u/Final_Masterpiece_51

Well, wrapping up this series of posts about The Dark Tower, it’s finally time to talk about the last book.

Fair warning right away: this is a long post, and once again, this is all just my personal opinion.

Overall, I’d say the final volume is a book full of contrasts. It has some genuinely AMAZING stuff and some genuinely TERRIBLE stuff, to the point where finishing it leaves you with a lot of mixed feelings.

Starting with the good, I have to say this is a book that really hits emotionally, and the further it progresses, the more it feels like an inevitable farewell. At its core, it’s a story about Roland realizing that his mission was always destined to be a solitary one, and that the ka-tet he formed along the way was never truly meant to reach the end with him. Their purpose was to accompany him and help him through part of his journey before leaving one by one, so that by the time he finally reaches the Tower, he arrives almost exactly as he began: alone.

I absolutely love that aspect of the novel, and I think it gives enormous weight to every farewell we get here, which for me are easily the strongest parts of the book.

The deaths are especially painful, each in their own way. Eddie’s death comes completely out of nowhere, and it hurts so much because of how unfair it feels. Just when it seems like the group has won and will continue moving forward, Eddie is suddenly taken away from us. I do think King made a smart choice by not killing him instantly, though. His goodbye, especially his final words to Roland, makes the loss hit even harder, and personally it completely broke me since he was my favorite character. Honestly, I think King knew Eddie was a fan favorite too, which is why he chose him to go first: to make it clear that from this point onward, nobody was safe anymore.

Jake’s death, on the other hand, feels masterfully written to me because it shows just how much his relationship with Roland evolved throughout the series. There’s a beautiful parallel between Roland sacrificing Jake in the first book and Roland later being willing to die himself in order to protect Jake. You really see how much Roland truly came to love him, and how humanized he became thanks to Jake and the rest of the ka-tet. That only makes Jake’s death even sadder, especially with Oy’s reaction afterward, which was absolutely devastating.

And speaking of Oy, I honestly think his death was the most painful one in the entire book. Partly because it happens so late that by then you’re not fully expecting another major death, but mostly because of the absolute loyalty he showed to Roland and Jake all the way to the very end, especially after Jake asked him to stay with Roland. I genuinely don’t have words for how much I cried over Oy. His death completely destroyed me.

On the other hand, I think it was the right decision for Susannah to survive. Her farewell with Roland is incredibly emotional, and the fact that Roland begs her not to leave him once again shows just how much the gunslinger has changed. It also leads to the reunion at the end with Jake and Eddie, which I found beautiful and deeply satisfying. And while I do think it slightly lessens the impact of their deaths, I still think it works because these are alternate versions of the characters who don’t remember everything that happened.

Now, as for the bad parts of the book, I think almost all of them come down to the villains and how badly they were handled.

Flagg exits the story WAY too early, and the fact that he never gets one final confrontation with Roland honestly feels like a huge ripoff. The entire series begins with the two of them, and in the end they never truly face each other again or get any real resolution. I do like how violent and grotesque his death is, but I just don’t buy that he wouldn’t have put up more of a fight against Mordred, no matter how powerful Mordred was supposed to be.

And speaking of Mordred, I think he was massively wasted too. The fact that he kills Flagg so easily immediately establishes him as an enormous threat, but then he never really displays any extraordinary power afterward and is defeated very easily himself. I don’t care if he was sick or weakened, narratively speaking, you can’t build up a threat that huge and then resolve it in such a simple way. It just doesn’t feel satisfying as a reader.

But without question, the worst part was the Crimson King’s pathetic role in the story. Again, I don’t care if the explanation is that he had physically deteriorated, gone insane, or lost much of his power. For several books we’re told about this unbelievably powerful being surrounded by an entire cult, and then in the end not only does he barely display any actual power, but he’s defeated in the most anticlimactic way imaginable.

This ties heavily into another very controversial aspect of the novel: Patrick Danville. I actually like Patrick quite a bit. I think he’s charming and endearing despite appearing so late in the story. I’ll even say that I have no issue with him being extremely powerful or with how strange his abilities are. However, because of the way he’s used here, he ends up feeling like a gigantic deus ex machina, mainly because both his powers and his role in the story are only properly established a handful of pages before he defeats the final villain. It just doesn’t feel earned.

