I dont know how many Stephen King fan's I have reading my entries, but I know there is at least one person who is reading the last book of The Dark Tower Series (yes, Scorp ~aka Dr Phil~ that'd be you *lol*)
For anyone that loves to read and escape into another world where your mind is startled with intruiging imaginings and interesting complexities, look no further, this series is amazing. It is written by Stephen King and if you have ever read ANY of his other books, this entire series forms around them ~but, if you havent read any of his books, everything you need to know is explained in detail so you wont be missing anything. This series was started off of a poem he read in college (which I have included at the end of this post) and it has grown to almost a cult like status in modern culture.
I started reading this series when I was 14 years old. I was finally able to finish reading it about a year ago when he released the last few remaining books. Here are my thoughts on the books ~though brief and as non descriptive as possible so I dont ruin your reading experience.
Book 1: The Gunslinger
This book introduces the hero Roland, who must reach the Dark Tower in order to save his universe, Mid-World. There are passageways between our world and Mid-World, and a New York City boy named Jake gets shoved in front of a car by Jack Mort ("death"), is killed, and finds himself alive in Roland's world. He becomes Roland's surrogate son.
Book 2: The Drawing of the Three
Roland is attacked by marvelous, poisonous "lobstrosities" and enters our world for help. He takes heroin addict Eddie Dean from 1987 New York and Odetta Holmes from 1964 New York as his team. In a powerful time-tripping scene, Roland confronts Jack Mort and actually changes Jake's Earth history, which has heady implications for Roland's world.
Book 3: The Waste Lands
Roland and company get ensnared in a civil war in the urban waste of Lud, acquire a delightful talking pet named Oy the Bumbler, and find themselves captives of a psychotic train called Blaine the Mono.
Book 4: Wizard and Glass
It is a sci-fi fantasy novel that contains a post-apocalyptic Western love story twice as long. It begins with the series' star, world-weary Roland, and his world-hopping posse (an ex-junkie, a child, a plucky woman in a wheelchair, and a talking dog-like pet named Oy the Bumbler) trapped aboard a runaway train. The train is a psychotic multiple personality that intends to commit suicide with them at 800 M.P.H.--unless Roland and pals can outwit it in a riddling contest. After an epic battle ending in a box canyon to end all box canyons, we're back with grizzled, grown-up Roland and the train-wreck survivors in a parallel world: Kansas in 1986, after a plague.
Book 5: The Wolves of Calla
Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and their talking pet "billy-bumbler" Oy continue their quest to prevent the destruction of the Dark Tower and, consequently, save all worlds from Chaos and the Crimson King's evil, red-eyed glare. Roland and company momentarily fall off the "Path of The Beam" to help the residents of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a farm town. The learn that every 20-odd years the "Wolves" kidnap one child from each set of the Calla's twins, bring them to the Tower and, weeks later, send them back mentally and physically impaired. Meanwhile, back in 1977 New York City (the alternate world of Roland's surrogate son, Jake), bookstore owner Calvin Tower is being threatened by a group of thugs (readers will recognize them from The Drawing of the Three, 1987) to sell them a vacant lot in midtown Manhattan. In the lot stands a rose, or rather the Rose, which is our world's manifestation of the Dark Tower. With the help of the Old Fella (also known to `Salem's Lot readers as Father Callahan), the gunslingers must devise a plan against evil in both worlds. The task, however, is further complicated as Roland and his gang start noticing behavioral changes in wheelchair-bound, recovered schizophrenic Susannah.
Book 6: The Song of Susannah
There's something about a crippled, black, schizophrenic, civil rights activist-turned-gunslinger whose body has been hijacked by a white, pregnant demon from a parallel world that keeps a seven-volume story bracingly strong as it veers toward its Armageddon-like conclusion. When Susannah Dean is transported via a magic door on the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis (the scene of much of The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla) to New York City in the summer of 1999, the "demon-mother" who possesses her, Mia, has only one thing on her mind. She must give birth to her "chap" at a predetermined location in Manhattan's East 60s, as instructed by the henchmen-or "Low Men"-of the evil Crimson King. Pressed for time, Father Callahan, preteen Jake and talking pet "billy-bumbler" Oy follow Susannah and Mia's trail in an effort to prevent an act that would quicken the destruction of the Dark Tower and, in turn, of all worlds. Meanwhile, gunslingers Roland and Eddie travel to 1977 Maine in search of bookstore owner Calvin Tower, who is being hunted down by mobster Enrico Balazar and his gang, who first appeared in Eddie's version of New York in The Drawing of the Three.
