The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King

A few weeks ago, when I was in the library, I saw books 5, 6 and 7 of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (that’d be Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower). Since I’d liked the first few books in the series, but had dropped it when it wasn’t clear whether King would ever finish the series, I decided to pick these up. I actually went back and re-read book 4, Wizard and Glass, when it was clear that I didn’t remember it, and it had some relevance. So I’ve slammed through probably close to 2000 pages of crap in the last few weeks. Fortunately, it’s fast reading, so I didn’t waste as much time as you might think.

Spoilers ahead, if any of you care.

I really did like the first three books in this series. They all have some memorable moments, with mythic overtones. Wizard and Glass was okay – obviously not very memorable, since I had to re-read it – it’s basically a standard Western plot set in a fantasy realm. The last three books are just kind of painful. King apparently decided that this was his opportunity to tie all of his books together, so he started dropping in characters from all of his books to meet the gunslingers and help them out. Characters from Salem’s Lot all the way through his more recent books like Insomnia (none of which I’ve read). So that added confusion, since I hadn’t read these stories, and these characters which I’m clearly supposed to recognize are showing up.

It gets even better, though, when King has these fantasy characters cross dimensions into a facsimile of our world. In this world, they meet, yes, that’s right, King himself, who is portrayed as one of the most valuable people in the universe, supporting one of the “Beams” that holds the universe together through his writing. I started losing steam quickly at this point.

Plus, the writing just isn’t very good. King, if nothing else, generally spins a good yarn. Books like The Shining or It are gripping, and have a sort of inevitability about them that is one of the keys to horror writing. These books just start wandering; in his attempt to include all of his other books, it just becomes a series of vignettes – “Oh, look, another of my characters!” And it suffers for that. By the time the main characters start getting killed off, I no longer cared about them.

In the last couple books, he also started pulling the omniscient narrative nonsense – things like “He slipped the .40 into his docker’s clutch almost without thinking, so moving us a step closer to what you will not want to hear and I will not want to tell.” How melodramatic is that?

I kept with it, mostly out of a desire for completeness. Just to finish it. And to find out what’s in the Dark Tower. And, of course, it’s a copout. I should have known.

Anyway. Strong anti-recommendation. The first three books are worth reading if you like a western-crossed-with-fantasy kind of book. And maybe book four. But if you never read 5, 6 and 7, you won’t be missing anything.