The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King (Spoilers Ahead!)

Since college, one of my best friends has been attempting to get me to read The Dark Tower series. Late in 2016, I started requested them from the library and here's my take on the individual books after having read them for the first time. I have a feeling that this is the sort of series that you should read multiple times to really understand completely.  I didn't know that there was a movie based on the series coming out when I started, so that was just fortuitous timing.

The Gunslinger -  I started this in November of 2016 and it took me WEEKS to read it. It does a great job of scene setting and you could really feel the expanse of the world and the simultaneous closeness and claustrophobia of it. But it also goes back and forth in time, back in forth in location, apparently alluding to and foreshadowing events in future novels, but it was truly maddening to read it because I had no idea what was going on or what was important. Also, this is when I learned why people criticize King for his use of adverbs - he never met one he didn't like, that's for sure.

The Drawing of the Three - This book was amazing! The edition I borrowed from the library had an introduction written by King in it that summarized the first book and focused my attention on the main points of the first book.  And then there was an amazing and shocking first scene and the action and tension just kept rising from there. This one was a page turner and I found myself desperately trying to find five minutes here and there to read it.

The Waste Lands - I wanted to like this book, I really did, but I just didn't. I kept falling asleep to King's interminable descriptions.  I'll call it an educational experience, though, because I kept having to look things up (Hohner is a German company specializing in harmonicas, for the record).  Words I looked up: coruscating, exordium, skylarking, jade as in a "saucy jade," and drogue.  I also looked up the novel The Bridge of San Luis and the author Richard Adams. 

Wizard and Glass - I wanted to like this book, too. I think I will like this book if I ever read this series again. I imagine there's lots of foreshadowing and important details that will be important later on.  I'm positive that's the case. But as a first time reader, I just wanted to scream in frustration with every passing moment.  The book is essentially a flashback (I'm sure it's an important flashback!), but I just could not force myself to care about it.  But I acknowledge that I'm probably wrong and may someday come back and love this book.  (No. I'm never rereading this.)

The Wind Through the Keyhole - It took approximately six weeks for me to get a copy of this book from our library and when I got it, the pages reeked of cigarette smoke, so I just bought it on my Kindle for $8.99.  It was actually kind of nice because a number of the proper nouns in the book were actually defined within the Dark Tower world if you clicked on them for more information.  Anyway.  This book is sort of a stand alone flashback/story within a story within a story kind of thing and I really liked it. I'll credit King with some solid storytelling because I always knew where we were in the nesting dolls of stories.  As I write this, not having finished the series yet (May 2017), I'm not sure WHY I read this, in terms of the larger narrative, but I'm hoping there's some payoff at the end.

Wolves of the Calla - Things are finally starting to come together in this book.   I honestly still don't know what's happening in the overall story,  but some of the foreshadowing from earlier books is starting to pay off,  the characters' relationships are developing into more than folks sitting around telling tales by the campfire,  and there was an actual plot to this one.  Once I actually started to read this 700 page tome, it didn't take long to get into it. It's possible I stayed up late a couple of nights for just one more chapter. I'm quite excited to read the next one.  The mashing of genres here between sci-fi, western, horror, and fantasy is delightful and well done.  Thumbs up, King.

Song of Susannah - WTF did I just read? Stephen King is an egomaniacal piece of lint.   This stupidly slow novel of how Susannah/Mia is going to give birth to a demon child is over 400 pages and the actual birth is one freaking sentence and yet we get endless pages about King himself and his writing block. I just...no. No, no, no.  He lost his outline? He can't go on anymore? Well, welcome to how I feel about this stupid series. Ugh. One more to go. It better pay off or I'm going to sing from the roof  about how very overrated this entire series is.

The Dark Tower - I thought this book was okayish.  I mean, I liked the ending. The idea that reaching the Tower is his goal and once he gets there, he has to start all over again seems like a pretty good metaphor for life in that every time you get to a major goal in your life, there's something else out there to reach.  I don't mind that. Life is for the living and living is in the journey, not the destination. I do not mind the ending. I minded so many other things, particularly Stephen King's authorial voice and Stephen King as an actual character. It just reeked of lazy writing (why is that turtle scrimshaw used? because King put it there!); it seemed almost as if he couldn't come up with in-world reasons for things to happen, so he'd just randomly make it all about how the author's sober now. Stephen King thinks highly of himself, but I do not feel kindly towards him, if I'm honest.
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So, here's my take on the series overall:

I finished this mid-August of 2017, so the whole series took ten months to finish.

I basically think of the triad of good storytelling as character, plot, and setting.  King does setting very, very well. I really feel like this mashup of genres is brilliant. I can picture Mid-World in my head and, while I don't want to visit there, it sounds like it would be a compelling place. I have images of Lud in my head and I think about those images frequently.   His plot is okay, although I must admit to wanting more signposts along the way. At one several points, I honestly didn't know why were going where we were going, but I just sort of went with it. King's characters are one-dimensional and mostly* forgettable.  (I actually think the Harry Potter series suffers from similar issuess, so I'm not just criticizing King for this. Also, I can barely write a coherent sentence, so King and Rowling can go tell me, quite fairly on their parts, to shove it.)

So I didn't love this. I think it has promise, but I think the last two books were terrible for the most part and the rest of the series was dreadfully inconsistent in terms of writing and holding my interest. I think the whole story could probably be edited down to 1000 pages in total. I don't think I'll be recommending this books to anyone I know, but I'm glad I can check them off my bucket list.

I repeatedly wrote in my book by book reviews that I think this series would benefit from some rereading, but I will guarantee you that I will not revisit these books. But I do think that if I read these again, I bet those earlier books would mean so much more to me than they currently do.  So, if you want a rambling epic, this could be for you, but I make no guarantees.

Now the question remains. Do I go see the movie that is getting such terrible reviews? 

*There are some exceptions. Oy, I'm talking to you, buddy.