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Book Review: The Dark Tower (series)

Ogami

Ogami

New member
Review: The Dark Tower
by Ogami

spoiler space if you're reading the series and not done yet

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I just finished reading Book VII of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, and can now finally say I read the whole thing. I bought the early books, and read the last three for free from the public library. That was the right decision, as now I do not feel like I wasted as much money as I could have.

I shall be up front and say I am not a Stephen King fan. The only books I liked of his are his three short story collections and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. In all cases, King in small doses is tolerable for me. It's when he waxes poetic that he loses me as a reader.

There are many notable elements in the Dark Tower series that are interesting. There is the story of the gunslinger. There is the overall story of worlds that have "moved on" and are suffering dissolution and decay. These worlds contain vampires, radiation mutants, and lost robotic technologies from "North Central Positronics", a nod to Isaac Asimov.

Unfortunately for me as a reader, there's an awful lot of mental diarrhea one has to slog through to reach the good parts. King actually addresses readers like me in his "Coda" to the final book, readers who are more interested in where the journey is going and not so much the journey itself. I confess myself guilty of this, if it means reading a story that I can follow with clear and concise language. Yet King's hallmark writing to me is diarrhea of the mind, this term fits his writing style perfectly.

The overall story of the Dark Tower could fit in a Novella. Each book could be reduced to a short story, and you'd have the story. So if you did that to an 800-page volume of this work, what did the other 700 pages consist of? Meandering, rambling, mucus and blood-covered dream sequences. I'm sure some find King's endless passages of altered mental states spine-tingling. I found it boring in every work that he fills with the nonsense.

King is pigeon-holed as a horror writer, but all of his horror takes places in the realm of the psychological, we are transported into someone's mental illness. Thoughts bend and twist, reality is distorted, and the reader has to sort through the nonsense to find whatever King's wandering meaning is. That’s his gimmick, his trick, and I got the strong sensation of reading the Dark Tower books that we were simply reading the breakdown of one man's mind, King himself. (Which sort of comes true, plot-wise, in the last two books.)

Am I the only one to say "the Emperor has no clothes"? I find this writing style tedious and a waste of my time. I'll cite Book V as an example, Wolves of the Calla: The book is about robots dressed up as the Green Goblin (from the Spider-Man comic) who come into a dumpy farm town every generation, take some youths, and return them as altered mutants. Roland and his gunslingers take 736 pages of nightmares, dream sequences, and novella-sized flashbacks to defend the town a few days later and win the battle. I found myself caring not at all to the backstory, the dreams foreshadowing Book VI, or the other nonsense dimensional travel to pick up pieces of the quest. The book could have been a short story, and nothing in those 736 pages screamed to me as "essential" backstory that was a "must read". (This should prove I'm not a King groupie.)

The entire series is like that, and I guess you could chalk me up to being a sucker for reading the whole thing, looking for some meaning to the bloated story. There is none. Anyway, back to the Book VII, the conclusion: King has Roland find the Dark Tower in the final chapters, and as Roland walks through the final door, guess what? It's a RESET BUTTON, Roland of Gilead finds himself back on his quest for the Dark Tower, on the trail of the man he wants dead. There was nothing in the Tower, nothing to find, nothing to fix, it was just a time loop sending him back to square one.

Stephen King strives mightily to explain in his Coda to the book that this is his deep thinking process, but it really looks like a case where the author had no idea where he was going with the story or how to end it. (As one critic noted, shades of the non-ending to Matrix Revolutions.) So he didn't end it, he gave up in frustration and assumed his trillions of adoring fans would spend the rest of their lives searching for the "deeper meaning" in this bloated work. There is no deeper meaning, the Emperor has no clothes, and you all got taken on a joyride into his equally bloated bank vault. But I can’t laugh at anyone, because I donated to the Stephen King Suckers Fund to the tune of about $50+ for the first four books. I am so glad I read these other volumes for free from the library.

Thankee sai!

