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Title: The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
ISBN: 0743538102
Author:
Stephen King
Publicate Date: 2004-09-21
Publish: 2004-09-21
List Price: $75.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Audio Cassette
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.40
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $5.75
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Anticipation Makes "VII" A Thrilling Read
I have to sympathize with Stephen King regarding the writing of this book...how do you end a series that has been going on for so long? King has often been criticized (me included) for writing thrilling stories accompanied by unspectacular endings, and this book is no exception, as many readers do not appreciate an ending that they never could have seen coming. However, I think that King did a marvelous job in ending this book by playing on one factor: anticipation.
While one would expect that the entire book would just be one big lead-up to the Dark Tower payoff in the end, that is absolutely not so. Instead, Roland and his ka-tet are presented with a challenge much like in "Wolves of the Calla" before heading off on the final trail to the Tower. Thus, while the intensity builds in the readers' mind (just from turning so many pages and approaching the end), he/she also gets to read another thrilling adventure that only King knows how to craft.
For a quick summary, this installment of the series quickly concludes the Susannah/Mio relationship (which I was pleased with, as that was what made "Song of Susannah" so drawn-out), and introduces us to their offspring, a much more interesting "fellow" than his two mothers. After that, Roland's ka-tet takes on the task of rescuing the Tower Beam that the Crimson King (through slave labor) is trying to crack. The descriptions of the "Breakers" are fascinating, as they are both evil and tragic at the same time. Once that task is "completed", Roland and Co. set out for the Dark Tower itself.
Any more detail would spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that the final trek to the Dark Tower will have you break out in goosebumps...from fear, excitement, and emotion. With Roland's final "shootout" task behind him, the new characters introduced on the way to the Tower take on a new significance, as one gets the feeling that their relation to the Tower is crucial to the rest of the story.
So, to conclude, if you enjoyed the previous installments of the Dark Tower series, this final chapter will not disappoint you. Roland's journey may not take you to a place you enjoy, or the place you figured he would end up, but I think you will appreciate this "ending" (even if it is 800-some pages!) better than most Stephen King conclusions.
I have always found that finishing a Stephen King adventure is a strange emotion, as you know the story has to end somewhere but you just don't want it to! That feeling is amped up x7 in this case, as Roland's quest has taken so many pages to express. After just finishing this book myself, I find myself wondering how I will ever truly appreciate another "short" ("only" 400-500 pages) King book again, as my insight into the characters won't nearly be as fleshed out as in this series.
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2: That was one long Jazz solo!
Damn. I've been pondering what to write about this for days. Ok, lets git to it! (Jazz reference will be explained :P )
Here's your first clue that the Dark Tower is not going to please everyone (actually the clue is at the very end). He cautions the reader to not read the Coda chapter beause they might dislike it. As if, after reading 1000+ pages of the book, the reader wouldn't read right through!
Second clue is in the Author's note at the end, when King says in advance not to email him to whine, and that he was a little bummed out himself with the end. To be cynical here, does King sound a tad defensive? Sure, ANY final book in a series can't please everyone. But could King's (just slightly) apologist afterword not be a bad sign that something here's gone a little `todash'?
DT is King's `sandbox', where the story can - and does - go anywhere it likes. It's his KILL BILL. It's everything AND the kitchen sink. He's grabbed everything in his mind (Doken) that's been kicking around for his entire life and put it onto paper. In this sense, the book is critic proof for the most part. If one is to point out something in the book that wasn't pulled off satisfactory, where is the context? To what other story can we compare it and say `this is the kind of book it should have been'?
What I'm saying, longwindedly, is that I could see any 2 given people feeling different about the series. To those who gave it 5 stars, cool. 1 star? I can dig. For me, I mostly accepted the conclusion, but what I would have wanted much more was to close it and say 'wow! I want to read it again. Now!' I did not get that feeling. And as fair as it is for people to completely enjoy it, it's not without it's flaws.
One of the things that annoyed me the most was how countless phrases spoken by people (or thought) are something someone else has said. Eddie is constantly thinking about what his brother would have thought of something. Susannah is always thinking about what her Dad would have said. Roland is frequently reminded of a phrase Cort would say, Etc. This was an overused technique. It was in meltdown mode here. He just would not stop.
Chapters constantly overlap, enabling the reader to see the lead up to the same event from a different participant. This is a useful tool, but it is so frequent that the result is that the reader is constantly being halted from finding out what happens next to backtrack, and in this, the final book, it the plot and pacing should be in overdrive. One imagines Roland gesturing his `get on with it' finger twirl. New characters who are introduced do not always need to have a large backstory. Sometimes it's just fine for a person to show up and help out, or get a bullet thrugh the eye. I thought this was one of the major contributors to the excessive length of the book. I don't flinch at doorstopper books, but please maximize your space and keep the gears shifting up in the plot, not down (see PILLARS OF THE EARTH for a massive but always focused story).