That said, it’s time to talk about the ending itself, which overall I really liked.

Roland finally reaching the Tower while shouting the names of the fallen is epic and incredibly satisfying to me. It truly feels like the culmination of the entire journey and it’s a very emotional moment. As for the time loop ending, I honestly have no complaints there either. I think it’s a perfect ending for the themes of the story, and I love that it allows the reader to actively engage with the narrative and even decide for themselves how they want to interpret Roland’s fate. It also practically begs you to reread the series over and over again (and ending the saga with the exact same line that started everything feels absolutely perfect to me).

I know a lot of people think this ending makes the entire journey pointless or that it isn’t really an ending at all, but honestly I think that mostly comes down to bad reading comprehension. Roland’s main goal was always to save the Tower. There are even moments throughout the series where he tells the ka-tet that if he dies along the way, he trusts them to succeed in his place. And that goal was achieved. Entering the Tower and discovering what was inside was ultimately just an extra reward, a form of personal satisfaction for Roland after everything he endured. And it’s precisely that obsession that condemns him once again, even after already accomplishing his true purpose.

So overall, I consider this a good ending to the saga: deeply emotional and filled with moments that stay in your heart, but also very messy in execution. You can really feel that King didn’t fully know how to resolve the massive threats he himself had built up, and that’s undeniably disappointing. Even so, I still think the series is absolutely worth experiencing, and that every Stephen King fan should make the journey at least once.

As for me, I’m really going to miss this ka-tet, but I’m sure I’ll meet them again someday. Because ka is a wheel… and there are other worlds than these.

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Long days and pleasant nights.

Continuing with my thoughts on The Dark Tower now that I’ve finished the series for the first time: in my previous post I talked about the first three books, so now it’s time to discuss the next three (the final book, as well as my thoughts on the series as a whole, deserve their own separate post).

- Regarding Wizard and Glass, I won’t go on for too long since I already made two separate posts about it while i was reading it. I’ll just say that, for me, it’s the best book in the entire franchise. Regardless of the expectations some readers may have had at the time or the years between releases, if we judge the work purely by its content and not by its context, I think this is the strongest story in the series. Here we see Roland’s true origins, the people he shared his youth with, and how being forced to become a man at only fourteen years old shaped him forever.

We get wonderful characters like Cuthbert, Sheemie, and of course Susan, whom I personally empathized a lot. The antagonists are also fantastic, and I don’t just mean the Big Coffin Hunters. Rhea of the Coos is a genuinely terrifying presence and a truly evil character (and I will never stop cursing Cordelia for being an absolutely HORRIBLE person).

I love the atmosphere of the town, the melancholic tone of memory and nostalgia, everything about this book works for me. But above all else, it’s the romance and its tragic ending that truly elevate the novel in my opinion. I know readers who aren’t interested in those themes may find it tedious, but if you’re someone who gets emotionally invested in the kind of young love that blossoms here, this story will absolutely enchant you (and completely destroy you as well).

- With Wolves of the Calla, we reach what is, for me, the first drop in quality in the series. Not because the book is bad, but because the previous two books had reached such an incredibly high level that things inevitably feel more restrained here.

That said, I have to start by saying that this book probably has my favorite opening in the entire series (maybe tied with Wizard and Glass). The way we’re thrown directly into the world of Calla Bryn Sturgis, the mystery surrounding the Wolves and the roont children, and the town assembly, all of it is fascinating and immediately makes you invested in the world. And then it leads to the introduction of a character many of us were thrilled to see return because of how well written and carefully foreshadowed it was: Father Callahan.

From there, however, the book slows down considerably, and that’s what places it below the previous entries for me. We spend a huge number of pages without much action or immediate danger while the ka-tet adapts to life in the town. It never became boring to me, but I do think it leaves the book behind others in the series that are thrilling from beginning to end.

What saves this entire section for me are the smaller character moments where we see the ka-tet growing stronger together, such as the town presentation where Eddie gives his speech, or seeing Roland dance at the Commala, which in my opinion is one of the character’s best and most humanizing moments in the entire series up to that point. Callahan’s backstory is good too, though it didn’t completely blow me away personally.

