I would have to say that I am some what disappointed with this book. As a finale to the epic that really was very interesting, it fell a long way short in giving me a feeling of sitting back and admiring what I just read.

The story lacked any real meat. There were probably three key moments throughout, the rest was pretty much just palava. Instead of dramatically closing in on the Dark Tower we kind of ambled along and found ourselves there without any thing surprising happen. King had lots of opportunity to create drama, suspense and even sadness with character deaths, but for some reason, in this book he decided to tell us ahead of time something was going to happen. I can see maybe that working once, to build the pressure knowing what was coming, but he did it with everything. Never have I read a book where the deaths of main characters left me feeling nothing because there was no surprise, It was like a long term sickness death rather than sudden accident, I just felt, right, thats him/her dead then, whats next. In this book you read a lot of this:

Roland was about to stop him from opening the door, but decided not to. Later when he looked back he would wish he did stop him, for it was the last time he would speak with him

Roland understood what was worrying him, the pair of them would not return from this trip, one of them would die out there

There was much of this. I was waiting for:

Roland decided not to put sugar in his tea. He would look back later and wish he had, for the tea did not taste as good. So e called his ka-tet and they had palava, he talked about Majis for nearly two nights, where he did put sugar in his tea.

So on to the ending.......

SOME SPOILERS ON THE ENDING TO FOLLOW.

Here is how I think it went. King finishes the book. Sends it off to his editor and his editor says "are you shitting me?! No way Stephen, the readers would crucify you. You can't end it like that. go back and write it again.

So King somewhat grumpily does what he is told, only after making sure, that we, the readers, understand his contempt for us wanting some closure. (sure Mr King, I 'get' the story is not about the ending, but about the journey, I did the journey, all 7 books, I am not an idiot). So King then thinks, right, I need a ending, But ah-ha, do i? There never really was an ending, so I'll make up a quick stupid ending that is completely out of form with the rest of the book.

Don't even get me started on the happy hollywood closure of the other part of the story - Gods that was cringe worthy.

So all in all, i was saddened that the story ended this way. I still gave it 3 stars, because I have really enjoyed the whole epic and I was very impressed with some of the writing. Some of that mid story was brilliant, unlike the last book there was some brilliant tension building like Blaine the Train.

Right onto the next Epic.

Розумію, що на емоціях писати відгук - не найкраща ідея, але не можу стриматись.

Це надто прекрасно

A fitting conclusion to a uniquely captivating story.

I love this book. This is an amazing and heart-wrenching and appropriate end to this epic series. This book is the culmination of a huge investment, both for author and reader, and it's a draining one. So much is found, and lost, and gained and lost and it makes me heartsore.

As much as I love this book, I always hit a point on re-reads where I just stall. Not because the book is bad (it's most absolutely definitely assuredly not), but because after taking this journey with these characters I love so much, after being with them for so long, I dread the end... I dread having to put this story back on the shelf when it's over.

This is the kind of book that I love beyond almost all others - books that open up their pages and let me fall right in... books that take me with them wherever it is they go, and accept me as part of the gang. This series is the epitome of escapist reading for me. I dream about this series and live in it while I read, and love it for a multitude of reasons that I couldn't even begin to enumerate here.

It's amazing... So just read it already. That's all I'm saying.

I don’t know how to review such an epic book. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a series so large in scope. The dark tower (the last book of Stephen Kings Gunslinger series) was an amazing conclusion. Roland and his ka-tet have made it this far. I won’t spoil anything but I thought this was fantastic. Nonstop action. You got monsters, time and world traveling, death, sadness, love, magic… it’s really pretty amazing. The ending is controversial, sure… but I sort of respect it… and it makes sense to me. It’s tragic and also sort of beautiful. I’m so glad I finally after all these years as one of kings constant readers… took the plunge and finished the dark tower

Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga comes to a conclusion with the seventh (or eighth if you’re counting “The Wind Through the Keyhole”) and final novel appropriately titled, “The Dark Tower”. In the series’ finale, Roland and his ka-tet draw ever closer to their destiny as the Tower is finally within reach, however, death and destruction lie ahead. Can Roland reach his ultimate destination without paying a heavy price?

It took King nearly twenty-two years to finish the series (from the publication of The Gunslinger) and in the end, he did not disappoint. King ran me through an emotional wringer in deciding to push Roland and his Ka-Tet to their absolute limit both mentally and physically. There’s so much loss in the finale that the weight of the novel cannot be measured in mass alone.