And now my last issue has to do with Stephen King being perhaps out of his depth in a 'fantasy' type of epic story. I have read over half of King's fiction, plus Danse Macabre and On Writing. He's a `Jazz' writer. He just goes with the flow, and thats been an asset of his for many of his other books. He's an intuitive freestyler. An improv rapper. The problem with this approach is the longer you try and 'freestyle it', the more chance you have of tripping over something as your mind races to keep track of what you're doing. He's been playing the worlds longest Jazz solo, and while he succeeded in many ways, he's hit plenty of off-notes on the way and it got a little sloppy there at the end.
King has become so entrenched in `antiplotting' that he willfully will NOT plot out anything (he says he did so with Insomnia and wasn't too hot on the result so hasn't tried it again much since). There's always an exception, but from my reading experience, you just cannot tackly a multi-volume epic in this fashion. You have to sit down and outline a little bit or else the whole thing comes off uneven.
Dark Tower readers have pretty much got the biggest imaginations out there. We've seen people walking though doors into alternate earths. We've seen Blood and Mind vampires feasting with Low Men in colorful suits wearing fake human masks. We've seen a politically-incorrect black woman with no legs who throws deadly plates. Robots who wear Dr. Doom capes, wield light sabers, and throw flying balls that are one part Harry Potter Sneetches and one part metal spheres from the movie Phantasm. We've even taken it in stride when a half Human spider gets diarrhea from eating a leprous horse. So having the story zig and zag to this ending, and have many people unsatisfied, is pause for thought. DT readers can handle anything King can throw their way in the Bizarre department, but just can't get behind this fizzled out resolution.
I think that's saying something.
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3: King got checkmated
I don't have the time to write a full review with synopsis and such, even if I did I don't think the book deserves it. It wasn't a terrible work of fiction, but it was not the grand epic finale I so patiently waited for. Steven introduced plot twists that lasted for 2-3 subchapters at best, that just makes me think he was desperately searching his tired (and lazy) imagination for more interesting things to happen. Roland had a cough and it went away after eating a deer kidney... Seriously Steven you can do better than that.
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4: stephen king dark tower delivers
the last episode, the one you waiting for to unveil the end - still in Stephens fashion - nobody will be dissapointed
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5: MAGNIFICENT CONCEPT: The symbolic trials and tribulations of an author's quest to write and complete his creation: his book.
Stephen King the author of the Dark Tower series is of course the Gunslinger: from the first volume to the seventh. In one of the most amazing symbolic epics ever written Stephen King has documented the loneliness and creative efforts of an author in his quest (the trials and tribulations) to create and finish a new novel.
The Man in Black is none other then his yet undefined creative genius who sets out the plot at the end of the first volume via the Tarot Cards by prophecizing the drawing of the three. To chase the Man in Black across the desert (mind) is essential to the beginning of any creative effort. This is why the Man in Black dies at the end of the first volume because his roll is complete in defining the limits and boundries of the new creative work.
Modred or should it be read 'MORE DREAD' as in the author's fear of not completing his task, which is a demon child always lurking in the background of any author's mind.
Ed Dean is the addict turned gunslinger, which is Roland or should it be read 'Roll On' or 'dragon = drag on' that can not stop creating until completion come, which is addiction in exclusion to the existence of all other aspects of creation: family, friends and society at large. This is the reason that Roland twirls his fingers as if to say 'get on with it' or 'roll on'. Keep the narrative going to get the work finished.
Susannah is symbolically the psyche of King, which has a one track mind: hence the wheel chair. This is why Ed Dean and Susannah fell in love with each other: two sides of the same coin (addiction and obsession).
Jake represents symbolically the 'youthful spirit' of the new creative idea of the new volume to be written whether it be King's first creative effort CARRIE or the last book he ever writes. Remember that it was Jake that was first pulled into Roland's world.
Oy seems to represent 'literary licence', which is the perogative of every author.
The Crimson King is 'Stephen King' incarnate locked out of what goes on in the tower because the book being written, regardless of its title, is the DARK TOWER, which takes on a life of its own. The book therefore writes itself and the author is helpless to do other then to fling spite and hate (slings and arrows) at the genius, which Roland represents but to no avail. The author forever dreams of writing his book (ruling the universe) unfettered by those seemingly unnecessary appendages: Ed, Susannah, Jake and Oy but the laws of creative writing locked Stephen King out on the balcony of his own genius preventing him from inserting his input. The book has taken on a life of its own and the author is powerless to prevent its journey to completion and he can only look on as his work completes itself.
As Roland: Stephen King, is snatched once again into that final room at the top of the DARK TOWER as if he is in an eternal time-loop he dreads the future of yet reliving the creative juices that flows through a writer as he journeys to the end of yet another book. Stephen King has written more then forty books and each time he had to relive this time-loop: the birth and completion of yet another book. He can not stop or retire from writing, for his mind will not allow it, for it is after all who he is: the last gunslinger.
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