A review by trin
The Dark Tower by Stephen King

3.0

When I recommend the [book: Dark Tower] series to people (which I do) the comparison I make is that it's rather like The X-Files's nine-year run: long and engaging, but at the end, you're still left scratching your head. (And possibly wanting to beat Chris Carter about his head with his own surfboard. Ahem.) King has a lot of fascinating threads going into this book, but they come out a confused knot. Certainly, there are thrilling moments, and moments that moved me (possibly to tears, but let's just ignore that). But on the whole, I found the ending unsatisfying, raising more questions than it answers. It doesn't fully make sense to me: how does Roland's end, for example, affect Susannah's? (She says vaguely, in a poor attempt to avoid spoilers.) Also, how the hell does Randall Flagg's exit manage to be both incredibly squicky and incredibly lame?

Yet as frustrating as the climactic volume is to me, I still continue to rec the series. That says something...about King's storytelling, my own level of masochism, or both.