The Dark Tower series ending *spoilers*

[pontifex]

a.k.a Fuck you, Stephen King!

yes, I know I'm a little late...

All that (7 large books) for a shitty excuse for an ending?

I enjoyed the books mostly, but the ending was pure crap. It's like he just got tired of writing the books and decided to make a cliched ending. What makes it even worse is his little explanation at the end that "the journey is greater than the destination" or whatever. This makes me think even more that he just got tired of writing it and he's trying to come up with some lame excuse as to why he stopped.

I haven't read much Stephen King besides this except for Hearts in Atlantis and The Green Mile.

Oh, I also didn't like the introduction of Patrick. This guy can draw stuff and it comes to life or he can something and then erase it to destroy the real life thing. But yet they never really use his abilities. Also, why did they need color from a rose and Roland's blood to be able to kill the Red King? Nothing else required color...Just seems, again, like Patrick was used to create an easy out for Stephen King.

 

[phoenix79]

I hate to say it but I have to agree. I waited for years on Wizard and Glass, then again on Song of Susannah, just to be let down by the ending of the story.

not to mention that most of his books written since the accident have been crap...

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

He always had a problem writing a really good ending. Still a favorite though.

I think I may have finished reading that last book in less than 24hrs after I got it.

 

[Redfraggle]

I'm right there with you. I started reading this series when I was 13 (I'm now 31). I eagerly anticipated each installment of the series. I enjoyed that it incorporated his other works, and yet was distinct from them. I was so pissed off when I read the end that I swore off King for good. I got rid of my large collection of his books and have never even wanted to purchase anything he's written since.

The ending was a cop out that came out of left field. What about everything else in the entire story? WTF did Roland need to be a gunslinger for? Apparently he just needed a random artist to win the war, not his amazing gunslinging skills.

When I read King's letter at the end, I was even more infuriated. I also saw the admission of lameness, and an admonition to not call him on it.

To you Stephen King: Screw off lame jackass. We all know you are capable of more. It would have been better to leave it unfinished (as you intimated could happen) than to wreck it with such a ridiculous ending.

 

[nageov3t]

the Dark Tower series as a whole went quickly downhill following Wastelands.

 

[dabuddha]

When King turned himself into a God in the series, that's when it started going downhill for me.

 

[highland145]

Thankfully, I haven't wasted any $$ on him since he took for hell and ever to put out #3(?) in the series. No excuse.

 

[Redfraggle]

When King turned himself into a God in the series, that's when it started going downhill for me.

I actually saw that coming as a natural (and logical) evolution of the story. I even detailed it out in a paper I wrote during college. I was fine with this...now where's my paper and pencil so I can draw and erase him?

 

[SlitheryDee]

I wonder how long he agonized over it before giving up and sending in the ending that he knew was unworthy of the series. From now on, when an author all but says "Stop here because the ending is crap" I'll take their advice.

I have a great idea for a thread.

Title it: "Let's write an ending worthy of the Dark Tower series".

When we all fail miserably too, maybe we can finally shut up about it.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I stopped reading the series about half way through Wizard in Glass. It was so boring and depressing, I lost all enjoyment from reading it.

Someone feel free to post more particulars about the ending, I will never read it. So, a guy can use magic when doing drawings? Sounds like the old Daffy Duck cartoon where Bugs is drawing him. Combined with the ending of that episode of Amazing Stories about the WWII bomber missing the landing gear. Real original SK.

He should have asked Peter Straub for help.

 

[Deeko]

Strong endings have never really been Stephen King's strong suit. I've read a lot of his stuff....I won't say most because he's written about 5,000 books....but I have read quite a lot of them, and rarely am I satisifed with the ending. I guess I've come to accept it.

Anyway, yea, the ending to the Dark Tower sucked, but most of the last two books sucked. Book #6 in particular was terrible, #7 was a little better up until the ending. I also agree that the whole "writing himself into the story" was absurd.

Oh well, I still enjoyed reading the series.

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

The whole point of the ending was to show that there was some hope for Roland to redeem himself. He had sacrificed everything and everyone in his life for the singleminded pursuit of the the tower. He had begun the process by learning how to be human again with his fellow gunslingers, but didn't quite finish the process. The Tower gave him a chance to do it right.

Was it the ending I had hoped for? No, not really. The second half of that book was extremely depressing, but you don't go into anything King writes thinking it's gonna be a happy-happy-joy-joy experience. You can be fairly certain at least one character you care about is going to die.

The thing that bugged me the most was the lame way that Flagg died. He was a bad-ass, centuries old magician and demon spawn that people had been trying to kill, and even set a nuke off right in front of him, and he was killed by a fucking BABY!

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

I gave up on the series halfway through Book 6.

 

[bobdole369]

All that (7 large books) for a shitty excuse for an ending?

He did tell you (or at least make it known that it was an option) - not to read the ending you know.

I for one was quite disappointed. I read the first three lo about the time I was 14ish and it was roughly 1993 once I discovered them in a dusty SE Michigan library. I ravenously set about devouring those books like a starving beggar. I wanted SO bad to live in the world of North Central Positronics and the Sombra Corporation. I must have read those 3 books a dozen times.

