Book 680: The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7) – Stephen King

Talk about a gut punch of an ending.

The Dark Tower picks up immediately where Song of Susannah ends and not only does it punch you in the gut in chapter one, but it continues to pummel you for the next 700+ pages! And honestly, I wouldn’t have expected less from something of such epic proportions. I can’t talk about this without spoiling it so don’t read any more if you haven’t read it and have any intention of reading it. (You can read the recommendation if you want though.)

I don’t think my thoughts will settle on an actual response to this book and series for quite a while. After reading more than 4,250 pages dedicated to this series over the past two years, it’s a lot to take in and process. Here are some immediate thoughts:

• Do I think it could have ended any other way? No.
• Am I 100% satisfied with the ending? No.
• Am I glad I read the portion after the “don’t read past here” warning message King included? I don’t know.
• Am I sad I’m done with the core series? Yes
• Would I read it again? Not all of them, but a good chunk of them (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, Wolves of the Calla, and this one).

Where this book shone for me was in the closure of all the characters’ story lines (with one notable exception). Yes, many end in death, but King spent 4k+ pages preparing us for it, but really laid it on thick in this book:

“Tonight the world seemed made of death.” (322)

“When she inhaled, she took in the breath of a thousand years and ten thousand miles. And yes, she tasted death.” (607)

The body count starts early and continues to increase up unto the final few pages: Pere Callahan, Randall Flag/Walter O’Dim/Walter Padick/The Man in Black, Eddie Dean, Jake Chambers, Mordred, Oy, and The Crimson King are all snuffed out in various deserved and undeserved deaths. I mean that right there tells you the only two survivors in Keystone and Tower worlds you should care about were Susannah and Roland, which is shocking, King also survives, but meh. The only ending I wasn’t so sure about was the ending of The Artist, to introduce him so late in the story and have him behind one of the key/most crucial moments of the entire series left me with a bitter taste. I get why King did it, but I don’t have to like it.

I was happy enough with Susannah’s ending, as bittersweet as it was and if anyone deserved it, she did. I’m not sure, and don’t think I ever will be sure, about Roland’s ending. We’ll just leave it at the wheel of Ka keeps on turning and turning and turning. I will agree with King that the story is very much about the journey and not the ending, although he appears to have been incredibly sentimental about writing and endings as he wrote this:

“‘”And they lived happily ever after until the end of their days,”‘ King said dreamily. ‘I wish I could write that.'” (372)

“You are the cruel ones who deny the Grey Havens, where tired characters go to rest.” (661)

“For an ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man (or Manni) can open. I’ve written many, but most only for the same reason that I pull on my pants in the morning before leaving the bedroom—because it is the custom of the country.” (661)

“Endings are heartless. Ending is just another word for goodbye.” (662)

Not only has he thrown in multiple Lord of the Rings references, like a bad-ass, but King spent some serious time thinking about endings and beginnings and the inter-connectivity of the two. And this novel of endings was traumatically beautiful on so many occasions. The way each characters’ story was brought to an end was perfectly in balance with how their characters lived or who they became once they entered Roland’s story.

King continued to name drop pop culture phenomena and literary references like there was no tomorrow,

“Star Wars was back for its umpty-umpth revival. If there’s any movie the Breakers never get enough of, it’s Star Wars.” (237)

“‘Looked to me like Dobbie was doing it,’ he said. Dobbie was the sort of domestic robot known as a ‘house-elf,’ old but still quite efficient.” (286)

I’m sure there were dozens more, but these are just a few of the literary works mentioned my name that I happened to flag: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum; The Collector and The Magus by John Fowles; Cujo, Misery, Salem’s Lot, 11/22/63, Hearts in Atlantis, It, Insomnia and Ur by Stephen King; The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis; The Harry Potter Series (Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows) by J.K. Rowling; Dracula by Bram Stoker; The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, and The Hobbit) by J.R.R. Tolkien; and The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells.

I know I’m not done with this series, I still have the two novellas (The Little Sisters of Eluria and The Wind Through the Keyhole) and as King has mentioned on multiple occasions and emphasizes on his website that The Dark Tower cycle is the “linchpin of Stephen King’s creative multiverse,” so I’ll definitely be back for a visit. There are 38 of his books listed on that webpage with references and connections to this cycle and of course the only two non-Dark Tower books I’ve already read (Cujo and Misery) are on there. I’m interested in reading the list below, mostly because they seem to be more interconnected to the series/I already have a copy:

– 11/22/63	– Hearts in Atlantis
– ‘Salem’s Lot	– Insomnia
– Black House	– It
– Desperation	– The Stand
– Dreamcatcher	– Ur
– The Eyes of the Dragon

I am looking forward to seeing the various connections throughout King’s work over the next few years as I dip in and out of his world, but I’m in no rush to read any of them.

