Book Review: The Dark Tower (VII) by Stephen King

And there we finally have it. The end. It’s over. Good bye.

I know there are two more books that were added later (one that comes before the first, and one between the fourth and fifth), but I haven’t read those yet. I might, at some point, but so far I’m happy with these.

For those of you who’ve been paying attention, I’ve read all the books now, (read reviews for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, here) and these are the first King books I’ve actually read. I feel like I’ve always been a fan of King though, through movies and reputation, but now I’ve actually read his words. And I… I don’t know what to say.

I love the series, I love the dark tower. Sometimes I’ve been more than frustrated with King’s writing, it’s sometimes slow, it’s definitely too long, and the whole of book 4 felt like a waste. (Book 1 and 4 are definitely my least favorite, but I did thoroughly enjoy the series.) At the same time, it’s kind of sad that it’s over, in a sense. Maybe because of the series and the books length, I was half-expecting it all to never end, but now it has, and I almost wish I’d never finished it just so they wouldn’t end. At least I have those two other books to read, right?

Book 7:

I don’t know how much I can tell you about book 7, other than that the Ka-tet comes together again finally, and we’re off to the tower. We’re finally heading to the tower. It’s a very good ending, even though I didn’t like (but we’ll get to that), and everything is finally answered. All the treads followed, all the problems solved. It’s all dealt with. At first I didn’t like the ending, because I didn’t think about it properly. I saw it as an end of a story instead of seeing it as the end of the road. Because it’s all about the road. The journey Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Susannah have traveled together is finally over, and I look back at it with a smile.

I wrote a post a while back about how I very seldomly re-read stuff. You can check that out here if you’d like, but I realized as I was finishing this book that I wanted to go back and start again. I’m not going to anytime soon, but I really am looking forward to going back, to going through it all again, together with them. Now that I’ve seen the end, now that I’ve been there, I want to walk down that road another time, trying not to take it for granted. I want to smell the roses again.

Stephen King:

I try to learn, when I read. I know a lot of authors say that they don’t read when they write because they don’t want to be influenced or lose their voice and style, but that’s not me. I’m not going to end up sounding like Stephen King over night, but I sure as hell want to pick up some tips and tricks here and there. In one sense we’re completely opposite. He writes extremely long, and I write very short (I try, I’m sorry). But we’re also similar (at least in my opinion), in that we both focus very much on our characters. It’s not really about the big action scenes, the massive battles, or the big hurrah, it’s the things that happen in between. That’s something I’ve noticed now that I’ve gotten very familiar with King’s writing, those long passages that drag the book out, it’s not the big scenes. It’s not the fight at the end, it’s the small stuff. He writes very much, about very little, and I think that’s why I keep up with it. That’s why I like it. Watching characters grow together, watching them bond, fight, break apart, and make up, that’s what’s so interesting.

I feel like I could keep going, wishing it wasn’t over but it is. I’m glad I started with this story when I decided to read King, and what a story it is. I highly recommend it, it’s not for nothing he calls it his Magnus Opus, and it’s very worth reading.

Looking forward to my next King adventure, which I think will be ‘IT’.