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A review by crookedtreehouse
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
2.0
Twenty friggen Stephen King books to get to an ending that I remembered not enjoying when I first read it, over a decade ago.
I must have skimmed the middle portion the first time I read it, as I vividly remembered the first section, and vaguely remembered the last couple hundred of pages but I have no recollection of the middle portion at all. It's possible that I was skipping pages during my original read, and while I'm glad, for this project, that I stuck it out, and read every page, I can't recommend it. There is an eternally long portion of the book where three characters trudge through a snowy badlands where not much happens but it takes a tortorously long time. It could have been summed up in about a paragraph. Instead, it's somewhere between seventy-five and twelve billion pages long, so you feel just as cold and torturously bored reading it, as the characters did surviving it.
The biggest drawback of this volume for me, is King's constant...I don't want to call it foreshadowing, as that's often subtle and you don't fully appreciate it until after the event foreshadowed occurs....forspoilering? Several times in the narrative, this book, which is the seventh part of a roughly five thousand page long series (over ten thousand if you read all the associated books), King says "By the end of this chapter a character you love will be dead." No suspense. No hint. Just...BtWs, I'm about to kill *spoiler*. Oh, wasn't that said, next up, I'm going to kill *spoiler*. While King does dial back a bit from his I AM GOD IN THIS SERIES that took place in [b:Song of Susannah|5093|Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6)|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372296326s/5093.jpg|1178083], he can't help but keep inserting himself, not just as a character, but as a narrator. Every chapter or so, he takes an opportunity to remind you that this book is hard to write. It continuously took me out of a story that I found myself less and less interested in as the final book continued.
There were cool parts. The major scenes between the Boring Badlands and the climax hadn't stuck in my mind from my first read, so they were enjoyable and I was glad that I read them, even with the over-meta-fictional Stephen King constantly interfering with the narrative.
The ending. I had the ending spoiled for me before I read it the first time. I had forgotten that King, himself, has two brief chapters after what he believes to be the ending of the story, and the actual end. Both of them implore you not to read his ending. And he's right. DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE. The coda is a satisfying ending.
I recommend this if you've already read, at least, the other six major books (skipping [b:The Wind Through the Keyhole|12341557|The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower, #4.5)|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328001524s/12341557.jpg|15678889] isn't just acceptable, it's recommended). I don't see any other reason why anyone would choose to read just the final book of an epic series. Weirdo.
I must have skimmed the middle portion the first time I read it, as I vividly remembered the first section, and vaguely remembered the last couple hundred of pages but I have no recollection of the middle portion at all. It's possible that I was skipping pages during my original read, and while I'm glad, for this project, that I stuck it out, and read every page, I can't recommend it. There is an eternally long portion of the book where three characters trudge through a snowy badlands where not much happens but it takes a tortorously long time. It could have been summed up in about a paragraph. Instead, it's somewhere between seventy-five and twelve billion pages long, so you feel just as cold and torturously bored reading it, as the characters did surviving it.
The biggest drawback of this volume for me, is King's constant...I don't want to call it foreshadowing, as that's often subtle and you don't fully appreciate it until after the event foreshadowed occurs....forspoilering? Several times in the narrative, this book, which is the seventh part of a roughly five thousand page long series (over ten thousand if you read all the associated books), King says "By the end of this chapter a character you love will be dead." No suspense. No hint. Just...BtWs, I'm about to kill *spoiler*. Oh, wasn't that said, next up, I'm going to kill *spoiler*. While King does dial back a bit from his I AM GOD IN THIS SERIES that took place in [b:Song of Susannah|5093|Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6)|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372296326s/5093.jpg|1178083], he can't help but keep inserting himself, not just as a character, but as a narrator. Every chapter or so, he takes an opportunity to remind you that this book is hard to write. It continuously took me out of a story that I found myself less and less interested in as the final book continued.
There were cool parts. The major scenes between the Boring Badlands and the climax hadn't stuck in my mind from my first read, so they were enjoyable and I was glad that I read them, even with the over-meta-fictional Stephen King constantly interfering with the narrative.
The ending. I had the ending spoiled for me before I read it the first time. I had forgotten that King, himself, has two brief chapters after what he believes to be the ending of the story, and the actual end. Both of them implore you not to read his ending. And he's right. DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE. The coda is a satisfying ending.
I recommend this if you've already read, at least, the other six major books (skipping [b:The Wind Through the Keyhole|12341557|The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower, #4.5)|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328001524s/12341557.jpg|15678889] isn't just acceptable, it's recommended). I don't see any other reason why anyone would choose to read just the final book of an epic series. Weirdo.