few weaknesses on the audience instead.
There's no need for me to go into detail about many of the problems -- the end of Flag, the sudden appearance halfway through the seventh book of the artist character who ends up saving the day, the weakness of the Crimson King, or the morphing of the series more than once as it progressed because King didn't bother to plot the series out in advance -- others have already gone into that -- but there is one question I haven't seen addressed that really bothers me.
Spoilers -- at the end of the book, after saving all reality ever, Roland is sent back to the start of the first book (which isn't really the begining of his quest, but I digress.) Apparently Roland has undertaken this quest numerous times before, each time regaining a bit more of his humanity and compassion, but never quite regaining enough to satisfy whoever controls the tower (presumably God,) so each time he is cast back to start again. Probably he will have to continue undertaking the quest until he gets to a point where he doesn't sacrifice Jake and doesn't value the quest over the people he travels with -- or until he fails the quest and all reality ceases to exist. BUT . . .
But there's something I want to know. With Roland's quest being to save all creation and every being who has ever or will ever live, how can his recaiming his humanity be worth more than his overall success or failure? Every time he's sent back to restart his quest he has a chance of failing, so whoever's running the tower has apparently decided that Roland's humanity is more important than the existence of every other being ever born and the potential of every other being who could ever be born. Why? Why is Roland more important than everyone else combined. For the ending to make sense, that's something that needs to be explained. Sadly, we'll never know because I doubt Stephen King even knows himself. That's why he tells the reader the end isn't important, only the journey.
King talks about not really planning out the series in advance in the foreward to one of the books, which is why Roland's quest changes from one in which he's seeking the Dark Tower for answers to one in which he's trying to save all reality, and it's also why the main villain, the Crimson King doesn't appear until the fourth book, but then appears as if he's always been there. It's also probably why Flags end was so anti-climactic and unsatisfying, and it's certainly why the Crimson Kings end required a new character to be generated halfway through the seventh book -- a character who existed only to erase the Crimson King because nothing in the previous six and half books had led to Roland being able to do it himself.
King has said he'd like to rewrite the first three or four books to fit in better with the over all series, and that he'd like to re-release the entire run as two or three vollumes -- I'd like to see him do it, and maybe at the same time he could touch up the last couple of books as well. Roland is one of my all time favorite characters, and I really enjoyed the whole series (even the part where Jake sacrifices himself to save King, which some people seemed to have a problem with,) I'd just like to see the series stay true to itself the whole way through.
Anyway, that said, I do recomend this series to friends because the characters, settings, and journey are very engrossing -- but I do make a few provisions when doing so. It's a great journey that isn't always internally consistent between books, and the whole thing would have been better if King would have respected his audience enough to plan it out before hand so that things that should have been important from the start, were, and the scope didn't keep changing. Myself, I actually liked books 1,2, and 4 the best, and found the way the characters all started talking like members of the Calla in the last few books a little annoying and pretentious.
In truth, I was surprised by the foreward to one of the books (or maybe it's in the Dark Tower companion,) in which King says his fans should realize they don't have a right to read everything he writes, and he was basically annoyed that people wanted to read the Dark Tower series to begin with -- the whole thing came off as a bit antagonistic and aloof. Instead of being pleased to have such loyal fans, it came off as a writer who seemed to resent the fan following he had built up, despite the fact that writers need fans in order to keep getting published. If King didn't want his fans to read the Dark Tower, he probably shouldn't have published it at all. After publishing it, it seemed strange to get angry that fans wanted a larger print run so that they could read it. It's this antagonistic view towards the fans that probably allowed King to get four books into a seven book series before he really started to plan where it was going. It's also interesting to note that after deciding to finish the series, King began to think of it as his greatest work and allowed it to infuse everything he wrote -- at that point he wanted everyone to read it.
Super End
I have read the other reviews of this book and while I understand the disappointment, I really do strongly disagree with them. Almost all the points that many consider weak seem to me to have essential, and if they had not been there we would have just had a typical "happy ending" which this story is not about.
Roland's quest for the Tower is a quest for salvation; I found the epilogue to be a perfect way to end the series...salvation is not easy, and even though the Gunslinger's life is far longer than a normal life, it will need many, many cycles before redemption comes. I can forgive Stephen King for wanting to cycle Roland back to the start of the first book, rather than his birth...this has been a journey for Stephen King too, and he is allowed some indulgence, and only the venal plot-sniffers would really begrudge him this.
So the tet broke so easily and there were deaths...but Roland had to come to the Tower alone...the whole series showed this (especially the 4th book)...and ever since that book I had pretty much guessed that the others would die or disappear. The author dispatches them honourable and honestly, not in some Hollywood fashion. If being shot off-guard was good enough for Gandhi and Kennedy, then it is good enough for Eddie; and Jake and Oy died to save others. These deaths were poignant and moving and added buckets to the story.
After the build-up for Mordred, I am glad he wasn't the centre of things. His dispatch of Walter was brilliant and about the most horrific thing I have ever read (which is saying something!) and I am so glad it wasn't at Roland's hand which would have seemed rather sad; it was fitting that Roland should have been robbed of revenge...Roland's journey was never about revenge or execution. That Mordred was "killed so easily" was no disappointment for me...he failed because he didn't take Oy into account, what is sop "easy" about Oy having to die to get rid of Mordred?
This book is intelligently written, well thought-out and cleverly plotted. A fitting end to a great saga!
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Series shows King's Strengths and Weaknesses 