Where the book truly picks back up is during the confrontation with the Wolves: one of the most epic battles in the entire saga and the first time the ka-tet truly proves itself as a group of genuine gunslingers. Then we get the ending with Susannah’s escape and the revelation that Salem’s Lot exists as an actual published book within this universe. This was another incredibly effective cliffhanger that completely blew my mind when I first read it.

I know that for many readers this marks the beginning of the series’ decline because of the increasingly meta elements, but as I’ll explain more below, I personally don’t have an issue with those aspects existing in the story.

Overall, this is still a very good book to me, with memorable moments and great setup for the future of the saga, even if it represents a considerable slowdown compared to the intensity of the previous entries.

- But if we’re talking about slowdowns, then we have to mention Song of Susannah. For me, this is the weakest entry in the franchise and also the worst Stephen King book I’ve personally read so far. Honestly, I don’t have many positive things to say about it, but I’ll try to explain myself as clearly and objectively as possible so it doesn’t come across as me simply trashing the book.

On paper, the premise is actually very good. The ka-tet splits up to complete different missions, giving us three separate storylines: Susannah confronting Mia and the birth of Mordred, Jake and Callahan trying to rescue her, and Roland and Eddie attempting to buy the vacant lot containing the Rose while also meeting Stephen King in the process.

I’ll start with that last aspect just to get it out of the way immediately. Personally, I don’t mind King introducing himself as a character at all, because I will always support bold and extravagant creative choices, especially when an artist is willing to take risks. If an author has a vision and wants to execute it, no matter how strange or controversial it may be, I’ll always respect the courage it takes to fully commit to it despite potential backlash. That said, I completely understand why many readers dislike it, and I think it ultimately comes down to how open you are to unusual ideas in fiction. For me, it adds another layer to the concept of The Dark Tower itself, where universes and realities intersect and interact with one another, enriching the story conceptually.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about what is, for me, the book’s real problem: King’s terrible decision regarding how much story he actually wanted to tell here. In previous books, we would see days, weeks, or even months of story progression. Here, however, we spend the entire book covering only a handful of hours, which destroys the pacing. On top of that, King chooses to end the novel before any of the three storylines truly reach a resolution, leaving us with an incomplete story that cuts off at the worst possible moment.

In the end, the novel doesn’t feel self-contained at all, and I firmly believe every individual book should still function as a complete experience even when it’s part of a larger saga. I genuinely think that if King had simply ended this book at the exact point where the first section of book VII ends, with the ka-tet reuniting, the novel would have been dramatically improved and would’ve provided a much more satisfying arc: the characters split up to complete separate missions, complete them, and reunite. It was honestly that simple.

Instead, we’re left with Susannah’s storyline completely unresolved, Jake and Callahan’s plot barely even beginning (those two are barely in the book at all), and Roland and Eddie’s storyline being the furthest along but still unfinished.

And since not everything is bad, I should say that Roland and Eddie’s section is easily the best part of the novel. Their confrontation with Balazar’s men gives us the book’s only real action scene, and I think it works very well. Their chemistry together is always fantastic and remains one of my favorite aspects of the entire saga, especially because here we can truly see how much their relationship has evolved since The Drawing of the Three.

Meanwhile, Susannah’s conversations with Mia are not only extremely long and tedious at times, but they’re also overloaded with exposition that strips away much of the mystery and magic of discovering the world organically.

So overall, I really didn’t enjoy this book very much. Within the larger context of The Dark Tower it’s only a weaker step in a much bigger journey, so it never becomes disastrous because the series has so much greatness before and after it to compensate. But as an individual novel, I think it’s genuinely very poorly executed.

That said, I still want to clarify that I don’t hate it. There hasn’t been a Stephen King book that I’ve outright hated so far. But this one definitely felt badly mishandled to me.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on books four, five, and six. I’d love to hear everyone else’s opinions, and I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on the final book in the series.

I recently finished my first journey to The Dark Tower, and I’d like to give my thoughts on the series as a whole, along with a small review of each book. In this post I’ll focus on the first three. Needless to say, this is just my personal opinion, and I’d love to hear other perspectives from the community.