-Ogami
 
Someone gave me the first three books as a gift, I read them one right after another and couldnt wait for the 4th. The 4th lost something (besides me as a reader) . Now I dont remember enough about the series to finish reading it. I would have to start over from the beginning and there are too many other books here demanding my attention.

I used to be a King fan, but several things happened that made him less desirable to read.... let alone spend my carefully hoarded wealth on. First of all, when he was guaranteed a best seller, no matter what kind of swill was between the covers, thats just what we got.... swill.... he either had a lazy editor or a frightened one.

Then .... and this one is weird, he quit smoking. After he quit smoking, his quirky things weren't quite so quirky. Any of that "OMG where does this guy come up with this stuff" stuff was written when he was still smoking.

;)
mm
 
I was always a diehard King fan.

I read the first three in the series, but they came out so far apart that I had to go back and re-read the books before reading the latest entry.

He finally just wore me out. Waiting that many years between serial novels is just wasting my time. :P
 
A friend of mine recommended "Bag O Bones", but I have to draw the line somewhere. There has to be better authors out there for me to give my valuable time to.

(I vote for the "frightened editor" possibly, by the way.)
 
I loved alot of the King books that they made into movies... poorly. I've been into him since Jr high...

For about 15 years there I read every book he put out there.

Like I said... die hard. ;)

I am also a huge Piers Anthony fan and I enjoy Koontz once in awhile.
 
I much prefer Koontz to King these days. Like you HF I was a die hard King fan, I slavishly bought every new book until I realised that he was boring me, so much so, that the last few books I never even finished.
 
Heh, If I have to read another book set in Maine...

I loved some of King's odd books too... There was one called The Dragon's Eye or something like it. It was a king type book in a fantasy type setting. Well fantasy and real world. Strange but good.

I loved The Stand, I bought at least two copies of it at one time or another. The movie was the suxxor. :P
 
I can honestly say that I am a King fan, a rather large one. I own all his books, including the Bachman books. (If you want to read good king, read them. The original, unfucked and de-ahnuldized story is fucking brilliant. Rage is a good look into the realm of insanity, etc.) Cell is also another good one. I was mildly surprised. It must have been a manuscript that had been sitting on his shelf because it goes back to old school king.

The Dark Tower series really took a lot out of me. The first three books were great, they set up the story perfectly. The I read Wizard and Glass, and I was horrified. It sucked. I now tell people to read the first few chapters to finish the Blaine the mono bit and then skip to the last few chapters. the entire middle of the book is unneeded backstory which never really comes into play.

Book 5, Wolves of the Calla, was a step back into the right direction. Lots of story that builds and builds into a massive action sequence. I viewed the book like it was a movie. The entire book takes place over something like a week or two as they come to Calla Bryn Sturgis and prepare them for the battle against the "wolves" (Robots in Dr. Doom outfits, not green goblin, with Lightsabers and explosive snitches called sneetches)

Book 6 is a back and forth mind fuck. It jumps around more then a 6 year old who's just had a box full of pixie sticks. While it really annoied me that it jumped back and forth so much, it re-enforced the idea about the different dimensions. With the one main and all the various branches.

Book 7.... Alright. This books was just fucking WEIRD. While it didn't jump around so much, the story was hard to follow. It began to feel like it was being rushed into completion. And then, he fucking kills Eddie Dean. Man, I tossed my coppy across the room when I read that. Everyone dies or enters another dimension of existence. And the Ending... The never ending cycle of the gunslingers life. It just makes me laugh. If you go and reread the books, and just look at certain passages you can see it coming. It was a beautiful ending to a fucked book.
 
The first three is about all I remember clearly...

I may have read the 4th, but I cannot be sure.

BTW, I have read the Bachman stories and I agree 100%
 
I agree the end of the DT series was hard to swallow in some ways, but Wolves of the Calla was pretty fun and good.

I dunno, I prefer later King honestly. I loved from a Buick 8 when everyone else seemed to hate it...
 
