"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

Having made it to the ending, after all this time spent with Roland and his ka-tet, I feel confident saying the Journey to the Tower was absolutely worth the read. Looking back at all of it, the ending makes perfect sense. It was the only way this story could ever end.
This last book was a truly fitting last puzzle piece to King's magnum opus. From the moment you pick up this book, you know you'll be in for a rollercoaster of emotions. There were multiple moments where I had to put the book down, I couldn't read the words because my eyes were full of tears. I can't give this book any less than five stars. It absolutely destroyed me, in the best possible way. I dreaded reading on at multiple points, knowing what would happen next, knowing it was the only way this story could go.

"If Ka will say so, then let it be so." ( )

Was it the best book I've ever read? I do not know. Was it the best series I've ever read? I don't know either. But regardless I loved every second of it and couldn't stop reading until I was done. Roland's story was something I HAD to see concluding this year and I don't know why. I am happy that I did. And I recommend the journey for anyone who is even mildly interested in fantasy books. It's a damn good series. It didn't sadly make me a fan of Stephen King, but it did make me a fan of Roland. If KA wills it, I will read something by King again, but for time being I say farewell and thankee sai. ( )

I thought this was a fine ending to the series, and typical Stephen King. Many people hated it, saying it wasn't really an ending -- but it DID end, and I think when ka rolls one more time, we know who will sit in the top room of the Dark Tower once and for all. ( )

Can't believe after over a year I've finally finished the series. I didn't always love it (the 4th book being a particular example), but once I finished the very last line (the same as the very first line, well done Mr. King) I knew the journey had been worth it. And isn't that what it was all about? The journey. I can understand how some people would be disappointed in the ending, wanting an epic battle, or some sort of resolution, but I think what King (and Roland through King) has demonstrated, that it is never about the battle or the resolution (the end) its about how you got there.

*and also I like that Susannah, Eddie, and Jake (and maybe Oy) received a somewhat happy ending. ( )

come ho detto, da ragazzina ho odiato il primo libro della Torre Nera ed essendo già allora quella che Stephen King chiama "Fedele Lettore" lessi pure il secondo, lo odiai un pò meno ma comunque abbastanza per decidere di aver chiuso con la serie. Nei decenni successivi, da buona F.D., ho letto qualunque cosa pubblicata da S.K. e sempre da buona F.D. ho continuato a sentirmi in colpa x l'abbandono di Roland&company ... ora che l'ho finita so che è King che dovrebbe sentirsi in colpa per averci propinato sta porcata!!

Resto una Fedele Lettrice, la compulsione è ormai troppo radicata, ma credo che ormai si sia incrinata la fiducia a livelli critici

il giudizio effettivo è di 1 stella ma sono così felice di aver concluso (chiuso davvero stavolta) che aggiungo una stella e mezza di pura gioia e un altra mezza per il doppio finale

SPOILER
dopo l'orribile orribile orribile sesto volume ero sbottata con: "spero che muoiano tutti!" beh, sono praticamente morti tutti e ci sono rimasta malissimo :) ( )

Großartig! Und dieses Ende... Ich lieb's! ( )

I don't know that, having finally finished all 5000 pages or so of the Dark Tower series, I really am impressed as much as I think I maybe should be.

An odd statement, no?

I definitely liked this series. At times more, at times less. Coming to the end after several months of reading, on-again-off-again, the conclusion seems both appropriate... and disappointing. I do feel like I've missed out on some key insight, some key "Ah-ha!" I was supposed to get, given all I've heard about this series over the years.

And yet I am impressed. I did like it. There is a certain kind of satisfaction in the incompleteness of the ending, the... dare I say it... fallback... to the infinite regress. Perhaps. After all, the first book, written, what 35 years earlier, did start abruptly. You just dropped into the story.

I don't know, the more I think about it, the more tied together it all does in fact feel.

And yet... :)

I wish I could give this 4.5 stars. But I think, perhaps for a change, I will round up. ( )

This book is the best I've ever read. Of course, it doesn't make sense without having read the entire series. I've only rarely read the same book twice, but this series, I will re-read. ( )

Interminable. Execrable. Self-indulgent. ( )

there's a lot that wasn't quite right with this - namely roland acting out of character too many crucial times to count - but this ending felt so perfect and right that i can't help but be left with the feeling like i loved this. i didn't - i liked it a lot, mostly - but that ending soared. it somehow wasn't what i expected at all (at all, at all) but in retrospect it really is one of the only ways to end it, and definitely the right way. loved, loved, loved that last line and what led up to it.