That being said, it’s really difficult for me to review this without heading into spoiler territory as all I really want to do is talk about the ending. It is the opinion of many of his fans that King often struggles with endings (he even says as much in the afterword). However, when he does get it right, he nails it - as is the case with The Dark Tower. I couldn’t imagine a more fitting end to the series despite some of the anti-climactic deaths on the antagonist side of things. I also would have likely trimmed some of the fat from the last 200 pages or so - there are points where it feels unnecessarily bloated. Then again, it wouldn’t be a King novel if Uncle Stevie wasn’t a little long-winded at times.

King’s magnum opus is not to be taken lightly. In total (including Wind Through The Keyhole), there are a staggering 4,250 pages when all is said and done. It has action, adventure, emotional depth and its own mythology. It connects many of King’s other novels into what many have dubbed “King’s Dominion” - it is what I feel to be the heart and soul of his life’s work. It is most assuredly worth your investment as a constant reader and I look forward to the day that I will once again set upon the journey to the Tower.

Here are some spoilerific comments:

Mordred felt ultimately pointless in the end. While he served a purpose in killing off Flagg, I would have prefered a showdown with the Ka-tet. He was seemingly half-dead from food poisoning when he finally caught up with Roland leading a fairly swift and anti-climactic death at the hands of the Gunslinger - but not before killing Oy (an unforgivable sin).

The Crimson King really sucked.

Patrick Danville seemed like a weird addition to finish off the novel and having him kill the man responsible for 99% of the shit that happens in the book seemed like an odd choice. Also, why didn’t he draw Roland’s hand giving him his fingers back? I was waiting for that to happen, but I guess it didn’t matter in the end.

I.Loved.That.Ending.

The absolute horror that Roland would have felt upon realizing he’d already reached the Tower time and time again. Can you imagine? Going through all that just to have to do it again? Jesus Christ. At least he wouldn’t know any different going forward. Is that worse?

My heart broke for Roland.

It took me longer than every other book in the series and I think that’s because I really didn’t want to finish it. It was so nice to have this book to go back to. It was so nice to say I was still working on the dark tower. But it’s over now and I can never again read the dark tower series for the first time, which is fine I suppose since everyone who has read it before knows that once we complete the journey, restarting it is only natural.

I loved this series. I really did. If the point of books are to entertain and give readers an escape from reality this series exceeded all requirements. I was lost in all the worlds King strung together and I didn’t want to leave.

Let me just say that I tore through this dang book in a weekend because I was ready for the answers finally.

I was heartbroken and crossing my fingers; the suspense was real, and the journey was harrowing.

And then you finally reach the Dark Tower; all of the worlds, all of the characters, all of the deaths, all of the lives, the multiple Stephen Kings... And then you find the top of the tower, and you shout out

Nooooooo!! Curse you, Stephen King....

It was epic, brilliant, a total mind flay.

Now, I need to go back to the beginning and see the clues that led us here with new eyes.

Quote that made me chuckle
"I wonder if Stephen King ever uses dreams in his novels, you know, as yeast to make the plot rise"

5 Stars

*sniff* Oh, you surprised me. Is it time for the review? Just a second. What? Crying? Me? Don’t be ridiculous. I was just ….uh…chopping some onions…..and I’ve got a cold….then somebody broke into my kitchen and pepper sprayed me….I certainly wouldn’t be shedding a few manly tears over a Stephen King novel, would I? Oh, fine. You spend almost twenty years reading this series and tell me you got through the conclusion without a lump in your throat. Liar.

Roland and his posse of gunslingers have to wrap up their business on Earth so they can get back to Mid-World. In our world, they’ll have to safeguard the rose in New York by founding a corporation dedicated to its protection, some of them will have to battle a very nasty nest of vampires and low men, and Susannah has to give birth to something that is supposed to be the end of all of them. The ones who can make it back to Mid-World will have to launch a desperate attack against overwhelming odds to stop the Crimson King’s breakers from destroying one of the last Beams holding the Tower and all of reality in place, and if they survive that, there’s a Very Important Person who still needs saving.

The Dark Tower series was written in fits and starts by King from the time he was in college to wrapping up the whole thing in a three book burst following his close encounter with a minivan. He didn’t always know where it was going, he littered many of his other books with DT tie-in stories, and he famously claimed for years not to know how it would end. So the series as whole isn’t the most tightly plotted thing you’ll ever read, and at the end King focused on delivering on the emotional journey rather than trying to wrap up every loose end he had hanging out there.

He chose wisely.

I consider this King’s flawed masterpiece. Some have focused on the ‘flawed’ part of that. I decided to dwell on the ‘masterpiece’ side of the equation. I’ll go a little more in depth on that in this spoiler section, but for any newbies not reading that, I’ll just say that all the years waiting between books turned out to be worth it.



The Flaws

The biggest let down to me in this was that the whole Modred thing was so anti-climatic. His birth was a huge focus in the final three books, yet in the end all he managed to do was send poor Oy to a grisly death.