- The Gunslinger is a… strange book to me. I like the story it tells, I like seeing Roland’s journey on his own before he found his ka-tet, and several of the moments that we see here have really stayed with me. The massacre in Tull is incredibly enjoyable, and if I remember correctly, it’s the only time we see Roland take down that many enemies completely by himself. That’s pretty cool. But without a doubt, the highlight for me is the flashback of Roland fighting Cort. That’s where I truly felt the weight of what it means to be a Gunslinger and the sheer epicness inherent to Roland's character.

But for me, this book has two major problems. The first is something King himself mentions in the introduction to the revised edition: you can really tell he’s trying to imitate a narrative voice that isn’t naturally his in order to sound deeper and more grandiloquent. While there are definitely moments in the prose that I genuinely like, overall it makes the book harder to read and gives the writing an artificial, overly heavy feeling.

The second issue for me is that it fails too much as an introductory novel. I know King fans are generally willing to keep reading and wait for answers, but I think for a casual reader this book is simply too confusing and doesn’t explain the basics of Roland’s goals and motivations well enough to hook them. Overall, it’s a book that can be appreciated if you’re already a King fan or invested in the series, but as a standalone work I find it very flawed for those reasons.

- The Drawing of the Three is a MASSIVE jump in quality. The narrative flows much better here and the reading experience is far smoother and more enjoyable. Above all else, I think this is an incredibly exciting book, full of thrilling action and genuinely effective tension. Each of the three adventures shown in this novel is engaging, and I think seeing Roland interact with the real world is one of the most entertaining parts of the entire series. It creates a really fun dynamic.

I will say that Odetta’s section is the densest part for me, since we spend a long time with Detta being insufferable while the characters walk along the beach. However, the duality of the character is interesting enough that it still makes that section worth reading. The Jack Mort section is my second favorite, and I especially love the part where Roland enters the gun store and everything that follows. I think this is where the “fish out of water” dynamic I mentioned earlier works best and gives us some really memorable scenes.

But without question, the best part of the book for me is Eddie’s section. The customs sequence and the confrontation with Balazar and his men — all of it is exciting and packed with genuinely great action, almost like a small mafia story inserted into a larger novel. I truly think this section contains some of my favorite moments in the entire series.

So for me, this is the point where the saga truly begins and where the really great stuff starts.

- Then, with The Waste Lands, we reach the peak of the series, which for me lies in books three and four. I think this is the point where King’s imagination reaches its absolute highest level throughout the saga, constantly throwing one wild and fascinating concept after another at the reader. Every section and every sequence is memorable and exciting, on the level of The Drawing of the Three and sometimes even beyond it. I enjoy the confrontation with Shadrik, and I think it’s one of the first moments that truly solidifies Mid-World as this unique fusion of magic and technology.

Then there’s Jake’s entire storyline, which is absolutely incredible. This is where Jake truly becomes memorable and lovable as a character, with his split mind and conflicting memories. I love everything involving the bookstore, and it works as excellent buildup for Blaine and everything that comes with him afterward. Jake’s arrival in Mid-World is also one of the most exciting scenes in the entire saga and perfectly captures the creativity and imagination I mentioned earlier.

Of course, we also can’t ignore the introduction of Oy, a character we all end up becoming deeply attached to from this point onward.

Then we get the bridge and the arrival in Lud, and once again the book delivers more incredibly tense and exciting sequences where the danger facing the characters feels very real and the reading becomes even more addictive. I think the Tick-Tock Man works well as the antagonist for that section, but above all else, Gasher is one of the most despicable characters in the entire series. The way he abuses and torments Jake throughout their journey was unbearable to read, and his death felt extremely satisfying.

And then there’s Blaine... One of the most insane ideas Stephen King has ever had for a villain (in the best possible way), and probably the most memorable antagonist in the entire saga for me. I love his introduction and how menacing he feels from the very first moment. The whole riddles concept gives him a strong identity and elevates him to that level of iconicity every great villain needs.

As for the ending cliffhanger, I understand why people reading these books in real time found the wait frustrating, but for me it was an excellent ending. It grabs you and leaves you desperate to know what happens next, almost like the ending of a TV season finale that leaves you impatient for the next season.

For me, this is an almost perfect book and the point where the saga most fully feels like a true epic journey filled with trials, villains, and a fascinating world waiting to be explored.

I’ll stop here for now, but I’ll continue with the remaining books soon. I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts and experiences with this first stretch of the series.