wow the first was amazing. a dark epic fantasy western. ill never forget the first time reading the scene in the village when the woman says the word and turns everyone into a killing frenzy against him. After that it was all downhill. overdrawn King nonsense heading in a crazy direction.... it went off the rails. the monorails.
shareI remember reading IT and being just as let down. The novel is one of the greatest horror stories and then in one of the final chapters he has the losers club "as kids" run a train on beverly in the sewers.
Right off the rails, ruined the whole book. So out of place, and it just came off as overly indulgent on his end.
Haha. Yeah it indeed came out of left field. Same with the part in the junk yard....wth was he thinking???
sharehe introduced cool ideas, like the zombies, or the giant mech bear, and never get back to them.
I believe I got to book 4, the wizard and the glass, and with some spoiler free research realized it was only going to degrade even more and more into unfocused Stephen King nonsense and move more and more away from book 1 which I loved so much.
his world was interesting enough without adding in the connection to the "real world".
like man you have a great epic story here, and you have to ruin it with all your Kingisms handfistedly shoved into it.
I dont even know how it ends I was so off put
THE MODERN EDUCATED OPINION...I LIKED THE BEGINNING...THE MIDDLE DID NOT PLAY OUT AS I WANTED...I SKIPPED THE END...HERE ARE MY FUCKING THOUGHTS. 🤮
shareim on wikipedia going though the last 3 books I didnt read. What a convoluted mess............
reading the plot synopsis form one book ". The Wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model') and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves with only a few casualties (including Benny Slightman, to Jake's dismay), all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby."
thank god I didnt read these......
riveting.. I think I will read the first one and pretend it is the only one.
sharesomehow, it only gets worse. as he incorporates himself in the story as a character. as well as other characters from other books.
Nothing screams epic fantasy like time traveling through portals to buy the deed to the land the tower will be built on.................................
It all turned into garbage, which is possibly brilliant given the subject of the story. It's all about the world turning to shit. Well so did the meta story about it.
The first book is truly brilliant. I quite enjoyed the sequel, but it's certainly a detour from where you thought we were going. The third book is like... a popcorn movie, I guess. That he couldn't be bothered to write the ending for. There was your big red flag. I enjoyed the fourth book, but honestly, I don't feel any of the Gunslinger backstory adds jack squat to the overall mythos.
Where things really go off the rails is the final books where he decides to tie all his books, and the works of other celebrated creators, into one loopy mega narrative. Including writing his own ass into the story like Deadpool having a wet dream. It felt to me like ideas he was throwing around that wern't very good, but never coming up with anything better, he just ran with it.
The only saving grace is the ending where he left himself an open door for him, or some other writer, to fix the mess he made.
The youtube videos out there connecting all the tangents of his BS into a cohesive narrative make the most outlandish conspiracy theories look tame. It's an absolute mess.
I randomly bring up the first book to fellow book enthusiasts who never read it. telling them how everyone went crazy reenacting Roland shooting a crazed village man or child in the face as they stab at him and he reloads lightning fast. sounds crazy but its such an epic scene and they get it.
its just like he brings stuff up that has no payoff and we never see again. then he just brings up concepts out of nowhere that are supposed to just work. but have no previous footing in his world..
haha thats fair I just read the wiki on it. many hate on the end but you are right. maybe somone can fix that mess. because the actual land Roland occupies is interesting with the guardians and crumbling remnants of civilizations. just how he wrote it is shit
There's a real poetry in the language of The Gunslinger that isn't present in the later novels. It's a book i've read over and over again over the years.
shareisnt it weird as fuck to think "well the book ends, but now the next cycle Roland will have the horn of eld and he has a chance to win". which even in my research I still cant find out what it does or how it'd help him win.
that aside wtf? thats like writing LOTR where instead Frodo kills Gollum, and hence cant compete his mission, so it just resets to the beginning in Fellowship.
my buddy assures me this is the only way the saga ever could have ended. idk. i like the core idea, mind you. the notion that the only away to save creation/existence is to trap it in an enteral loop. this is a staple of science fiction going way back. the whole ouroborus. but i don't believe the ground work for this ending was properly laid throughout the saga. this is ground that Michael Moorcock covered to far greater effect. (King steals a lot from Moorcock btw)
sharebut why would he have to trap creation in an eternal loops?
sharethe unraveling of everything, a return to the void, of non existence, the anti-big bang. if anybody wins, the game is over. the only true victory is the struggle. Sisyphus. Cheating death.
shareis that what will theoretically happen in the books? im just not super into it clearly so looking for clarification. if he does succeed wouldn't Roland finally get live out his life? I agree if it restarts Roland would in theory cheat death and so would the universe, instead of dying billions of years from that event.
but what's preferable? Roland winning, getting his revenge, and living out his life. or reliving over and over and over the trials, tribulations, pain and anguish as those around him die over and over again as he fails his mission and then restarts it?
