So i've finally finished the whole lot of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. 7 books. All 3712 pages. It's taken me a year. Of course i've read other books in between but it's been just over a year since I opened The Gunslinger to start the journey with the opening line "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." And what a journey it's been.
I have to say, when I finished the final book last night I laid awake in bed for maybe an hour saying my goodbyes to the characters in my mind. Sounds crazy, I know but if you've read these books you'll understand how much these characters become a part of your life and you become a part of theirs. I'll give you a brief introduction to these characters;
Roland Deschain- The original gunslinger. A kind of Clint Eastwood meets Aragorn. Roland is the most important character and it's his long journey to find the dark tower that we follow from the start.
Eddie Dean- A New Yorker from 1987 who is drawn into mid-world in the second book and with Roland's help overcomes his heroin addiction before becoming Roland's humorous sidekick.
Jake Chambers- A New Yorker from 1977. A young boy who we meet in the first book but is reintroduced later and becomes an important member of the group eventually calling Roland his father.
Odetta/Detta/Susannah Dean- A New Yorker from 1964. She joins us in the second book and has a multiple personality disorder. She has both legs missing and gets around using different methods in mid-world. Her and Eddie fall in love and become husband and wife.
Oy- A creature from mid-world called a billy-bumbler. Joins our journey in the 3rd book. Billy-bumblers are described as a cross between a raccoon and a dog and have a limited speaking ability. He joins the others to form what's known as
Ka-tet.
A ka-tet is a group of beings brought together by ka (fate).
After a year of having these characters in my life and being a part of their ka-tet, I said my goodbyes with a degree of sadness after the deaths which occur in the final book.
Right, if you are reading this series but haven't finished or you haven't read them yet but are going to, I suggest you skip the following because I am certainly going to ruin the story for you. I know this will drive my girlfriend mad because she'll really want to read my blog but she is only on book 6 so she'll not want to read on and find out the ending. Sorry babe.
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
Eddie Dean is the first to die causing the breaking of the Ka-tet. After freeing the breakers (humans being kept prisoners to use their psychic powers to destroy the universe) and saving the world, Eddie is shot in the head by a warden and suffers a slow death with his wife Susannah at his side. While she prepares his body to be buried, Roland and Jake must travel to our world to save Stephen King's life so he can continue writing their story. As they find King walking along the side of a road with a speeding vehicle heading straight for him, Jake jumps in front of him and takes the impact himself. He lies dying at the side of the road with his best friend Oy by his side. Roland carries his lifeless body away from the road, buries him and says goodbye to the boy who he calls his son. Him and Oy make their way back to mid-world to meet Susannah. Oy is never the same after Jake's death but continues his journey alongside Roland, even after Susannah returns to New York leaving Roland to climb the tower alone as she believes he was meant to. She offers Oy the chance to go with her but he chooses to stay perhaps knowing he still has one last thing to do to before Roland can make his climb to the top of the tower. Later that night after Roland falls asleep his real son, Mordred, who is fathered also by a demon, comes to the camp to kill his father. Oy attacks Mordred who has transformed into a giant spider and although Oy has his back snapped and then is impaled on a tree, in this time Roland has awoke and kills his demon son. He goes to Oy who is still alive. Oy whispers Olan (his way of saying Roland) and licks his hand once before dying.
I can't make you understand how heartbreaking this stuff is unless you have made this journey yourself and felt the loss.
After so much despair you expect that there must be a happy ending for Roland when he finally reaches the top of The Dark Tower. Not really. King don't work that way, I guess. Although he does give you the opportunity to leave the book after Roland enters the door at the foot of the tower and consider it a happy ending and not venture inside the tower with Roland. But seriously, after coming so far with him you have to know what will happen. And I do. And although i've read so much criticism about the ending, i'm actually really impressed with it. You would never see it coming. So if you are one of the people, although I doubt there are any at all, who didn't read the final part of the book, i'd doubt you'll wanna read this bit.
Roland climbs to each floor where there is a room containing an item from his past that represents certain events. As he gets higher and finds each room reminding him of the sadness he has encountered, he decides to look no more and just make his way to the top. When he gets there, he finds one final door and prepares himself for what he might find. As he opens the door, he realises he has been here many times before and is then sucked through the door to where the story began in the desert with no memory of what just happened. The book ends with the infamous opening line of the first.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed"
To me, that is genius. Especially considering I will be reading the series again and although i'll start from the beginning, I will also be joining Roland at the same point that I left him in the final words of the final book. Back at the beginning. Although this time I will know what has already happened and what will ultimately happen. Unfortunately, Roland won't.
At the end of the book Stephen King includes a letter to the readers explaining that he wanted to leave us to draw our own conclusion about what happened to Susannah but was brow beaten into adding in the ending of what happened to her.
After she goes through the door that takes her to an alternative New York, she finds Eddie and Jake but they are also alternative versions of themselves and are now brothers with the surname Toren (coming from the dutch word for tower). They don't know her but have been dreaming of her and Eddie tells her that he is somehow falling in love with her even though he has no memory of her and the events in mid-world because it was another version of himself that it happened to. So Susannah does have a happy ending and she's the only member of the Ka-tet that doesn't die somewhere along the road to the tower.
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
The story doesn't end there. Apparently, King is writing an eighth book of the series and there are many of his other books, in fact most of his other books, that have a connection to the dark tower. He spent 34 years writing this series so it's no surprise that a lot of his other work includes elements of it.
There is also a short story about Roland that I haven't read yet and I have a book called The road to the dark tower which is a book exploring the whole series and everything there is to know about it.
Also there are a series of graphic novels about the dark tower which I have yet to read.
It was recently announced that The Dark Tower is coming to the big screen. A trilogy plus a miniseries for tv. The first one hits cinema in 2013 and I urge you to get the books and read them before then because there is no way the films will be able to include the entire story. I hope the films do the books justice but i'm well aware that many, many, many films never come close in comparison to the original stories in a book. Lord of the Rings for instance is an epic film and runs at around 10 hours altogether but so much is left out and in fact, i'd say the films are quite loosely based on the books.
Rumour has it that the role of Roland Deschain has been offered to Javier Bardem, probably best known for playing the kiliing machine known as Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men. It's being directed by Ron Howard who directed The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I've read both those books and the films are actually really good so I hope he can do the same for The Dark Tower.
For now I am going to take a break from The Dark Tower and if any of you could see my home, you'd see I certainly have plenty of other material to get through. Next on the list is the first in another long series but of a completely different genre. It is the first of 13 books by Andy McNab about the character Nick Stone. An ex-SAS soldier now working for the British Intelligence. I will eventually read the whole lot but for now i'll get the first one out the way so a certain friend of mine can stop nagging me to read it.
"Go then, there are other worlds than these" -Stephen King