what i didn't love about the book is partly confused with what i didn't like about the overall story in places, like how susannah is picked up and carried the way she is just doesn't feel right to me (but what do i know). things that were in all or most of the books. or things that felt unresolved (or were we supposed to assume that the black glass was destroyed on 9/11?). i didn't love the way susannah left, although i did love that they were all together again in the end. what an uplifting ending for stephen king, who doesn't usually indulge in sentimentality like that. but it felt good. what felt less good, to me, was the way it seemed like he was repeating the ending of it where they weren't going to remember their history or what brought them together. i guess he must have a reason for that, or that he's saying something since he's repeating it - maybe that trauma doesn't have to be the ties that are strongest? - but i'm not sure how i feel about those memories fading. i also didn't love the introduction of patrick at the end there, although i do think what he's saying with that character is important. throughout the last couple of books we're told over and over again that stephen king, as the writer, isn't in charge, that he's not really directing what happens. so i think it's important that he uses another artist - and one that has no words, is mute, at that - to really be the one who can be seen almost as a god in the story. i think he's making a powerful point about art here, but i don't love the character or his participation. probably it's bringing in someone so crucial at such a late point in the story that bothers me. what bothered me the very most, though, was how roland wasn't roland over and over again in this book. the most obvious time was when they meet the old man and roland gets taken in by jokes. jokes. roland. a man who hardly ever even smiles was undone by a series of bad jokes? it doesn't work for me. over and over susannah saw things that roland didn't, and she's a gunslinger and perfectly capable in her own right, but no way roland didn't notice those things. it just doesn't work for me.

still, none of those things are really what i'm left with. i found that throughout this journey i didn't even mind the vampires, which are one of my least favorite things to read about. especially when i thought of them more as metaphoric vampires, which tracks with all kinds of ways governments or people in power take from the people they're supposed to be representing. it's not my favorite way to talk about that, but it worked. and i really enjoyed seeing some characters from other books reappear here, and just the way this entire story is an umbrella for basically everything else he writes. i can see why he talked of retirement once this was done, but i'm glad he kept going. i also really really loved the way he inserted himself into the story, and how it wasn't indulgent, but just so fun and interesting. there's a lot of really great stuff he did here. i'm so glad i finally read these.

"Anyone who doesn't think the imagination can kill you is a fool." ( )

Not much to say about the end of such an epic tale. This certainly a long part of the story but hard to put down. You get so lost as the members of our beloved ka tet grow closer to the tower, it's impossible to not be fascinated and drawn to their hope and fear, kind of like the draw of the Crimson King himself. I can't say there is a happy ending, or even a satisfying ending, but it does feel like the right ending, after all is said and done, there can be no other ending. So to Stephen King I say thankya. I feel we were well met ( )

I would have rated it 5 stars if, every time the fantasy enveloped me, fake Steven King didn’t drag me back to reality al la a horrible episode of coitus interruptus! Worse than jarring. ( )

ok, holy fuck

this series, as a whole, has a lot of ups and downs. periods of good, fast-paced plotting and unique and exciting character development, surrounded by dull dull stretches of nothing much at all, and plot points that border on racism and homophobia thrown in every now and then for good measure. (japanese tourists with cameras, talking in broken, l-laden english? REALLY?) there is an unevenness brought on by the fact that some books have huge gaps between the time they were written. i am also generally annoyed by mr. king's driving need to overlap his stories, so those of us who don't care to read every single one of his thousand books aren't let in on the joke. this series is particularly full of that, and though he tries to make sure we are not completely lost, it still grates on me.

still, there is real emotion here, and a really good story. but the thing that redeems it all is the end, the very end, which he states within the book was added because he knew it would be demanded, so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. who can not read something like that when its placed in front of you? still, its nice that he gave the option.

that ending, though. it made me jump up and yell with joy. not because it was joyous, but because it was right, and it was good. no backing away from the necessary here. still, i can see how people would be angry with it. the unnecessary after word says simply "don't send me angry letters and don't try to find my house." fine requests.

so, if you want a good fantasy/western with parts that may make you tear your hair out in frustration, but that will leave you sad that you get no more when its over, and if you are already ok with mr. kings level of hokey-ness, i recommend these.

start with the gunslinger. its the first one.

( )

There is nothing I could possibly say to do The Dark Tower justice. Are endings ever what we hope them to be? And yet, I am satisfied. It's never easy saying good-bye to our friends; and after the thousands of pages spent with Roland and his ka-tet, I feel as if they have indeed become my friends.

I'll leave this short with a quote from The Dark Tower:
"I hope most of you know better. Want better. I hope you came to hear the tale, and not just munch your way through die pages to the ending. For an ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man (or Manni) can open. I've written many, but most only for the same reason that I pull on my pants in the morning before leaving the bedroom—because it is the custom of the country.