I hate to admit this but the angry Constant Reader that King references in the last pages of his book, the one who doesn't like what he finds at the end of the quest and not to bother him with it...well, I guess that would be me.
I almost stopped reading when King said to. I really, truly almost stopped. It would have left me with insatiable curiosity though, and I think I'd have been curious how it all turned out till' my dying day. So with no more willpower than a wino guarding a liquor store, I trudged forth into the final pages of the book. And having finished it I will gladly share my thoughts with the whole shebang.
1. Flagg: Randall Flagg. Anyone who's read "The Stand" understands what a mean, nasty villain this guy is. To be frank I never got the idea that Flagg was entirely human. Sure, he *looks* human, but can change into a crow, can seemingly teleport, has a high innate knowledge of his surroundings. Tom Moon in "The Stand" indicates that he is known by many names, including Legion, when Jesus cast him into a herd of swine once. Flagg is something more than a simple man, something less than a demi-god. While it is nice to get a little more background info on him in this book I just have a really difficult time believing that he could be dispatched so easily, not to mention by *anyone* other than Roland, who was the one who was meant to kill him. His means of death was grotesque, and while debate will probably ensue on whether or not he got justice remains to be seen. Personally I thought it was horrific, even for him.
2. New York, Maine: I'm sick of it. I'm sick of both. What was great fun in "Drawing of the Three" and "The Wastelands" feels like covering the same old ground, over and over and over again. This whole business of jumping back and forth repeatedly grew so stale that I was tempted to just skip by it. I thought, in fact, that it hurt the story terribly that even though what seems like a dozen trips have been made there that one final trip to Maine had to be made to save King yet again. The Tet Corporation, while interesting, really brought nothing to the book. I didn’t really know these people and the gifts they gave Roland were, shall we say, lame? A book which he quickly gives away (huh?), a watch that will stop working when he goes near the Dark Tower (um...huh?) and I can't even remember what else. It was beginning to feel more like an episode of "Sliders" rather than the Dark Tower series. A really boring episode. Nuff' said.
3. The Crimson King: Granted, he's crazy. But the ruler and almost victor of the battle of the Dark Tower should be more than a doddering old fool throwing hand grenades. He was made such short work of (by the unforgivingly convenient Patrick) that it felt like a rush job.
4. Mordred: I'll grant that while he was an interesting sub-plot idea this guy was just put down alarmingly too easy. The entire fight lasts 3 paragraphs (small ones at that), and this after an entire book filled with tension buildup.
5. The Dark Tower: Exactly how I pictured the outside. Not at all how I thought it would be inside. Now after having read "Insomnia" my imaginings brought me to believe that the Tower itself was an inhabited structure with several levels, each level containing more and more sophisticated and/or powerful creatures as you reached the top. Now it's possible that all it is a representation of the major events of the life of whoever enters it. I would have liked to see Roland receive redemption at the end. A nice "Well done, Gunslinger...be at rest" from God or Gan or whomever. Instead...well...it broke my heart. An interesting ending, very original, but not one I agree with for one of my favorite story characters. He deserved better. Sue me if you don't agree.
6. Miscellany: The book had so many loose ends to tie up, so many uber-villains to kill, so much plot to sew up, so many mysteries to unravel, that I just cannot see how this could have been done with a clear conscience. I understand Mr. King wanted the books to be done, and I don't blame him. They're his "Opus Magnus" as he calls it, but it being that it should at least be as neat as the first four books of the series. The last 3 books, but this one in particular, feels rushed. Hurried. Please don't get me wrong, in places this book is wonderful (Blue Heaven, the Breakers, Empathico, the last leg to the Dark Tower, etc) and had me almost crying with several deaths. These were my friends, they'd become something real to me, and to have the book feel so rushed is almost...shall I say...sacrilege? I'm sorry...I'd have rather waited 5 years between installments for a better ending than this offered.
King was in the book too much, making me wonder if he's got a narcissistic streak. What was done well in Song of Susannah just doesn't have the same cohesion in this book. NYC possibly being the Lud of the past really flummoxed me. Susannah's "reunion" with Eddie and Jake at the end felt like a terrible cop out. I cannot believe for a minute that Susannah would do such a thing with anyone other than her own Eddie, and nice as it was to see her happy at the end it just felt poorly thought out. Where were "Travellin' Jack" Sawyer and Parkus of "The Talisman" and "Black House" fame? These were characters I fully expected to see and when they didn't show I wondered why all the hoopla from "Black House". Sheemie being there shocked me, but his untimely death and total non-reaction to that death by Roland left me stunned. Why no more flashbacks? What happened to Alain and Jamie DeCurry? So many unanswered questions.