In fact, there’s precious little satisfaction to be found in any the endings of the major villains. Modred was dying of food poisoning anyhow. Oy spoils his attack and Roland dispatches him with ease. The Crimson King is just crazy old man on a balcony throwing bombs around, and he gets taken out by a pencil eraser wielded by a kid with no tongue.

Maybe worst of all was the ending of Randall Flagg a/k/a Walter a/k/a Martin. This one was especially galling because not only had he been Roland’s nemesis, he’d been a boogeyman in King’s books for years. Yet he gets eaten by Modred the baby. That sucked.

I’m still not sure about King writing himself into the story either. I don’t think he did it out of ego because he made himself look pretty awful overall, but at some point after his accident, I think he couldn’t separate what he’d gone through from the story it inspired him to finally finish. It didn’t ruin the series for me, but I kind of wish he’d come up with something else.

Having gotten that out of my system, let’s proceed to:

The Masterpiece

I loved the whole concept of the Tet Corporation, and I continue to hope that someday King will give us a book detailing its war against N. Central Positronics and Sombra. I could have read several more chapters regarding that piece.

The character deaths were incredibly well done and still painful the third time through this. We’ve known since Roland let Jake fall into the abyss in The Gunslinger that this quest to find the Dark Tower would cost Roland dearly, but I was not prepared for how high the price turned out to be.

Which brings us to my favorite part, the ending. The idea that Roland has been stuck in an endless cycle of climbing the Tower only to find himself back at the beginning of the series seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but caught me completely by surprise. As King noted in the afterword, it’s not a happy ending, but it’s the right ending. I agree with that. Roland’s ultimate damanation wasn’t that he sacrificed his friends to get to the Tower, it’s that he risked the Tower again by pressing on to satisfy his own obsession to see it after it had already been saved that puts him in his own personal hell.

I also like how that sneaky bastard King made us all complicit with Roland’s fate. By offering us the chance to opt out and leave the book knowing that Roland reached the Tower and that Susannah was reunited with Eddie and Jake in another version of New York, King made us all Roland by proxy. We couldn’t resist. We had to know what was in the Tower. And when we find out, we all share Roland’s fate of going back to the beginning.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

I don't think a sentence has intrigued me more in the literary world. The italicized sentence started the long journey of Roland Deschain of Gilead, line of Eld. And, it finishes King's telling of Roland Deschain's, dan-dinh of the ka-tet, journey.

I'm sitting here, thinking, trying to formulate the right words to say what I need to in this review. It's almost 3 a.m., and I have to be quite honest: this journey has worn me out. Emotionally, I don't think I could handle another installment. I don't think I could handle another trip in Roland's life. I say this with praise, not disdain. A much lighter read will be taking place after this...

I was a little worried King would leave things unfinished in areas. With a story so involved, so many characters, and odds and ends to tie up, I was worried I would be left wondering, "What happened to...??" I wasn't. I know everything King wanted us to know about Roland, Eddie, Jake, Susannah, Oy, and every character in-between. I think that is a small part of what made this story so great.

Was this the ending I wanted? To be quite honest, I didn't know what I wanted, well, maybe to some degree. Was it what I expected? Absolutely not. Am I left feeling empty? YES. Am I feeling like I need emotional therapy because of how many times I have cried reading this book? Well, we won't go there...;)

Like I said, I didn't really know what kind of ending I wanted for Roland. All I really knew was.....I didn't want him to die. If you've read it, you know what happens. For future readers, I won't spoil it for you, like I had someone keep doing to me. (And it pissed me off beyond belief.) Also, I knew, I wanted him to make it to the Dark Tower, and then....I honestly didn't know what after that.

I have read some different reviews, and people wondering why King ended this book the way he did, and I think I get it. I think I understand...maybe.... I will have to think about it, though. Am I disappointed in the ending?...absolutely not.

Things really began to make sense for me in this book. Loose ends tied with their other half to close out the importance. And everything fit together so perfectly, so magically, and there were no loose ends for me.

I'm going to get into some spoilery junk, so if you haven't read it, do yourself a major solid, and don't cheat... I understand why he did it...I understand why Eddie died. It was ka. When Eddie died, I felt like...the journey really started to be 'over.' When Jake died...I was so damned angry at King. I thought, "Finally, father and son are together...Finally, Roland can stop beating himself up over dropping Jake." But no...King just had to go there. Break my heart. Jake is without a doubt, my favorite character in this series. I don't know if I can fully explain why, but he is. I think its because his parents cast him off to the side, and let someone else raise him without any regard to his feelings....just like my own mother did. There's a wisdom which comes from knowing "the truth", say thank ya, and Jake definitely shows it in this journey. Having Jake die.....hurt. But, I guess in the end, he didn't really die...He just took his life to somewhere where Mid-World can't harm him any longer.

