The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (7)

Technically this book is not low quality enough to merit one star, but if you've been with this series since Day One, and believe as I do that this book carries more with it than just itself as a story, to give it anything more than one star would understate the magnitude of its failure.
All of the problems with book six are extended and compounded here in book seven: the reliance on New York and Maine as settings for an adventure story that's supposed to be grander than any one time or place, the prominence of annoying and unwelcome new characters, King's overuse of unbelievable internal dialogue to cram exposition down our throats, his narcissistic inclusion of himself as an important element, (more on that later) and his lack of focus on any one element worth caring about. The bottom line is this: "The Dark Tower 7" is King at his laziest and least original, which is hard enough to sit through in his lower-quality stand-alone output, but shockingly unforgivable in what is supposed to be the center of all his literary creation (his words, not mine) and his bid for greatness in the eyes of posterity.
Perhaps writing the Dark Tower had become a burden not unlike the Tower quest itself. Unlike his character Roland, however, King jumps ship rather than stick it out. Consider the evidence: the books inexplicably marginalize Roland and the Quest the further they go. By contrast, pointless distractions and King himself (with a profound dislike for the burden of being author) appear and assume importance. Roland is relieved of many of his soul-testing responsibilities (sacrificing his friends, dealing with his foes) by cheap plot devices that cause them to disappear outside of any action of his-- even the Tower itself is made practically irrelevant by a series of contrived events and unimportant characters. Forgive me, but wasn't the great central tragedy of this series that he'd give up anything for the Quest, and has in the past? King spent quite a bit of books one, three, and almost all of four dealing with this-- why throw it out the window in the closing 300 pages?
In "Dark Tower 7" Roland sacrifices nothing-- he is LEFT BEHIND and made irrelevant; this is perhaps symbolic of what has happened to the Series on the whole. The final three books in this series have a lurching, breakneck pace and reach their end with all the subtlety of a dump truck hitting a brick wall. Is it coincidental that they were penned all at once, contrasting with the twenty or so years it took King to write the first four? Consider also the growing preoccupation with the Tower in his other works over the last few years. The overwhelming presence in the first four books was the slow decay of a many layered world, one like and yet unlike our own, with complex characters that were all just a little bit crazy from their own mental decay. In the final three books, this world gives way to the familiar rushing and business-like atmosphere of omnipresent New York. The characters we knew fade and are replaced by cardboard heroes or villains, doing what they have to do to bring the story to an end.
The Quest (and possibly King's concern for his own mortality) probably proved too much to bear and King wanted out. If so, that is his prerogative. I do not feel he owes me any duty to "finish the series right," although I can offer my opinion that it would have been better to leave it unfinished than to drop it off a literary skyscraper like he has. In a self-serving note at the end, King remarks that the problem with Constant Readers is that they never want to acknowledge that sooner or later they'll have to let go-- whether there's real closure or not, and that it's a tragic thing to be insistent on some kind of neatly resolved 'ending.' I would answer that he should have taken some of his own advice: in the rush to close and end this series he's given up its soul. Tragic, indeed, as the once-great "Dark Tower" books deserved better treatment than this. If you are (like I was) an enthusiastic reader of the series and began to smell a rat in places during Book Five, I advise you to stop and leave your impression of the books as intact as it can be. If you've already read book six and enjoyed it without any problems, you might want to continue. For everyone else: it only gets worse.

I have been reading these books since I was a kid, a little less than twenty years now, so the previous chapters have ceased to be "books I've read" and have instead become a part of my life. When you stick with a story or a journey for that long, it's not really a consious thing. If you'd asked me a few years back what I thought of these stories, I'd have said that they were probably the most important work of American fantasy ever written. I can no longer say that, and its a shame.

There have already been some good reviews here with specific reasons as to why the story failed at the end. I'd like to just focus on a few specific examples without revealing too much.

King has always said that the joy is in the journey and not the destination. That may be true, but why go on the journey if you don't have one. The end of this book, and indeed the series, seems so forced, and false that I just couldn't go along withit. It's not so much the contents of the tower, I actually found that to be appropriate, it was the grand anti-climax and the ton of inconsistancies that I have a problem with.

King has been establishing the characters of Flagg and the Crimson King as evil incarnate, when we learn of their actual fates, they go from being evil incarnate to silly cartoon characters. It's like being chased by a maniac with a hockey mask only to find that beneath the hockey mask is Curly from the 3 stooges. So Yeah, very disappointing.

