I’ve really wanted to get into Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and bought the first few books. I’ve never managed to make it through the first one, The Gunslinger, even though I’ve given it probably five or six attempts. I always make it to the same part in the book where Roland and the kid are using the hand-cart through the tunnels, and it just takes so. fucking. long. to get anywhere and for anything to happen, and my mind starts drifting as I’m reading and then I start missing things and have to go back… That section of the book is so frustratingly boring that I can’t make it through.
I heard from quinn’s ideas is you have to be a pretty big reader of king’s other works in order to read the dark tower.
That’s pretty funny to me. I read the start of a King novel when I was probably too young for it (pretty sure it was It?), and just got bored with it. Never tried reading another for years. A decade or two later I tried the Dark Tower series and ended up binge-reading the first 5 books.
I really love those books, although I absolutely see their flaws and understand why people wouldn’t like them.
Either way, I definitely don’t think you need to be a Stephen King fan to enjoy them. I mean, I’m certainly not and I certainly did. Still haven’t read any of his other works…
I hated book 7. Ruined the whole series for me. I read the last 3 books (excluding Wind through the Keyhole, I’m done) when they came out, book 6 was just a setup/tease for book 7 and I was so excited for it. But it was so dumb and disappointing. I’ve talked to people who liked the ending and I just don’t get it. 6 books building up the existential evil that lived at the center of all existence, and when he gets to the tower to face the evil it’s just an old guy on a balcony throwing Harry Potter hand grenades. You have to suspend so much disbelief to get there, trudge through thousands of pages, and it’s just a sad, pathetic, uninspired, lazy ending.
through thousands of pages, and it’s just a sad, pathetic, uninspired, lazy ending.
I mean, it does literally warn you to stop reading when the characters other than Roland get their happy ending, so if you kept going that’s on you… /s
Also, it’s thematic to the story at hand. It also ends hopefully, as Roland has the horn he did not have the first time through, which is implied to be incredibly important to his quest going well. We see the cycle right before victory, when he gets everyone else their happy endings and redeems his sins enough to earn the horn and, on the next cycle, likely end his quest. Which can be read as very hopeful, but your take isn’t invalid or anything
Its been a long time, like I said I read it right when it came out. I’m glad people enjoyed it! It was quite an investment, and I loved most of the books leading up, even the Wizard and the Glass. You all make some good points but it just didn’t hit me that way and I’m not liable to go back. I hardly read any fiction anymore, except the occasional classic, Philip K Dick, or whenever Joe Abercrombie comes out with a new book I’ll usually pick it up.
6 books building up the existential evil that lived at the center of all existence, and when he gets to the tower to face the evil it’s just an old guy on a balcony throwing Harry Potter hand grenades.
Funny, I absolutely loved this. The banality of evil. And good, too. Everything. The world is falling apart. Even the great evil is not, in the end, that great. Two old (REALLY old) men at the ragged ends of their lives trying to do this one last thing.
Try listening to it as an audio book. It’s really great if someone else pushes you through the dry parts.
Be warned. There’s some real…racist choices made in the audiobook reading.
I honestly despise King’s longer novels. The Dark Tower series is the epitome of his inability to stay focused and well paced.
It’s like he set a goal of some ridiculous book length, thought he needed a bunch of padding to get there, hit the mark and abruptly ends it.
Give me Salem’s Lot, Carrie, Pet Semetary, etc all day but I can’t with Dark Tower.