Should you go on, you will surely be disappointed, perhaps even heartbroken...There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal 'Once upon a time.
Endings are heartless.'
Ending is just another word for goodbye. " ( )

This book, it broke me in places. Of course it did, I knew it would. I was so invested in this story, it's characters, their journey. I didn't want it to end...but, like them, I HAD to reach the tower. The highs and lows of this book were so close in proximity that I found myself having to put the book down to breathe. I read it at a breakneck speed for the most part, but sometimes I found myself closing it to have a good cry (and I don't cry, like at all). The ending...well I was so excited to get there and figure everything out. And now I know, I did not see it coming, and Stephen King is a bit of an asshole. But was it still perfection? It was, and I'd do it all over again. Bravo Mr. King, but also, bite me. ( )

Well, so much for this series. I don't even have the energy to skip to the end and see what happens. It just got too boring. ( )

I am totally stoked that I did finish this series ... it's been on my bucket list for far too long.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the entire series ... from why? To, is this sloppy? To, is this for real? To you've got to be kidding me (both in a good way and a bad way). To, OMG! To, I can't put this down ...

Overall, I think it's brilliant. However, as with anything ... enjoy the journey. ( )

So glad to have finished this epic (how many words?) story. So glad I wasn't waiting for the next instalment like many of King's readers were (especially with the scare of the author's own near-death in 1999). But I have grown used to the violence of gunslingers, anticipated encounters with evil beings and unexpected friends, and most of all I will miss the language:
Long days and pleasant nights (May you have twice the number). I see you well. Thankee sai. Ka-tet. For your father's sake. Chassit. Lobstrosities!
The text size in my book was very small, but I found it didn't take long before I was following the story instead of the page numbers.
As for a good ending to a long story? Well, it obviously has only just begun! I read that Black House has many tie-ins to The Dark Tower. I think it is more like sharing some of the author's own mind than anything else. I really enjoyed his use of metafiction to write himself into the books, kinda makes you think outside the box. Recommended read? - definitely a great one for time to fill (the series took me over a month with the added extras), and very fun (once I got over the gunslinging aspect that doesn't much suit any pacifist). I look forward to encountering some aspect of the Dark Tower again in other King novels. (Thank you, S. K.) ( )

Esta saga tiene en muchos momentos una calidad increible, funcionan muchas de las situaciones a las que se enfrentan los muy buenos personajes que King creo, en este libro en especial se siente que se hace demasiado largo, no pone situaciones muy originales, apresura algunos echos pese a ser una conclusion que satisface ( )

I LOVED this series of books. I may even read all 7 again at some point. Probably one of my favorite endings of a book :) ( )

And so at last we come to The Dark Tower, the final book in Stephen King’s series of the same name (the long tale he’s said is his Lord of the Rings).

The first act is fast-paced—more so than anything else in this saga of Roland the gunslinger and his “ka-tet” of misfit warriors. After the birth of Mordred, his horrifying son by a demon mother, Roland and his companions are reunited and set about trying to save the remaining Beams that support the multiverse. Doing so involves defeating the Breakers (psychics who are destroying the Beams) and preventing King (yes, the author himself) from being killed in an automobile accident. The cost is high: several characters die, both major and minor. But Roland and the survivors succeed.

Then the pace falters. The second act becomes a drawn-out trek to the Dark Tower, the lynchpin of the multiverse and Roland’s ultimate goal. He eventually reaches it, but not before King takes us on some unnecessary tangents, including an extended session on how to make hide clothing. “I’m not ready to be there yet,” Roland says at one point about the Dark Tower (perhaps speaking for King; I got the sense he didn’t want to end the story before he absolutely had to). “Not quite ready … I need a little more time to prepare my mind and my heart. Mayhap even my soul.”

Things pick up in the last act, which features Roland defeating Mordred and the Crimson King—as close as the series has to a big baddie—and finally entering the Dark Tower. I won’t spoil what he finds inside, but I think it serves as a fitting ending, even if it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped.

So what do we make of all this?

My biggest takeaway was that, as much I appreciate how creative King is, I wish he’d followed a more traditional story structure. For Book 7, he could have clustered the big events—saving the universe and reaching the Dark Tower—for greater emotional impact. For the series as a whole, King could have given Roland a clearer goal and a more-involved antagonist. Getting to the Dark Tower isn’t that compelling; we never know what he’s supposed to do there. And the fight with the Crimson King isn’t as meaningful as it could be, because this is the first time we’re seeing the mad ruler. (Roland also defeats him with a cheap trick. I wish he’d used something he’d learned along the way, rather than resorting to an option King only introduced in the final hundred pages or so.)

I’m also still mixed about King injecting himself into the story. He does this in several ways: by creating a multiverse within his own works, by making himself a character in this one, and by commenting on the narrative as it goes along.