Not only is there anti-climax, the whole tone and language of the final few chapters seem flat an apologetic. It's almost as if King knows he's doing us the reader wrong and is ashamed. I don't have the book in front of me or I could site you specific examples.

I can forgive a lot of things about the final three books, including the fact that in an act of self-parody, King himself appears in the books, or the "non-ending" that lies within the Tower. But the fact that we have waited for so long for so little basically seems like King cheated himself out of what could have been his grand masterwork. In his haste to finish the damn thing its as if he never stopped to consider the quality of it.

It just doesn't feel right, nor does it feel like the books that came before which were tight and as close to perfect as books can get. Ultimately this feeels like a betrayal. Not enough for me to kidnap King and cut his feet off and make him do it over again, but at least enough to tarnish my image of him forever.

My husband and I joke that SK books are coffee table books -- just add legs. What brought us back time and again was that none of the words were wasted. When Rowland stepped into the desert the reader could taste the sand. It was a world beautifully invoked, detailed and wrenching. The characters are people you wouldn't be surprised to meet next door, although who you met might determine whether or not you went armed and invested in a pack of pit bulls.

The final Dark Tower is vast but it's hollow. All of SK's descriptive powers are in service of detailing unimportant backgrounds and characters that flit in and out without leaving much of an impression. The relevant storyline could probably be fit into a pamphlet, and a very thin one at that.

Major characters are dispatched in ways that bear no relevance to their importance or how they've been developed. Randall Flag, for instance, has demonstrated vast inhuman power throughout many of King's books. Yet he is dispatched perfunctorily as a human being, and a stupid, bungling one at that. Not only this, but his demise is at the hands of a minor character, not Rowland's or even one of his ka-tet. This completely contradicts the dramatic tensioning that took place not only in the Dark Tower, but in The Stand and other books. Other villains that have been built up as thoroughly as Flagg are disposed of off-handedly in ways that do not resolve any part of the story. Characters are brought in without explanation, used to resolve major plot lines, and then are either gotten rid of or left to lump up the scenery. Other characters that have been mentioned repeatedly through the series in ways that foreshadowed something never have that foreshadowing explained. Characters that have been connected from other books never show up and are never explained.

Worse, Rowland and his companions are all out of character in this book. They perform actions and are given dialogue that do not fit their personalities at all. Their deaths are without meaning, their improbable resurrections are intolerable.

With all of the space that SK has to work with -- after all, his following knows he writes by the pound -- something worthwhile and truly classic could have been fit between the covers of this book. It wasn't and that's a shame. I don't have a problem with the ending myself; Rowland is learning a lesson, a hard, slow, stubborn message and he will wear out a hundred pairs of boots or more before he understands it. It's every [expletive] moment that leads up to the ending that bothers me.

After becoming absorbed in the series with the first three books, I trudged through the forth one waiting for the story to start. It never did. It was a needless 500-page flashback. I should have realized then that the rest of the series would be just as disappointing. I read books 5 and 6 - not great, but readable. I started book 7 hoping Stephen King would turn it around and go out with a bang. Unfortunately, once I got to where Roland realized that Jake knew that he (Jake) had to die to save said author, I just couldn't go on anymore, for many of the same reasons other reviewers have stated. It was bad enough that Eddie's death was not for some greater cause but now Jake's death is a waste also.

I really don't even care anymore how it ends.

I've been an avid reader since the late 70's and have not finished only a handful of books I've started. This one was that bad.

Don't start this series, it will only disappoint.

Spoilers Ahead....

It's funny to me to read all these reviews of those disappointed in this final book in the Dark Tower series. This may offend them, but I don't really care: I feel like you all are a bunch of crybabies.

I just finished this book, finally, and it seems I'm in a minority. I enjoyed the first four Dark Tower books, but starting with Wolves of the Calla, the series really took off for me. From the moment I started reading it, I was completely enthralled. And so it is I came to the seventh and final book in the series.

I wondered how it would end. I wondered how King would wrap it up. But in the end, the part which touched me and stuck with me the most was near the end, when King speaks to us, the readers, and explains that it's more about the journey than the destination. Yes, I toyed with the idea of putting down the book at that point, never finding out what happened to Roland once he entered the Dark Tower. Then, I thought about it. King just told us that the journey matters the most. If King really wanted us to stop there, he would have stopped writing. He continued, though, which told me that the Coda itself was also part of the journey. And I'm very glad I did read it. I thought the ending was sadly perfect.

Let me touch on a few things everyone seems to be whining about, though.

