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 ( )