Matt's review
The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
by Stephen King
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** spoiler alert **
This seventh and final book of the Dark Tower series is utterly heartbreaking. After slogging through however many thousand pages and sharing all these moments with characters, I found myself attached to their fictional existence. I cared about them. So when all hell broke loose in this book, shattering their ka-tet, I was emotionally devastated. I cried, on more than one occasion. It's possible that I cried as much as I did because I was in a fragile state-of-mind at the time. But really, I believe King was visceral and sincere enough in his prose for me to imagine and believe. The CODA conclusion is the perfect recap, steeped in memory and melancholia and savage disbelief as Roland the Gunslinger walks through the door at the top of the tower, only to be cast back into the desert of the first book, fated to chase the man in black and to find the tower once more. This sad, heroic cycle repeats itself, but with a caveat: there is still hope for change and redemption. And the b...more
This seventh and final book of the Dark Tower series is utterly heartbreaking. After slogging through however many thousand pages and sharing all these moments with characters, I found myself attached to their fictional existence. I cared about them. So when all hell broke loose in this book, shattering their ka-tet, I was emotionally devastated. I cried, on more than one occasion. It's possible that I cried as much as I did because I was in a fragile state-of-mind at the time. But really, I believe King was visceral and sincere enough in his prose for me to imagine and believe. The CODA conclusion is the perfect recap, steeped in memory and melancholia and savage disbelief as Roland the Gunslinger walks through the door at the top of the tower, only to be cast back into the desert of the first book, fated to chase the man in black and to find the tower once more. This sad, heroic cycle repeats itself, but with a caveat: there is still hope for change and redemption. And the best part is that we can carry out that entire adventure in our heads...
Naturally, seeing how I read the final five tower books in a row, I am taking a very long, extended break from reading Stephen King. Having read these books, my respect for the man grew. As King himself admits, he's not a technically gifted writer, but a kind of avatar of stories that flow through him. His prose is hit or miss, and I find several of his motifs and descriptions to border on the redundant and clumsy, but the driving force behind his fiction, the immediacy of the story, rings true and, if you allow it, will propel you and your imagination forward. I cannot say its true for all his works, as I haven't read them, but I think the Dark Tower is a worthy cause....less
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message 1:
by deleted member
03/07/2008 05:11AM
Welcome to the promised land, my friend. (From the cover, the Dark Tower looks uncircumcised. And why is that light-emitting rose all up in my grill?)
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message 2:
by deleted member
03/09/2008 03:26PM
I have only read Pet Sematary, Thinner, and Carrie--and that was a hella long time ago, but King--who, yes, isn't a "technically gifted writer"--writes very viscerally. He keeps you in the game. That's a credit to any writer, I suppose.
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Flagging a post will send it to the Goodreads Customer Care team for review. We take abuse seriously in our discussion boards. Only flag comments that clearly need our attention. As a general rule we do not censor any content on the site. The only content we will consider removing is spam, slanderous attacks on other members, or extremely offensive content (eg. pornography, pro-Nazi, child abuse, etc). We will not remove any content for bad language alone, or being critical of a particular book.