Dark Link wrote:

The Dark Tower series really took a lot out of me. The first three books were great, they set up the story perfectly. The I read Wizard and Glass, and I was horrified. It sucked. I now tell people to read the first few chapters to finish the Blaine the mono bit and then skip to the last few chapters. the entire middle of the book is unneeded backstory which never really comes into play.

Every volume pretty much goes that way, especially Wolves of the Calla and The Dark Tower.

Book 6 is a back and forth mind fuck. It jumps around more then a 6 year old who's just had a box full of pixie sticks.

If there is a single line of plot in the entire Song of Susannah, I didn't see it. King's absurd "Honkey Mo' Fo'!" writing for this lady was well, absurd.

Book 7.... Alright. This books was just fucking WEIRD. While it didn't jump around so much, the story was hard to follow. It began to feel like it was being rushed into completion. And then, he fucking kills Eddie Dean. Man, I tossed my coppy across the room when I read that. Everyone dies or enters another dimension of existence.

At the scene of Jake's death, one King fan said he cried. I could have cared less, all the Gunslinger has to do is go to another dimension (tingling bells send you there of course) and Jake will be alive again! Same for Eddie and anyone else King kills off. Heck, Callahan blows his head off at the start of the book and arrives to help Roland later on. It's not supposed to make sense, it's diarhhea of the mind.

And the Ending... The never ending cycle of the gunslingers life. It just makes me laugh. If you go and reread the books, and just look at certain passages you can see it coming. It was a beautiful ending to a fucked book.

You can see it coming all right. Just re-read Volume I the Gunslinger, and you've got the ending for book VII. I'm glad you got more out of King than I did, I for one believe he has taken up too much of my time.

-Ogami
 
missmanners said:
Someone gave me the first three books as a gift, I read them one right after another and couldnt wait for the 4th. The 4th lost something (besides me as a reader) . Now I dont remember enough about the series to finish reading it. I would have to start over from the beginning and there are too many other books here demanding my attention.

I used to be a King fan, but several things happened that made him less desirable to read.... let alone spend my carefully hoarded wealth on. First of all, when he was guaranteed a best seller, no matter what kind of swill was between the covers, thats just what we got.... swill.... he either had a lazy editor or a frightened one.

Then .... and this one is weird, he quit smoking. After he quit smoking, his quirky things weren't quite so quirky. Any of that "OMG where does this guy come up with this stuff" stuff was written when he was still smoking.

;)
mm
Click to expand...

Cigarettes are to writers what hair was to Samson. King, Serling, Twain... Mark my words. *lights up*
 
Book 1 was rewriten after book 7 to more fit the ending.

I always tend to think that since he has the horn of Eld at the end of book 7, that the next loop might be different enough to avoid the same fate, but it seems like the only way to avoid the same fate is just simply, dont go to the dark tower, do the rest, save teh beams, kill the crimson king, but just dont go in the tower.

I agree with most of the others here, although I did like book 4, although that might be because I read that first.

Book 5 seemed like not only a giant waste of time, but a copy other peoples ideas book, although that started as early as book 3 and 4 with teh wizard of oz.

Book 6, well thats not even a real book is it, just a bridge between book 5 and 7.

Book 7 was a disapointment, not in the ending, but in all the things inbetween, the others dying, the exterordianary convient boy that can make things real by drawing them.

Instead of using him as a deux ex machina to end the crimson king, and get rid of a skin cancer, he could have drawn back Rolands fingers, and Susies legs.

Too many big villians had stupid death scenes, and things didnt make a lot of sence.

If Eddie grew to realise he was a fictional character wrote by King on the real earth, why were Eddies gangster enemies real people on the real earth?
 
I liked the first book -- but one of the primary things I like about it was that it was so different from King's usual style -- his (coincidentally self-proclaimed) "Diarrhea Of The Keyboard." At least the man knows his failings.

His style in The Gunslinger was stark -- poetic, but also brutally simple. I liked that, and I was sad to see it fade and vanish in the subsequent entries in the series.
 
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