Roland, I've definitely loved since he openend the three doors, and formed his ka-tet. (Well, Jake's journey into Mid-World for the second time was different, as we all know). There was never a time when I felt like I didn't like Roland. I always felt like...and this is weird,...but I could trust what he said, his wisdom, knowledge, and just him. When Roland was around, I felt like the ka-tet was safe. Safe from harm. But, I guess even the most powerful of gunslingers can't save everyone, can they?

Eddie....ha...Well, he made me laugh quite a bit. He reminds me a bit of my older brother. Always cracking jokes, even when it's inappropriate. I really enjoyed the way his character grew and changed from junkie to a gunslinger who can stand with the best of the best...Roland of Gilead. Eddie really grew on me, and matured over time. I think it is what partially helped him to grow on me. His undying love for Susannah proved he was more than just a recovering junkie wasting his life on drugs. It proved he was human, had a heart, and a will to live. But, being a gunslinger, he also proved his worth. He helped to save the Dark Tower from falling, even if he didn't get to see the Dark Tower itself and touch it. Ka is a real bitch.

Oy....who doesn't love Oy? I cried...okay...bawled when Mordred murdered Oy. See? Told you I need Dark Tower therapy. Oy provided a lightness, a reprieve from darkness. He added so much character to the story, or at least I thought so. I think I said this in a previous review of one of the DT books, but I love animals. I have two cats of my own, and one of whom is very, very special to me. I thought, for the longest time, Oy would make it to the Dark Tower. I knew better deep down inside. I knew it was Roland's journey to make alone....and for that...Oy had to die. Did I like it?....Oh hell to the no, I did not. But, at least, it's just a story....No real billy-bumbler died. Say thank ya big-big. Again...ka..

Susannah, has been my least favorite character. She has been since the beginning. In a previous review, I said I thought her character was lacking, and I think King really brought her around in the end. She still isn't my favorite, and I don't 'hate' her character in the slightest. In fact, I thought she was perfect for the series. However, she just wasn't my favorite. I, for some reason was surprised she was the one who made it that long on the journey. I really thought after Eddie died, she would be gone...like dead gone. Actually, I thought she was going to die first. Don't know why I thought that, but I did. I knew someone...didn't know so many though, was going to die. For some reason, I suspected it was her. King definitely proved me wrong. And for that, I say thank ya.



I say thank ya because, this whole time, throughout the entire journey, I never knew what to expect. I had someone spoil several things in the story for me before I started to read this journey, and it made me quite angry. Fortunately, I had a few people tell me the story was so much more than those few inklings of spoilers: Blaine the Train, the wolves of Calla Bryn Sturgis, the literary ties to other famous stories, Gasher, Pere Callahan and his story (I also really admired him), etc.... I am glad I took this journey with Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy, and everyone else they met along the path of the beam. It was definitely a wild ride. It had it's ups and downs, action-packed and dull or down moments, but all in all, the journey was definitely worth it.

Un final complicado. Un libro con altibajos. Valió la pena?. Si. Sin embargo lo mejor es el camino. Mi libro preferido de la serie es Mago y Cristal. Por otro lado se nota que SK hizo su mejor trabajo en los libros 2. 3 y 4. Y se siente un cambio en el 5 siendo más notorio en el 6 y 7. Se sienten algo apresurado. En fin. Recomendado para lectores constantes de SK.

De todos los libros que recomiendan leer para esta serie, creo que son importantes Salems Lot. Insomnia. Corazones de la Atlántica el primer relato. Hampones de chaquetas amarillas. Y el relato todo es eventual del recopilatorio del mismo nombre. Suficiente creo yo.

Mi libro preferido del autor sigue siendo 22/11/63.

Sequência de livros lidos para a conclusão da saga:
1) A DANÇA DA MORTE
2) OLHOS DE DRAGÃO
3) TORRE NEGRA I
4) TORRE NEGRA II
5) TORRE NEGRA III
6) TORRE NEGRA IV
7) TUDO É EVENTUAL (CONTO AS IRMÃZINHAS DE ELÚRIA)
8) TORRE NEGRA VIII
9) O TALISMÃ
10) A CASA NEGRA
11) SALEM
12) TORRE NEGRA V
13) TORRE NEGRA VI
14) INSÔNIA
15) HEARTS IN ATLANTIS (CONTO Low Men in Yellow Coats)
16) TUDO É EVENTUAL (CONTO TUDO É EVENTUAL)
17) TORRE NEGRA VII

Cerca de 8.600 páginas de pura diversão! :)