I had nearly given up hope when book 4 was published in 1997, and I had recently enlisted in the Navy. This was one of my many joys. I really enjoyed book 4, the great story, though I felt it out of place with the rest of the series. I re-read that book at least a dozen times, just like the first 3.

6 more years passed and I'm out of the service. Now I've moved and in a totally different person. Mid-20's with a serious girlfriend, time for reading is short. But I manage to get Wolves of the Calla read in due time. This is where I started resenting King.

I strongly feel that he rushed out the last 3 books simply to get them over with. He relied on magic and simply explained things away far too much. He took too much latitude and ultimately the story started to get unbelievable. He wrote himself into the story too. How arrogant!

Book 6 was nearly unreadable. It took a long time to finish. Seriously. A Thinny?

Book 7 meh. Ruby slippers?
I finished it just to say I was done. Of course I read the ending. Did anybody take King's advice and not?

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

 

[MrMatt]

Remember the flash back in volume 2 to Gilead? Still my favorite section in any book I've ever read, ever. I actually felt devastated for Roland with what happened to the girl

 

[nageov3t]

wasn't that book 3?

I hated Wizard and Glass... I hate extended flashbacks like that on general principle. it's one thing when it's something that adds to the story, but when it's the whole story? how do you get involved in a story when you already know the ending.

 

[freakflag]

If anyone reading this thread is thinking to themselves, 'King is a literary genius. The endings he writes are just too cerebral for these cretins...', I submit as states evidence "Needful Things". When I finished this incredibly long, incredibly boring pile of long winded redundancy (and I DID finish it, though it was alot like work) I closed the book and threw it across the room. I did not read another King book for 5 years. True story.

 

[Paratus]

May I suggest to those of you burned out on SK novels as I was after reading book 7, to read his short story anthologies. They are all uniformly good.

 

[Redfraggle]

May I suggest to those of you burned out on SK novels as I was after reading book 7, to read his short story anthologies. They are all uniformly good.

I thought Bag of Bones was wonderful, beautiful even, and even that doesn't redeem him for me. I just can't bring myself to read his work. Just talking about it makes me angry. It's hard to say which pisses me off more: that he ruined all of his work for me, or that I wasted all that time reading the series all those years.

 

[pontifex]

The whole point of the ending was to show that there was some hope for Roland to redeem himself. He had sacrificed everything and everyone in his life for the singleminded pursuit of the the tower. He had begun the process by learning how to be human again with his fellow gunslingers, but didn't quite finish the process. The Tower gave him a chance to do it right.

Was it the ending I had hoped for? No, not really. The second half of that book was extremely depressing, but you don't go into anything King writes thinking it's gonna be a happy-happy-joy-joy experience. You can be fairly certain at least one character you care about is going to die.

The thing that bugged me the most was the lame way that Flagg died. He was a bad-ass, centuries old magician and demon spawn that people had been trying to kill, and even set a nuke off right in front of him, and he was killed by a fucking BABY!

so why does it start him out halfway through his life already? why wouldn't he start out at being born? I mean, by the time we get to the part where it starts, his life is already fucked up beyond belief.

 

[Jesusthewererabbit]

so why does it start him out halfway through his life already? why wouldn't he start out at being born? I mean, by the time we get to the part where it starts, his life is already fucked up beyond belief.

Because King is fucked in the head, and he wanted to have his greatest villain killed by a fucking BABY!

I've always wanted to know more about the time from the fall of Gilead until he started across the desert, but I think The Little Sisters of Eluria is all we are going to get. I want to see the fight against Farson. I want to see the battle of Jericho Hill. Roland spent 20 years chasing Walter before we ever met him. What other horrible things did he do during that time? Here's a better question: what would Roland have become if he hadn't been driven insane by the pink ball? What made him go todash on Jericho Hill? If it was Black 13, which seems to be pure evil, why would it save the one person who could stop the Crimson King? Why was the Crimson King such a pussy? In Insomnia, he seemed like pure evil, with incredible powers, not an impotent old man who's only power was to use Harry Potter balls. Is the Turtle in IT the same one that's at the other end of the Beam they were following? King left all these unanswered questions just to mess with my head.

I know entirely too much about the Dark Tower.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

I like King's short stories far more than many of his long ones. There are a few long ones that are gems (especially among the older words), like IT, but many like Tommyknockers just don't get near that level.

 

[Paratus]

I will leave you with this parting thought.

At least Kings vampires don't sparkle.

 

[nageov3t]

Because King is fucked in the head, and he wanted to have his greatest villain killed by a fucking BABY!

I've always wanted to know more about the time from the fall of Gilead until he started across the desert, but I think The Little Sisters of Eluria is all we are going to get. I want to see the fight against Farson.

if you've got money to burn, it's actually being covered in a Dark Tower comic book series.

I can't personally speak to how good/bad they are as I'm prejudiced based on the fact that I MF'ing hate flashbacks and couldn't get myself invested in a story where I already knew the outcome.