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Science Fiction & Fantasy |
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The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
written by Stephen King
Studio : Simon & Schuster Audio
by Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date : 2004-09-21
Publisher : Simon & Schuster Audio
Released : 2004-09-21
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 23
EAN : 9780743538114
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 691 reviews)
List Price : $75.00
Our Price : $32.00
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Product Description |
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All good things must come to end. Constant Listener, and not even Stephen King can write a story that goes on forever. The tale of Ronald Deschain's relentless quest for the Dark Tower has, the author fears, sorely tried the patience of those who have followed it from its earliest chapters. But attend to it a while longer, if it pleases you, for this volume is the last, and often the last things are best. Roland's ka-tet remains intact, though scattered over wheres and whens. Susannah-Mia has been carried from the Dixie Pig (in the summer of 1999) to a birthing room -- really a chamber of horrors - in Thunderclap's Fedic Station; Jake and Father Callahan, with Oy between them, have entered the restaurant on Lex and 61st with weapons drawn, little knowing how numerous and noxious are their foes. Roland and Eddie are with John Cullum in Maine, in 1977, looking for the site on Turtleback Lane where "walk-ins" have been often seen. They want desperately to get back to the others, to Susannah especially, and yet they have come to realize that the world they need to escape is the only one that matters. Thus the audiobook opens, like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little father. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower. |
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Americancivilwar.com Review |
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At one point in this final book of the Dark Tower series, the character Stephen King (added to the plot in Song of Susannah) looks back at the preceding pages and says "when this last book is published, the readers are going to be just wild." And he's not kidding. After a journey through seven books and over 20 years, King's Constant Readers finally have the conclusion they've been both eagerly awaiting and silently dreading. The tension in the Dark Tower series has built steadily from the beginning and, like in the best of King's novels, explodes into a violent, heart-tugging climax as Roland and his ka-tet finally near their goal. The body count in The Dark Tower is high. The gunslingers come out shooting and face a host of enemies, including low men, mutants, vampires, Roland's hideous quasi-offspring Mordred, and the fearsome Crimson King himself. King pushes the gross-out factor at times--Roland's lesson on tanning (no, not sun tanning) is brutal--but the magic of the series remains strong and readers will feel the pull of the Tower as strongly as ever as the story draws to a close. During this sentimental journey, King ties up loose ends left hanging from the 15 non-series novels and stories that are deeply entwined in the fabric of Mid-World through characters like Randall Flagg (The Stand and others) or Father Callahan ('Salem's Lot). When it finally arrives, the long awaited conclusion will leave King's myriad fans satisfied but wishing there were still more to come. In King's memoir On Writing, he tells of an old woman who wrote him after reading the early books in the Dark Tower series. She was dying, she said, and didn't expect to see the end of Roland's quest. Could King tell her? Does he reach the Tower? Does he save it? Sadly, King said he did not know himself, that the story was creating itself as it went along. Wherever that woman is now (the clearing at the end of the path, perhaps?), let's hope she has a copy of The Dark Tower. Surely she would agree it's been worth the wait. --Benjamin Reese |
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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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King got checkmated |
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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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stephen king dark tower delivers |
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the last episode, the one you waiting for to unveil the end - still in Stephens fashion - nobody will be dissapointed |
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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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King's Magnus Poopus |
* Spoilers*
I had a negative first impression after reading DT7. I happened across this site and was surprised at the high number of five star reviews the book received. I saw a lot of "Brilliant Ending" and "Masterpiece" descriptions so I figured that all these people can't be wrong. Maybe I just missed some of the finer points of the book. Maybe my initial impression was off base. I read the book again. Turns out it wasn't any better the second time. The same glaring flaws I noticed from my first reading were still there after the second. From the hastily written demise of Flagg to the numerous instances of deus ex machina, this book screams "rush job."
I honestly don't see how any true fan of SK can feel anything but cheated after reading the confrontation or lack thereof between Roland and Flagg. I mean this guy is featured in a number of SK's books. The mere mention of his name had been known to cause death and insanity. The Dark Tower series even spends six books painting Flagg as Roland's arch nemesis. Based upon all this build up, one would expect an epic battle for the ages between Flagg and Roland right? Well think again. Flagg is easily killed by a newly born spider boy who is a-hungry. This is like Darth Vader getting killed by an Ewok before his epic battle with Luke. Then there is the Crimson King, the most powerful being in the world, one would expect that his death would be difficult right? Nope, he gets erased. How about Susan? She endures all these hardships, from physical pain to mental anguish, to reach the Dark Tower. Even the death of her lover cannot not deter her from reaching her goal. Then when she can actually see the Dark Tower she decides, " You know what its not worth it anymore, I am going home." Uh okay. I wont even go into the parts where SK writes himself into the story.
Maybe I expected too much after reading the first four books. SK piqued my interest with hints here and there of a world that had moved on. A world that was linked to ours but one that was different and dying. A world where paper and glass were considered luxuries. I remember the first time I read about the Rose in the vacant lot and the little suns it contained and thinking that King would have some way of tying all this together and it would be magnificent. To build suspense King even tells us that not everyone, including Roland, will make it all the way to the Dark Tower. After, reading DT4, I was also hoping to learn why or how the world moved on and the fate of his childhood friends. Back then, the possibilities were limitless.
Well, I guess the joke was on me, the constant reader. Turns out the whole series was about Roland forgeting to pick up a horn. I guess I mistakenly thought the series would be about the Rose, the Beams, the Tower and the different levels of existence.
To be fair, taken by itself DT7 is not a bad book. But when taken in the context of the series, the new ideas just don't mesh very well. Major charcters get killed by minor characters, the ka-tet jumps back and forth between different worlds and time periods, its all rushed. If you read the first four books you will notice that SK used to take his time to develop his characters and ideas. After the accident, SK relented to those who wanted him to hurry up and finish the book. It took him forteen some years to write the first four books and two years to write the last three. Its not too hard to notice the drop off in quality.
I am giving this book one star because it pretty much ruins all of King's books that came before it. Books like Insomnia and Rose Madder are pretty much worthless. Now that we know Flagg is a scrub, the Stand loses its most of its luster. This stinker just killed King's entire body of work. I can only hope he redeems himself and decides to rewrite the last three DT books, at least last two, like he did with The Stand. |
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