Finished
The Dark Tower series last night. Took me about 3 months to get through the final book.
It was an entertaining series. Unlike what I'd read where people really hate the last 3 books, I felt like all the books had their pros/cons and the series was pretty consistent. I read all 8 books including the latter Wind through the Keyhole (reading between book 4-5 where it fits timeline-wise) and the 9th book was reading Salem's Lot before Wolves of the Calla with Callahan.
My biggest complaint in the last book was just that it was
really slow. Like there's a part near the end where so much has happened and so many people are dead and it's the final last bit of journey and King spends 100 pages describing walking through the winter cold hunting deer and sewing clothes and snow shoes. Stuff like that just draaaagged between bits where things were happening. But then again when you got to the end, it really felt like you were there for every step of the journey. You felt the length and tiredness of the long journey in your bones like the characters, and so eh, it's acceptable.
I actually really liked the ending
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When it ends with Patrick Danville watching Roland walk through the rose field and into the tower as the tower doors shut closed behind him forever. THE END.
Like it definitely was about the journey and not what's in the tower. And I like that the series kept it's own wacky continuity with Stephen King being in the story, so he probably wouldn't know what was in the tower, because no one besides Roland ever would, so that was fitting to end it.
But the Coda was
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Definitely less satisfying. King even prefaces it that the story was about the journey and what's in the tower isn't going to satisfy you. And yeah, time loop but maybe he'll get it right next time (with total vague what right even means) kinda sucks but eh, I'll live with it. I'd like to think that Roland's journey is to die satisfied with the choices he made with his life and so he's in a purgatory loop of repeating the journey over and over again until he makes choices he can live with and then the final door he walks into the clearing and dies. Since when he's seeing his life play out along the tower he can't even watch it in this journey because it's just full of bloodshed and death and that's his story this time around. Anyhow, that's just my take since the ending is so open.
On the goofiness of the latter half, I didn't mind. I also enjoy Kingdom Heart's story for the silliness but serious lore it is. My main thing with built up crazy lores are just to stay logically and universally consistent and I felt like Dark Tower did that and didn't break its own logic rules. Even when
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King provides the Deus Ex Machina note in Dandelo's hut (which btw was a cool bit, having an IT-related creature in the story they have to escape from), the deus ex machina bit works since King is telling the story and creating the narrative that Gan/God wants.
I also have no problem with Stephen King being a character in the story. I thought it was fun.
I can see why people would be pissed with how some of the main antagonists went out, but I felt all of them were tonally and logically consistent with the series and actually liked their endings even if at the moment they felt anti-climatic.
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Walter/Man in Black - Goofy Magician going across worlds for centuries doing evil shit like Kefka the Jester, but when it comes to the real final deal of trying to cheat his boss The Crimson King and take the tower he rolls a gambit of making Mordred the Spider Baby thinking he'd control him and it blows up in his face and literally eats his eyeballs. Feels right in retrospect for his character.
Mordred - It was a little weird following him the whole time and he's an interesting weird character as an angsty kid/spider-demon. And while it's a little anti-climatic to have his final battle play out as it did with him waiting for the right moment and then pouncing, ignoring Oy thinking who cares about some dumb critter, and then having it blow up in his face literally as his face is shot off. He's weakened from eating the poison IT-monster horse but it goes into his character logic that he's been hungry and eating everything he sees and whoops, that fucked him. He was powerful but he was also a dumb kid who thought he knew it all and the pride kills him. Also the final fight was important in the line of things Roland sacrifices since he sees his own child's face in the spider-demon and shoots it without hesitation in the end.
Crimson King - I see a lot of people made a fuss about how this battle played out at the end, but I loved this bit. I loved the idea that the Crimson King was just some charismatic Hitler-ish leader with some psychic powers that created a cult, destroyed most of the world and then grew old and went crazy and made himself an undead vampire and then whoops locked himself out on the tower's balcony and now he's just this crazy old Santa Claus guy with no cult left and just a frail old man with a stash of weapons and some psychic power and deeply afraid of Roland since it'd been prophecized Roland would kill him. His EEEEEEEEEEEEE! lunatic screaming and stuff was greaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
I also liked how Patrick took him out. Once they revealed Patrick's abilities to erase it made sense, because there was no way Roland was gonna be able to beat this undead psychic power guy and painting and erasing him made sense within the series logic. I was at first annoyed I thought of this way before Roland did, but then Roland even says he'd been holding off going in that direction simply because of Pride, because he wanted to be the one to kill the Crimson King. I like how self-aware it was.
So yeah, I satisfied with how everyone went out. Eddie's & Oy's deaths were sad and Jake was kinda a bummer but someone was gonna die. The book did a good job making me think it might kill Roland off and have Jake finish the journey for him. I never was 100% sure how it would be go.
Overall the world and journey of the Dark Tower series with the beams and todash creatures and Blaine the Mono's and Dandelo's was a really epic journey across a fascinating world that had passed. I think yeah, Wizard and Glass book 4 was the best, but then I actually liked Book 3 The Wastelands and Book 5 Wolves of the Calla on equal grounds after. The first was a good Fallout book, the second was a good Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven book. After that I really liked Book 8 The Wind Through the Keyhole for its stories and what it added to the world. I felt it added a good deal about Walter. Book 2 Drawing of the Three had good bits and kinda boring bits, Book 6/7 was a really long and slow final journey with good bits and some boring bits, and my least favorite is The Gunslinger just because it's literally just an intro episode for the series.
Not perfect, not great art, but I enjoyed the ride and glad I read it. Now I kinda want to hunt down and read some of the tangibly related King stories featuring Can-toi, The Crimson King, Walter, etc... like The Regulators, Insomnia, Eye of the Dragon.
Also now I can finally watch the Dark Tower movie! Excited for Idris Roland, I started the series around when the movie was coming out so during my read Roland was always Idris Elba and Walter always MM. I know the movie is gonna suck but just seeing Idris be Roland is something I'm looking forward to.