Losing Eddie, Jake and Susannah before the end was a travesty. We've been following their lives for how many years now? And he drops them before the end for no apparent reason. Why? And then brings in some last minute character that we neither know nor care about ("the artist") to defeat Roland's nemesis. No showdown between Roland and the king. Wow. And putting himself in the book was just sad (yes I know he tried to explain it away in the afterward, makes no difference.) I guess maybe he was tired of this story after all these years and just wanted it out of his hair, so he churned out the last 3 books as quickly as possible, knowing we would all snap them up no matter how they were written (myself included).
My main criticism is that the book lacks a purpose, which is a necessity for a quest. A quest is typically good versus evil, but that seems to be missing here. King seems to feel that the quest is an end in itself, instead of the means to an end. Roland seems more amoral with every line that I read and by the time of the final confrontation, a part of me is rooting for Crimson King. There are some sparse mentions about the end of the world if the Crimson King wins, but it seems to me that Roland doesn't care about the world, just so long as he gets to enter his tower.
King does provide some interesting details about how the Crimson King is breaking the beams and adds some new characters; however the character that should have been left out was Stephen King himself.
In the book, the epic of the Dark Tower series is not written by King, but is channeled to him by Ka. In fact, he doesn't want to write about the tower and does so only out of obligation. My overall reaction to this book goes along those same lines. It seems like King is tired of writing and really doesn't want to finish this book, but feels obligated to finish the story for his readers. Or perhaps he feels obligated to Ka to finish it.
Lastly, what shall I say about the ending? I don't get it. I don't. This is the end of the quest and I have no idea what the ending that King wrote is supposed to symbolize. I won't say that this is the worst ending ever written (that honor belongs to Clive Barker, who actually killed God in The Imagica) or the worst ending that King has ever written (that honor belongs to IT, which involves children and an orgy).
I won't spoil the results, except to say that it's not a happy ending for Roland. The ending makes me question what the Dark Tower is supposed to represent. Since the Dark Tower is the tool for giving life and the Crimson King wants to destroy it, I had always made the connection that King wanted it to mean God, love, truth, or some such thing. After King's ending, I haven't got a clue what it stands for. I left feeling empty.
Stephen has gone back and modified The Gunslinger. Hopefully, he'll get tired of retirement and in a few years he will do the same with The Dark Tower.
Trying to look at it from a different perspective, King taught us (his readers) that Ka is a wheel...so....I guess in many ways this is a story of hope. The hope that all of one's efforts in life will pay off, and, that efforts will not be in vain. The question becomes for the reader to decide, is the journey of the ka-tet in vain, or is their hope well founded in the end. Overall the book reflects the events of life in general, some days the efforts might not pay off, depending on how you look at it, some days efforts pay off in a big way.
...All in all...it was a fabulous series with a plot that will go down in history as one of the most complex, twisting, and fascinating...I don’t regret the time I spent with Roland and His Tet...I feel terrible sadness that even after accomplishing all of His goals Roland was still not allowed to rest.
The one thing I don’t understand is IF King really wanted this series to be finished (and its loyal readers to quit bitching at him to finish it) ....WHY did 99% of every book he’s ever written in his entire career have something to do with the Tower & Roland’s quest? If he really wanted it to go away why would he plot his entire career around it? Why would he then think his loyal readers would be pleased with the very shabbily written ending to a series that millions have grown to love?
"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”
by Robert Browning
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed, neither pride
Now hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
V
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bit the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith
And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;')
VI
When some discuss if near the other graves
be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among 'The Band' to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! No sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round;
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on, naught else remained to do.
X
So on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.
XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See
'Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly,
'It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
''Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place
'Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.'
XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupified, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm to mine to fix me to the place,
The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII
Better this present than a past like that:
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
XIX
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI
Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
- It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -
XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No footprint leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
XXIV
And more than that - a furlong on - why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? With all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
XXV
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood -
Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.
XXVI
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss, or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
XXVII
And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend,
Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought.
XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains - with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when -
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den.
XXX
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!
XXXI
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
XXXII
Not see? because of night perhaps? - why day
Came back again for that! before it left
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, -
'Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!'
XXXIII
Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers, my peers -
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
XXXIV
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'
1 comment:
Well said Christine!
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