I'm a big fan of fantasy; I love a long book, I love a long series. I'm also a longtime fan of Stephen King, having read and loved a bunch of his horror novels. So I was really sure I would enjoy the Dark Tower. I started by reading the related books, including Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, the Jack Sawyer books (which I loved, by the way; can't wait for the third). I've finally finished all 7 DT books, and here are my thoughts. The TLDR though is I think that Stephen King is much better at writing standalone stories than series. Every writer has their quirks, their idiosyncrasies, and I think SK's do not serve him well in this context.
Fair warning, I'm spoiling a lot in this post.
Firstly, I found the pacing of the series as a whole completely bizarre. Huge plot events happen at random points in the books. Roland loses his fingers immediately at the start of book 2. The riddle contest happens right at the start of book 4, strange place to have a story break. Books 5 and 6 feel like they drag and drag, and then the final book races through one plot point after another. Few of the books felt like they had a clear story arc, with the notable exceptions of 4 and 5 since they basically are standalone stories (and happen to have been my favourites).
My main gripe with the story as a whole is the feeling that nothing ever seems to happen for any reason. The level of deus ex machina throughout is truly staggering, and lampshading it at the end does not make it a compelling literary device. He can call it ka all he wants, but so many things feel like they happen out of nowhere. The characters just know what to say and what to do and when to do it. Why? Because they just do. If I took a drink every time a character said that they didn't know how they knew something, they just do, I might have had a more enjoyable time. The single biggest disappointment in this regard was Roland's motivation for seeking the tower, a great mystery well set up in the first book. You spend four whole books wondering where his motivation comes from, wherefore his quest, only to find out that a magic glass ball just told him to.
In relation to this, the characters as a whole are pretty boring and flat. Roland, Susannah, and Jake never seem to have any actual struggles. They learn to shoot and throw plates at the drop of a hat, simply acquiring god-like skill seemingly overnight. Ka. They grow and change hardly at all throughout the entire series. The only character with any interest in this regard is Eddie, who actually goes from his helpless junkie self to a courageous hero able to take responsibility and action. And then, of course, his death is also a complete anticlimax since King seems unable to stop himself from telling us he's going to die multiple times before it happens. Holding him up next to the rest of that ka-tet highlights how boring they are.
I find myself also constantly irritated by the way SK would, seemingly at random, introduce new words, elements, devices into the story. The "nineteen" thing comes out of absolutely nowhere, a vague feeling among the party that immediately becomes a plot-driving magic word. "Chassit" also just gets bestowed from above; the fact that it's 19 in some language serves as no real justification. Who is Gan, and if he's so important in the universe (which book 7 would lead you to believe), why hasn't he been mentioned a single time before this? Saying "beware of Dandelo" is meaningless when we don't know what Dandelo is or why Eddie knows about it. The speech patterns from Mejis and the Calla are cute and all, but by the end of the series, long after leaving these places behind, it has devolved into a sort of folksy mish-mash that is pretty grating to read, especially with the random thees and thys thrown around (which he uses incorrectly, by the by). The sköldpadda (swedish for tortoise, if you didn't know) mcguffin, that just shows up to drive the plot forward before being tossed in a gutter, was especially maddening.
Much has been said about Stephen King's insertion of himself into his own story, and I won't harp on it too much, but I did think it was dumb. That, combined with the frankly disgusting descriptions of eyes being plucked out and eaten, pimples being popped, and pus and snot being eaten, made books 6 and 7 maybe my least favourites of the series.
Last: Mordred. What a goddamn waste of time. Mordred and Mia are the focus of a good amount of book 5 and all of book 6, not to mention how much he gets talked about in book 7. We spend all of book 7 worried about him, tracking how he's following, watching him observe the party in Thunderclap, seeing him kill people, and then what happens?? He gets food poisoning from eating Dandelo's horse?? And then he shows up and Roland just shoots him dead instantly?? This is what we spent two and a half books building up to? Nothing makes it more evident that SK had zero plans for this series, or makes it clearer why an outline is essential, than this decision.
I don't think I will be recommending this series to anyone going forward. The whole thing just feels immensely unsatisfying. With everything that happens, I find myself going "yeah, sure, whatever", and that's not the kind of book I like to read.
edit: it's also dumb that Roland could never say "aspirin". tell me, what does this add?
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