Book #4: The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is the final book (chronologically) in the Dark Tower series. After a disappointing sixth novel, I was hoping for something more enjoyable, but this turned out to be only a slight improvement. It definitely felt to me that the books "jumped the shark" at the point where they turned all meta and Stephen King started inserting himself into the narrative.
In this book, he is mentioned - a lot, far too much, in fact. One of the main plot points involves his well-publicised incident in 1999 when he was hit by a truck when out walking. In the alternative reality though, Roland and his companions discover that the accident has killed King, so set about to alter the course of history, and save the author's life.
There's more, too; in one Alice in Wonderland-inspired scene, guards who are basically clones of Stephen King show up for no apparent reason.
I wanted to enjoy this one, but it was too difficult, which is a shame as the book really pulls out all the stops (expect a few character deaths). Apart from the constant references to its own author, this book felt very over-long, both in length and the dense narrative style, which involved a lot of exposition, and even point of view shifts to minor characters.
Secondly, I didn't really understand the purpose of some of the plot elements that got thrown in, and were quickly forgotten about (dinosaurs under New York, for example).
Also, I had expected this to be a book all about the series' main McGuffin, the Dark Tower itself, but as I read through this book I was reminded of a scene from the Simpsons. The kids are watching a new Itchy and Scratchy episode which shows the cat and mouse duo driving past signs pointing to a fireworks factory. Eventually, Milhouse demands to know: "When are they going to reach the fireworks factory?" At times, I felt like asking: "When are they going to reach the Dark Tower?" The tower itself doesn't really feature at all until literally the final chapter. It felt like too little, too late.
There were some good points; the initial fight against a vampire army was handled well, and I liked the fact that the book introduced two villains: Mordred and The Crimson King. Mordred, described as a kind of shape-shifting human spider, made for a good adversary, but the final confrontation with him, though devastating, was also somewhat anti-climatic, as it felt rushed. When Roland finally meets the Crimson King, it almost feels like the narrative is about the final boss fight from a video game; it's bizarre.
At the end, I didn't really understand why Roland had wanted to go to the tower, but reading the book's Coda did at least bring in an unsettling plot twist, albeit one that King has copied in at least one book that he wrote subsequent to this one.
Overall, I was dissatisfied with the last couple of titles in the series; it definitely started to feel as though the author himself had run out of ideas with this one, and as other reviewers had noted, just wanted to finish writing the books. This one felt like it could have been made at least a hundred pages shorter.
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