Recommendation: If you can make it past the middle hump of Wizard and Glass it is 100% worth committing to the end. It’s also 100% a personal decision on whether or not you read past King’s final warning because that definitely changed my thoughts and opinions on the entire series and the meta-commentary King increased in the final few books which was fascinating and confusing and wonderful all at the same time.

Other Books in The Dark Tower Cycle

• The Little Sisters of Eluria (#0.5)
• The Gunslinger (#1)
• The Drawing of the Three (#2)
• The Waste Lands (#3)
• Wizard and Glass (#4)
• The Wind Through the Keyhole (#4.5)
• Wolves of the Calla (#5)
• Song of Susannah (#6)

Opening Line: “Pere Don Callahan had once been the Catholic priest of a town, ’Salem’s Lot had been its name, that no longer existed on any map.”

Closing Line: “June 19, 1970–April 7, 2004: I tell God thankya.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Dark Tower
“You needn’t die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from beginning to end and ka is always served.” (4)

“‘It’s a poorboy sanditch,’ Roland said. ‘With lots of mayo, whatever that is. I’d want a sauce that didn’t look quite so much like come, myself, but may it do ya fine.'” (38)

“She opened her eyes and saw doors marked SHANGHAI/FEDIC and BOMBAY/FEDIC and one marked DALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC. Others were written in runes that meant nothing to her. At last Nigel stopped in front of one she recognized.” (61)

“There was a kiosk on the far side of the lobby-vault, with a sign in one dusty window reading LAST CHANCE FOR NEW YORK SOUVENIRS and another reading VISIT SEPTEMBER 11, 2001! TIX STILL AVAILABLE FOR THIS WONDERFUL EVENT! ASTHMATICS PROHIBITED W/O DR’S CERTIFICATE! Jake wondered what was so fabulous about September 11th of 2001 and then decided that maybe he didn’t want to know.” (69)
“‘I never been to Harvard Business School’—Haa-vid Bi’ness School—’but I guess I can kick a fella in the crotch as well’s anyone.'” (100)

“But beyond page 676 of Wizard and Glass not a word about Roland and the Dark Tower had Stephen King written, and Walter considered this the real happy ending. The people of Calla Bryn Sturgis, the roont children, Mia and Mia’s baby: all those things were still sleeping inchoate in the writer’s subconscious, creatures without breath pent behind an unfound door. And now Walter judged it was too late to set them free. Damnably quick though King had been throughout his career—a genuinely talented writer who’d turned himself into a shoddy (but rich) quick-sketch artist, a rhymeless Algernon Swinburne, do it please ya—he couldn’t get through even the first hundred pages of the remaining tale in the time he had left, not if he wrote day and night.” (138)

“He felt a breath of cold air on his sweaty skin and then stepped through onto the slope of Steek-Tete in Thunder-clap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia.” (165)

“‘Check out the crate-lid,’ Jake said when they joined her. Susannah had set it aside; Jake picked it up and was studying it with admiration. It showed the face of a smiling boy with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. He was wearing round glasses and brandishing what appeared to be a magician’s wand at a floating sneetch. The words stenciled beneath the drawing read: PROPERTY 449th SQUADRON 24 ‘SNEETCHES’ HARRY POTTER MODEL SERIAL #465-17-CC NDJKR ‘Don’t Mess with the 449!’ We’ll Kick the ‘Slytherin’ Out of You!” (204)

“…wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.” (283)

“I’d have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle—they know better than that, every one of them—but because now they are ka-tet for the last time. The story of their fellowship ends here, on this make-believe street and beneath this artificial sun; the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that’s gone before. Because when katet breaks, the end always comes quickly.” (310)

“It wasn’t the Dark Tower, not his Dark Tower, at least (although it wouldn’t have surprised him to know there were people working in yon sky-tower—some of them readers of Roland’s adventures—who called 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza exactly that), but he had no doubt that it was the Tower’s representative in this Keystone World, just as the rose represented a field filled with them; the field he had seen in so many dreams.” (396)

“She spoke in a just-let-me-make-sure-I’ve-got-this-right voice and looked at Roland with a mixture of wonder and contempt.” (411)

“Ted and his friends were pretty amazed by the rotunda where all the doors are, especially the one going to Dallas in 1963, where President Kennedy was killed. We found another door two levels down—this is where most of the passages are—that goes to Ford’s Theater, where President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. There’s even a poster for the play he was watching when Booth shot him. Our American Cousin, it was called. What kind of people would want to go and watch things like that?” (437)

“He thinks of Misery—Annie Wilkes calling Paul Sheldon a cockadoodie brat for trying to get rid of silly, bubbleheaded Misery Chastain. Annie shouting that Paul was the writer and the writer is God to his characters, he doesn’t have to kill any of them if he doesn’t want to.” (440)

“. . . there’s just one rule with no exceptions: before victory comes temptation. And the greater the victory to win, the greater the temptation to withstand.” (478)

“It occurred to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now.” (608)

“. . . the spiritual side of cannibalism was greatly overrated, but what harm in seeing for one’s self?” (609)