Yes, Mordred killed Flagg. That chapped so many of your hides, it makes me laugh. I was surprised, as well. I, like a lot of you, thought Roland would get to do the honors. The death scene actually made me physically cringe while reading it. And I thought it pretty awesome that one of King's greatest villians was snuffed out, not by the greatest gunslinger who ever lived, but by his half-child, barely past infancy. But you all can sit and cry that it didn't come out the way YOU all wanted it to.

The Ka-Tet were killed off. Yes, and it was sad. While Roland was always an anti-hero of sorts, they were always the heroes, and the characters you really grew to love. Like many of you, it broke my heart greatly when Eddie, Jake and Oy were killed. I would have loved to see them live, but guess what? I wasn't driving this car. None of us were. King was driving, and we were all just passengers. He even warned us of these bumps in the road to the Dark Tower, something I would almost have rather found out for myself, actually. I like surprises, whether good or ill. And unlike some of you, I loved the quasi-reunion of Susannah with Eddie and Jake Toren. Of all the parts in the book, it was this which brought tears to my eyes, and not because of any lame attempt to bring back two beloved characters from the dead. That Epilogue wasn't for my benefit, in my opinion. It was for Susannah's. And that made me happy for her.

One of the biggest gripes was King placing himself in the novels. Of all gripes, I can understand this one the most, but again, I disagree and thought he did it in a genius way. I suppose most of this opinion comes from the fact that I'm a huge King fan, and have read almost all his books. When I started to realize, as King did, that the Dark Tower somehow encompassed all his works, it excited me greatly. It was like a small reward for being one of his Constant Readers. When he appeared, I thought it was brilliant. I was iffy on the fact he was portraying himself almost as a God of sorts. That changed, though, as he seemed to almost start to fault himself for many things. He never painted a very good picture of himself. In fact, many of you think it arrogant that Jake died saving King's life. In my eyes, King painted an ugly picture of himself there, making himself the blame for Jake dying. And the two heroic characters still alive even hated King for it. I'm not forgetting Oy, although I'm sure little Oy harbored more hate than anyone for King putting carelessly putting himself in harm's way like that. I thought it was done well.

Patrick Danville. Yes he was a Deux Ex Machina. He was brought into the story for no other reason than to save Roland's butt at the end with a miraculous power. But all you people crying over this, take a look at the entire series for a moment, and notice how many times this happened, something coming from out of nowhere to be the key to the survival of the Ka-Tet. I'm not going to list them all here. This review is already long enough. Patrick came into the story late. He served his purpose. He erased the Crimson King. Get over it. If he hadn't been there, you all would have hated the ending even worse, as Roland was powerless to do anything himself but blindly answer the Tower's call, ending his life as well as possibly all of existance.

Finally, the ending, or lack of an ending. Ka is a wheel, Yes, you all know this. Yet you still think it lame that Roland is placed back at the start of his journey. One reviewer asks if, after the Ka-Tet saved the Universe, was the Universe in peril all over again. In a word, no. As I see it, the journey Roland took through the seven books of the Dark Tower is a journey we find out he has taken many times already. This wasn't the first time he found the Dark Tower, nor will it be the last. No, the Universe is not in peril again. Roland has been sent back to the start of book 1... again. He will draw his Ka-Tet... again. They will save the beams... again. This time, though, he has the horn. All the other times, it had been left at Jericho Hill. He has it now. Perhaps that will make the difference, finally ending the repeating cycle Roland is caught in. We will never know.

But like Stephen King tells us, it is the journey which matters most. And I, personally, say thankya to him for this journey.

I've been a long-time reader of the Dark Tower series, and had eagerly awaited the resolution of what was arguably King's most epic work. Unfortunately, the final volume was, to put it mildly, a letdown. As King himself anticipated in the conclusion, readers were likely inclined to dislike the end; I reacted as expected. However, it wasn't the concept of the finale that bothered me, as King commented--I rather enjoyed the idea--but the overall lack of resolution to so many loose ends and events throughout King's work. For example, King's solution to the plot lines developed in Insomnia, IT, and other works? They were misguided images of the "real" story revealed in the seventh book. This is a technique more akin to the "it was all just a dream" potboiler rather than in a novel King considers to be his magnum opus. In a similar fashion, the expectations built up in The Gunslinger's philosophical musings are never realized, just as the most basic plot point of who the main antagonist actually is and what motivates him are never developed beyond a caricature-level of developement. It's hard to feel positive about a book that's clearly been rushed, especially when it's on the heels of six other books, over a period of decades, that I enjoyed immensely. With a conclusion like this, I wouldn't reccomend even starting the long joutney I've undertaken with these novels.