I’ve already talked a lot about the multiverse concept in my reviews of earlier entries in the series. In his afterword, King clarifies that, “My idea was to use the Dark Tower stories as a kind of summation, a way of unifying as many of my previous stories as possible beneath the arch of some über-tale. I never meant that to be pretentious (and I hope it isn’t), but only as a way of showing how life influences art (and vice versa).” It’s a neat idea. But for it to really sing, I would have liked the events in non-Dark Tower books to have more impact on Roland’s larger story (beyond running back favorite characters).

In my Book 6 review, I also pondered the perils of writing yourself into your story. On balance, I think it worked here, and it was fun when the characters ragged on their creator. (Roland and co. call King various forms of “lazy” and “cowardly,” and at one point an old villain dismisses him as a “shoddy quick-sketch artist.”) But having a Stephen King character in a Stephen King book makes certain scenes a bit absurd.

I haven’t said much about how King frequently breaks out his author voice, though. He mostly does this to foreshadow coming events. For example, before a major character dies, King writes, “He slipped the .40 into his docker’s clutch almost without thinking, moving us a step closer to what you will not want to hear and I will not want to tell.” Most authors couldn’t get away with this, but King knows how to set your expectations in a way that builds tension rather than sapping it. (The asides also reinforce the conceit that King-the-character met his protagonists; if the fictional King sees them as real people he created, it would certainly pain him to kill them.)

Final verdict: for all the criticisms I made above, I’m still glad I read the Dark Tower books. They’re inventive, surprising, and original, and I won’t forget them.

But The Lord of the Rings remains my standard for epic tales.

(For more reviews like this one, see www.nickwisseman.com) ( )

Criando uma trama fantástica a cada reviravolta, Stephen King supera todas as expectativas neste maravilhoso final da série A Torre Negra, uma saga épica de sete volumes, que foi publicada ao longo de mais de vinte anos. Entremeando histórias, mundos e panos de fundo vastos e complexos, esta conclusão muito esperada pelos leitores é criativa, de tirar o fôlego, corajosa, visionária e vale cada segundo de espera e de leitura. Roland Deschain e seu ka-tet viajaram juntos e separados, espalhados e distantes, em mundos paralelos, em diferentes tempos e espaços. Agora o destino de Roland, Susannah, Jake, padre Callaham, Oi e Eddie são unidos na própria Torre Negra, que os atrai para cada vez mais perto de seus próprios fins. Neste capítulo final, o grupo acompanha o último Pistoleiro na missão para encontrar – e salvar – a Torre das mãos do Rei Rubro e seus aliados, e o desfecho da missão implacável de Roland e seu ka-tet finalmente é revelado.

I'm so happy it's over. Stephen King is not a writer for me.

Well, reading this added another experience. And the lesson is that don't read series or books where it's obvious that the author doesn't have a plan himself for the book series. These books were at places good but mostly just a sequence of word with no content, no message and no entertaining value. The common theme seemed to be "steal something form a book, song or movie" rather than an intrinsic red thread. That the books are based on a poem "Child Roland to the Dark Tower came" is repeated so many times without it being true in anything but the most weak way.

Anything good with this book? The absence of the ridiculous repetitions of "19" present in the previous book, and it's not good when the absence of something is a book's main quality. ( )

I really wanted to finish this before the new year, say true, but it was not meant to be.

There's probably something that could be said about the metafictional aspects – perhaps something akin to Heinlein's ideas of "pantheistic solipsism" and "world as myth" – of the later books of the Dark Tower series, but I'm not sure there's much value in saying it. There is too much nodding and winking to one's self (almost literally, in a few spots), and there are far too many words expended in finishing this tale: Their inflationary nature devalues the parts of the story that were worth anything to begin with.

I will begrudgingly admit that I like the ending, the true ending that is, not the several false ones. It doesn't make up for the terribleness of the movie that came out last year, but it does allow for a certain circularity that beckons "many minds and hands," to borrow a Tolkienian phrase.

It was good to have read it, but having read it, I do not anticipate ever wanting to read it again. ( )

A really satisfying conclusion, except for one thing. THERE IS SO MUCH STEPHEN KING IN THIS BOOK. The parts that aren't about Stephen King are wonderful and interesting and enjoyable to read. But. It was the most irritating thing in the world that half the plot revolved around the character King when his presence in previous books was not only boring but also kind of ridiculous. Each bit that talked about how that folksy author Stephen King is practically the key to saving this world and many others made me want to find him and poke him with a pointy stick. They also knocked a star off my rating.

All the parts that were about our main characters being their interesting, well drawn selves were a joy to read. Even the sad or weird or gross parts were fun to read. So that makes it worth it, I suppose. If you were wondering. ( )