GENERAL INFORMATION
TITLE: THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWER
AUTHOR: STEPHEN KING
PAGES: 686
PUBLISHER: HODDER & STOUGHTON
YEAR: 2004
GENRE: FANTASY FICTION
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_VII:_The_Dark_Tower
My copy is a first edition, hardback that includes several color illustrations.
The Dark Tower won the British Fantasy Award in 2005.
BLURB FROM THE COVER
This magnificent novel is the final volume in Stephen King’s epic masterpiece and the most anticipated book of his legendary career. It is the book millions of his readers have been waiting for with excitement and awe in their own quest to reach the Dark Tower. Powerful and darkly suspenseful, this unforgettable finale will also leave readers wanting to read the series again.
The last masterful chapter of Roland Deschain’s relentless quest is a roller-coaster of exhilarating triumph and aching loss. Roland’s band of pilgrims remains united, though scattered. Susannah-Mia has been carried off to a chamber in New York. Terrified of what she will give birth to; Jake, Father Callahan and even Oy follow, not aware of how noxious are the foes they face.
Roland and Eddie are in Maine, looking for the site on Turtleback Lane which will lead them to Susannah. Yet they have come to realize that the world they need to escape is the only one that matters.
His every step shadowed by a terrible and sinister creation, Roland closes in on the Tower. And finally, he realises he may have to leave his companions in the last, dark strait.
EXTRACT
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. He didn’t much care. Concepts such as reality had ceased to matter to him.
REVIEW
I love The Dark Tower as much as I love the other volumes in the series. I was shocked to realize this novel was first published in 2004, ten years ago. I remember buying it, how excited I was. I sat up all night and read it in one sitting. It does not seem like a decade ago. King pulls out all the stops with this final volume in his epic series. This is only the second time I’ve read the full series.
I love the links between The Dark Tower and King’s other novels. You find these in every volume. Insomnia is mentioned in this volume. Roland visits the offices of the Tet Corporation, the firm they set up to protest the Rose and is given a copy of Insomnia by the people working there who tell them this is a key novel linked to the Dark Tower. How true. The Crimson King plays a large part in Insomnia. Patrick Danville, the boy Ralph Roberts saves plays a key part in the final chapters of The Dark Tower. Two of the Breakers feature in other King works. Ted Brautigan is a key player in Low Men In Yellow Coats from Hearts in Atlantis. Dinky Earnshaw is the key player in the story Everything’s Eventual from the story collection of the same name. Pere Callahan who dies in the opening pages of The Dark Story features in Salem’s Lot. I love these little links to King’s other work. You need to be a huge fan of King like me or you would miss them completely and it’s one of the things I enjoy the most about the series.
The Dark Tower contains some of the saddest moments in the whole series. I actually wept when Eddie Dean is killed in the battle to free the Breakers and save the beams. I sobbed when Jake dies saving Stephen King’s life in Maine. I was inconsolable when Patrick Danville sent Susannah through an Unfound Door to a different world where she meets Eddie Toren and his brother Jake. It’s rare for a work of fiction to touch me so much I actually cry. I blubbered several times while reading The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower is packed with action and drama. King manages to tie up all of the loose ends. One of my favorite sections is when they stop the Breakers from destroying the beams. Roland and his ka-tet fight a good fight. I thought it was amusing in a sad way that some of the Breakers were furious that their comfy little lives had been taken away. They seemed oblivious to the fact they had been prisoners working to destroy the world fed on the brain juice of kidnapped children. There are so many things I loved about The Dark Tower. Susannah, Roland and Oy’s harsh trip through the white lands of empathica and their confrontation with a sinister vampire-creature called Dandelo when they rescue Patrick Danville. Oy’s death in the last leg of the trip. Patrick Danville’s ability to draw things in and out of reality.
I thought the characterisation was great in The Dark Tower. Roland is much changed from the man he was in The Gunslinger who let Jake fall to his death. When Jake dies Roland is a grieving Father and would denounce his quest to have his boy back. Jake has much grown from the frightened boy who told Roland go then, there are other worlds than these in The Gunslinger. Susannah and Eddie are also much changed. Despite her grief over Eddie’s death she wants to see the tower and is heart-broken when she realises she needs to leave Roland’s world. I felt sorry for Mordred, the boy-spider creature Mia gives birth to. He’s quite a forlorn character. He can be quite menacing in his spider-shape but is just a boy, lonely and afraid, skulking in the shadows. I felt quite sorry for him when he eats Dandelo’s horse and is poisoned. He is dying when he makes a final desperate attempt to kill Roland. He was sort of sad and pathetic.
The ending of The Dark Tower has been much contested. The whole series had been leading up to Roland and his ka-tet mounting the tower, killing the Crimson King and saving the world. The Dark Tower does not play out like that. The ka-tet is broken. Roland climbs to the top of the tower passing mementos of his long life. He opens the door at the top and ends up back at the start of the first novel The Gunslinger when he is chasing the Man in Black across the desert. I was furious with King when I read this. It took several re-reads of the books and The Complete Concordance for me to understand the ending. King makes it clear Roland is supposed to blow the horn of Eld when he reaches the tower. He does not do this because the horn was lost in the battle at Jericho Hill when his first ka-tet was broken. In the last pages of The Dark Tower, Roland starts to cross the desert again and this time he has the horn. You can fill in the gaps yourself. The ka-tet is not broken because Eddie and Jake live. They reach the tower together and Roland blows the horn.
The Dark Tower is a well-written, fantastic end to a great series. The Dark Tower series really is King’s magnum opus. Nothing he has written or will write will even come close to this greatness. Real King fans know The Dark Tower thread runs through a huge amount of his work. I feel quite sad that I’ve finished the series again. If only King had written another half a dozen volumes. I like the fact King includes his inspiration Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning. It’s a great, epic poem. The Dark Tower series leaves me in awe of King’s talent as a writer. What an imagination he has to come up with this series.
RATING