Let me start by saying, I really enjoyed this book, it was a page turner and the story moved at a brisk pace. 800+ pages went by pretty fast. If you are considering getting it, I can't imagine you've come this far (to book 6) and plan on stopping. It's much better than book 6 (which was by far the worst of the series).

If you haven't read it, stop reading here (and go read the book instead). It seems everyone else has used the review space to discuss the book itself, so I'll throw my 2 cents in. (or 1.5 for what it is worth ) In short, spoilers ahead.

I too was displeased with the ending. My take and it seems a majority of the readers agree is that Roland must repeat this task until something changes, either externally (someone kills him in the key world), or internally (some change within him), or the world ends. Otherwise, the tower is nothing more than a teleportation device that simply sends him back to the beginning (could have used a door for that). It's been argued that the beginning should really be his birth, not the desert which I totally agree with since he's made decisions long before the desert about his quest for the tower.

An element in the series that kept bothering me was when a character would say they just know this is the right way to go or the right thing to do. I felt this removed some of the element of danger as if a higher hand was guiding them. Ka if you will. After reading the ending, I now interpret that to be a sense of deja vu having done it so many times before. I suppose it can be interpreted however you like, but it makes me sleep easier at night with my interpretation.

I don't think King is built for a series like this. The reason being is his somewhat shoot from the hip style of writing. The story just comes to him as he writes it. This saga needed a tight plot outlined ahead of time. How can you possibly keep up with elements spanning 30+ years over 7 books and tie them neatly into a pact ending? You can't, unless you plotted the whole thing out at the beginning and knew precisely what you were writing in each book. It truly feels like a series of different books especially 4 and 5 (I loved book 4 by the way, but more for its language and independent story)

Here is where King dropped the ball. If we are to believe Roland will eventually get it right or screw up somewhere along the way (which is admittedly an arguable point), why not tell the story of that ending? Mention early on that he's done this task 54 times already, let the reader know so we are in on the little secret that the characters don't know. It would be much more gratifying to see Roland come to terms with his obsession where we know he's failed before and finally succeed.

That whole spiel in the coda by King about just stop reading now was really insulting. Don't tell me the journey is the only part to enjoy and the ending is only there out of necessity. Raise your hand if you stopped reading at that point? For those whose hands are up, did you stop because you didn't want the series to ever end and you wanted to savor the ending slowly or are you really happy just with the journey (be honest)? Of course we want to read the ending. I don't get on an airplane to Paris only to sit on the runway and fly back home. That being said, the ending was weak. You can interpret it however you want and be happy with your decision, but after reading well over 3000 pages, I want more than a reset button.

Mordred's awesome mind control abilities were totally useless. Why didn't he use them on Susannah or Roland? He struggled to follow them for months always nearby and his big plan was just a bum rush up the middle? He even could talk telepathically to the Crimson King who never once offered him some strategic words of advice, or asked him to bring a ladder over to the tower to help him out. Then you have Patrick which was probably the worst display of "deus ex machina". King could have had Roland dispatch the Crimson King in a more interesting manner than the magic eraser. It just feels all these characters weren't thought out when the cards were laid on the table. All that buildup and then nothing. King was getting to his Dark Tower along with Roland and you can just tell he was as anxious to get to the end as Roland, no matter how much King talks only of the journey. It would be interesting to know how long it took King to write about the last 25% of that book. I'll bet it was pretty darn quick.

I could easily comment on a hundred aspects of the book, but instead I'll just narrow it down to what the conclusion seems to say about King's faith. Take a closer look at the conclusion. King ends with Roland starting over again in the desert. I think this shows that King's own search for faith ended in perhaps a slightly ambivalent conclusion: reincarnation. Reincarnation, according to certain religions, is a process whereby people return to live in another body after they die. In Roland's case, since he reached the Dark Tower (the locus of destiny), he doesn't die and take on another body. Instead, he is forced to relive his own life again and again in his own body.

It's an ending with no obvious answers, but with answers of an entirely different kind. It seems Roland may never come to the clearing at the end of the path. Hell-bent on his agenda, he sacrifices countless people to reach his goal. He saves the world, but in the process, loses his soul. Imagine your life constantly repeating itself eon after eon. How many mistakes must he correct before earning rest: a million? He manages eternal life, but not a life that anyone would envy. Could Roland represent to King that religious zealot who unabashingly follows his religion to the detriment of others?