There's really good ideas in there. Bringing in Father Callahan, the vampires, the Breakers. That was good stuff. He should have kept it simple, smaller. Only involved a handful of his own works and that's it. Less is more. Keep it mysterious. I wish he'd rewrite those last three books. It was a rush job after his harrowing brush with death and they suck.
shareif the other robots look as epic as this artists rendition of Shardik I want more
https://preview.redd.it/blroe4c8cobx.jpg?auto=webp&s=cd1f2f84e03d2a786d74377feb6ae5afc1b02132
yaa agreed like afew characters sure and smaller. like I said I never read it only the summaries, but it seems hes grasping for multiple new characters/idea/ ways to connect it to another one of his books rather than working with what he has.
lol in a lot of ways he was hip on the whole shared universe hype that's all the rage now.
i'm not getting the most out of it cause I haven't read all the king books. In particular, I haven't haven't read Talisman or Black House, and I barely remember Hearts in Atlantis. talking to super King nuts who read his books over and over like religion, apparently they find the whole of his Dark Tower very rewarding.
thats fair I guess. but my aunt was a big reader and thought it was shit and she read lots of King. I could see that. however from my own bias as a mostly fantasy reader, thats probably why my disappointment is extra high
shareCompletely disagree with this. You have forgotten the face of your father….
“The Drawing Of The Three” was so much better than “The Gunslinger” for me. I didn’t really care for how the first book was written, so take of that what you will. And “Wizards & Glass” is my favorite of all the books.
Yes, Dark Tower novels did go down in quality after 4th book/Wizards, but up until that point he was firing on all cylinders. With each story growing in all directions. King almost died after Wizards by being ran over, so I cut him some slack on his change of mind/writing pace & how he tried his best to finish the story ASAP.
A Dark Tower fan with cancer, who wouldn’t be alive to finish the saga, ran into King & begged him to tell her how it all ended.. He said it made him feel horrible because he knew he didn’t have the answer. He also realized how slowly he was writing the books. So he sped up the process in a mad dash for the finish line… That sucks & all but again he was hit by a car, loaded up on painkillers & worried he might not be alive long enough to finish it with his old writing pace. Anyway, the first 4 books are amazing.
"“The Drawing Of The Three” was so much better than “The Gunslinger” for me. I didn’t really care for how the first book was written, so take of that what you will. And “Wizards & Glass” is my favorite of all the books. "
Was it though........ a standalone epic fantasy western. improved on by... adding two people from another dimension/timeline. a schizo and a drug smuggler........ I mean its subjective. but thats a firm no from me.. thats be like if fellowship of the rings ended. and in two towers. the towers are actually the world trade towers in NY and a portal opened ect ect. and Tolkien was now a character.....
"Yes, Dark Tower novels did go down in quality after 4th book/Wizards, but up until that point he was firing on all cylinders. With each story growing in all directions"
what direction was that exactly? I dont see one. I see a series of events, loosely connected. not really going anywhere. introducing new ideas and concepts, that dont really ever. pay off later. we do get some important backstory on Roland when he was young. how did that pay off later?
"He said it made him feel horrible because he knew he didn’t have the answer. He also realized how slowly he was writing the books"
thats not a good way to write... not saying all epic series need to have the end known at the beginning. but it becomes clear he had none. and if you dont write with an end goal in mind/ complete story and how it'll go, you kind of meander
Yes, I disagree with you & your opinion on this. Which is why I said “…for me.”
That’s what’s great about the first book, someone like you can just read it & stop there. For me, again, I barely made it through the first book the first time, but was glad I did when “Drawing of The Three” peeked up my interest.
Secondly, King didn’t say he had no idea where the story was going. Of course he had a rough outline/idea with Roland/Dark Tower etc at the end, but yes, he did not know the true ending. Many authors don’t know the true ending until the story takes them there. That’s not “a good way to write” or a bad way to write. It’s just how the process works for Stephen King.
for sure a matter of taste.
but I have to disagree with it "just being a process". that may work for a single book, but even then. when its a multi book series, what really elevates it is payoff later. not that King needs my advice, but when I think of the best books I read that happens. and not like an author cant sneak stuff in later and it appear as if it was his/her plan all along.
Well, that’s his process.
Everyone has different approaches to creating. King let’s the characters/story take him for “a ride”. Others have the ending they want right out of the gate. It’s not really something to disagree or agree with unless you are a writer/creative yourself & have your own process.
The “proof is in the pudding” as they say. I myself do not like how “Dark Tower” ended, but also feel it’s about the journey as much as the ending, at least for me.
theres just no way to do it that way unless you have a plan. and his books showed in the series show that imo
I noticed above you didn’t even finish the story, so…? How can you really judge anything? Wikipedia?.. Nope.
Anyway, we’re just going in circles at this point. Agree to disagree, again.
He has great ideas. He sets up amazing characters, settings, atmospheres, mysteries, everything. He simply can't stick a landing. I think he writes blindly forward until he feels it's about time to wrap things up, pulls a quick ending out of nowhere, and calls it a day. I usually adore the first 80% of most of his books. Also, in the past several years, he's gotten a very bad case of SJW disease which affects his newer work and has made him ashamed of his best earlier work. Somehow he bungled his own ending as well. Very meta.
shareYup. Dude should have stuck to the cool shit.
share