The last chapter

The Dark Tower

Finally, after six books and god knows how many thousands of pages, King has ended his Dark Tower cycle. It took me a while to read this -- maybe because after so long I didn't want it to end. After recent King books have failed to impress (even Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah had their problems), maybe I didn't want to know if he could pull it all together and end on a high. This is, after all, his crowning work.

So what do I think?

The good bits:

The ending is great -- both the real one, and the one that King bolted on (the Coda) to appease the fans who would be mad with the real one. He cautions you not to read the Coda, but there's no way you can do that. If you've stuck with the quest that long, there's no way you're not going to read every word. I say read it anyway; it may not be the ending you expected or wanted, but it is the right ending.

I can understand what King says about the story being beyond the author's control; yes he could have made the ending happier, or easier on the reader, but it would have felt like a cheat. After this long, at least allow the man to end his story how he sees fit.

It's the freaking Dark Tower! That's a good bit of itself.

The bad bits:

It does feel rushed somewhat. So much happens in this book compared with the previous two that you can't help but feel that he was forcing himself to the end. The book may appear big, but compared with King's other works it's not huge, and you'd think that it would be somewhat bigger, that the final miles to the tower would warrant longer recounting.

Mordred's part is woefully underplayed; he doesn't really do anything right up to the time that he finally catches up with Roland's tet. The same could be said of Patrick Danville; we expected more from him, we expected more of him.