If what happens in these books reflects even a smidgen of King's own view, God is ka. He represents a wheel of life that either accepts someone to their rest (the clearing) or keeps turning people back to relive their destinies. Like Roland, people can change during each revolution of the wheel, little by little. If they complete their destiny, then they may have rest. If not, well, I kept getting a flashback of Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day."

When I read a book like this, I'm reminded how glad I am that my hope is not based on Gan, but another one, more warm and personal. The God I believe in may not live at the top of a tower, but I know he exists and will be with me till the "path's clearing." Ka affects me very deeply. Directed by his words, ka always has significant purpose. Jesus was not a myth, but was God in human form, come to fix the sin problem that threatens not only the universe--but our very souls. And in the end, peace, not torment, await those who trust in the act of his unfailing love.

Say thankya.

I am truly shocked at how much flak this book is getting.

First, the caveats: I am a Stephen King fan. I love most of his works. I love the Dark Tower series. I hate some of his works (Tommyknockers was a little lame -- just a shade better than the awful movie. Didn't like Song of Sussanah too, mind you). That being said, what follows is my review, biased or unbiased, you decide.

This is the last volume in the Dark Tower series. I was almost sad to start reading the book, and sadder still to come to the end. And, speaking of the end, I certainly don't agree that the ending was bad. To me, the ending was well-crafted, despite King's contrarian self-assessment. To me, the end really summarized the theme of the series: Ka is a wheel. It gives the reader something to think about, allowing him to draw his own conclusions on what follows next. The end also allows King to satisfy his own sentimentality about the characters in this book. Old friends are difficult to let go for sure. Like some of the other reviewers, I initially felt cheated by the ending, that King was taking the easy way out. However, I realized that the ending actually makes sense. It is the fulfillment of what has transpired, how the characters developed, and again, how much of the book revolves around ka being a wheel.

Stephen King leaves a lot of his fingerprints in this volume; he returns to his trademark blood-and-guts horror in numerous portions of the book without sacrificing the underlying sentimentality which is the core of the story. Sadness, much a part of King's work, does seem to be the prevailing theme of this very last view we get of the Gunslinger.

King has outdid himself in beautifully painting End-World through his prose. I have always thought of King as a storyteller with a good ear for dialogue, but this time he goes above and beyond, graduating to artiste status. Read the book and you'll know how descriptive the scenes are. Descriptive enough to transport you inside the story itself.

What I found most interesting was the manner by which King flawlessly shifts voices in this tale. From detached third party viewer to personally-involved author-cum-Gan. When King introduced his character Stephen King in Dark Tower VI, I felt that he pushed it too far, but after reading this partially autobiographical sketch, I knew how central the character King was in the plot. Plugging in his real-world experience in this work of fiction was seamlessly made, like a deck of cards dovetailing in a casino dealer's hands.

King clearly struggled with this series. The book itself says so as much. After his brush with the grim reaper, King probably felt that he owed it to himself and to his God to finish the work. Many have proclaimed Dark Tower VII as a rush job. I disagree. King may have finished the work with urgency, but it was an urgency that did not reflect in the book. I'm no psychologist, but perhaps some people felt DT VII to be hurried only because the last three came one after the other.

To the naysayers: punish me if you must -- say sorry -- but I truly found this book to be an amazing and insightful read, one that shouldn't be overlooked by those who've read the first six episodes.

Nearly a year after reading this epic series, I decided to come on to Amazon to see how it was rated among fellow junkies. I was not at all surprised to see that the reactions to this book, not unlike most books on Amazon, spanned quite broadly across the 5-star spectrum. The biggest difference I noticed between this and other books is that regardless of what the viewpoint of the reviewer was, the description behind it was often lengthy and passionate. Most of the negative reviews are negative because King left the reader feeling betrayed, empty and hurt -- and some people can't deal with that kind of emotional burden. The beauty of his "magnum opus" is that he achieved exactly what he intended to. Out of the near 600 reviews this novel has received, very few of them are one-liner reviews shooting the book down without a second thought. Call me crazy, but I think the cascade of emotional response from his readers speaks for itself with regards to the integrity and brilliance of this series and even this ending.

Speaking as a reader who has now had nearly a year to reflect on the ending of this book and the entire journey as a whole, I can honestly say that there is immense replay value in these books. Even knowing how the series will end, I've been drawn to it once again. Lo and behold, I am about to begin the tale from the beginning and stand over Roland's shoulder once again. I'll see you all at the top.