The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Title: The Dark Tower
Authors: Stephen King
Hardcover: 845 pages
Pub Date:  Sept 21, 2004
Publisher: Scribner
Rating: ++++

Summary from goodreads:

Roland’s ka-tet remains intact, though scattered over wheres and whens. Susannah-Mia has been carried from the Dixie Pig (in the summer of 1999) to a birthing room—really a chamber of horrors—in Thunderclap’s Fedic; Jake and Father Callahan, with Oy between them, have entered the restaurant on Lex and Sixty-first with weapons drawn, little knowing how numerous and noxious are their foes. Roland and Eddie are with John Cullum in Maine, in 1977, looking for the site on Turtleback Lane where “walk-ins” have been often seen.

They want desperately to get back to the others, to Susannah especially, and yet they have come to realize that the world they need to escape is the only one that matters.

Review:

It took me so long to finish this series. So long in fact, that there is another book coming. It doesn’t add anything to the end of the series and is more like the fourth book and is a prequel. So in a way I am glad I waited so that I know there is more coming in April!

This book also took me a long time to read. It started off great, but then dragged for about 100 pages (the only reason it is getting four stars and not five) and it took me longer than a week to read that chunk because I wasn’t excited. Luckily, it picked up and when i got to the end it was hard to put down —  I read the last 300 pages in just a few days!

This is a huge epic series so you would expect it to have a huge epic ending. And you would be right. Stephen King was back in the story which I still was not crazy about. I understand why and think it sort of fits…but at the same time it still felt egotistical and tacky (and do not get me started on his letter at the end. I love the guy, but he was kind of a jerk. And a lia)

But I digress. This story has always been an epic journey, but it has always be grounded in great characters to root for, terrifying bad guys to root against, and a look into humanity that is rarely done so well in fiction.

I feel like I knew these characters so well, especially those in the ka-tet. I won’t give details, but you will probably cry during this book. And don’t tell me that was a spoiler because if you have read any of these books, you knew not all could survive. With the sadness also came beauty and wonder…and some comic relief.

I will not give away the ending, but I actually really liked it. I have seen many instances of people not liking it, but I thought it was appropriate and  really well done.

All in all, it was a great ending to a series that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

The Song of Susannah by Stephen King

Title: The Song of Susannah 
Author: Stephen King
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Scribner (Simon & Schuster)
Year Published: 2004
ISBN: 9780743254557
Rating: ++

Summary (from goodreads because I couldn’t summarize this crazy book if my life depended on it):

To give birth to her “chap,” demon-mother Mia has usurped the body of Susannah Dean and used the power of Black Thirteen to transport to New York City in the summer of 1999. The city is strange to Susannah…and terrifying to the “daughter of none,” who shares her body and mind.

Saving the Tower depends not only on rescuing Susannah but also on securing the vacant lot Calvin Tower owns before he loses it to the Sombra Corporation. Enlisting the aid of Manni senders, the remaining katet climbs to the Doorway Cave…and discovers that magic has its own mind. It falls to the boy, the billy-bumbler, and the fallen priest to find Susannah-Mia.

Eddie and Roland, meanwhile, tumble into western Maine in the summer of 1977, a world that should be idyllic but isn’t. For one thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called ‘Salem’s Lot, a writer who turns out to be as shocked by them as they are by him.

Review:

I am so glad the series didn’t end here – it would have been a huge disappointment! I loved the fourth and fifth book in the series so much, but had heard from many people that the sixth was strange and the worst in the series. My best friend read the first five books then gave up on finishing it because she hated it so much. That is why it took me over a year to read this one…but I finally did and had to push myself through it.

I didn’t like Susannah’s split personalities in earlier books and I hated going back to Detta/Susannah, then adding a pregnant demon. I had to push through it every time it came back, and it was about half the book. I usually love Stephen King, so having to push myself to read it was disappointing. I have been told it is needed for the last book, but I will only believe it when I read that.

At least it wasn’t the entire book. I really loved the parts with Father Callahan and Jake. Jake and Oy have been my favorite characters in the series. Watching Jake transform from a scared boy to a kick-ass gunslinger has been amazing. I love how you can’t forget that he is just a though. This makes him more real and made me feel what he was feeling at time. Roland is a great character too, but I think Jake’s innocence combined with hardness to life makes him an intriguing and deep character.

I really enjoyed Roland and Eddie’s story…until they head over to meet this Stephen King guy who wrote about Father Callahan. Sometimes, adding the author is a character to the story works, like in I Am the Messanger. Sometimes, it is just strange and does not seem to have a point at all, like in this book. Again, I was told it matters in the next book, but I think that is poor writing and planning. It felt arrogant and self-serving in this book. I get it, he wanted to write about some of the things leading up to the accident and the accident, well he could  have written in a journal about it. Oh wait, he did, but then he published it/a fictionalized version of it. Why the need to add it to this epic story? Did he want to talk about the writing process more? He has an entire book on the topic.

Maybe I will change my mind about it after I read the seventh book. Maybe it will make sense, but as of the sixth I don’t like it or think that it is effective. In my review of the previous book I was excited to see characters saying they were real people, not just in a book and exploring the issue more in the next two books, but it just fell flat.

Apparently the last book is worth a strange and boring penultimate one, but that remains to be seen. I sure hope it is because I would be upset if this great epic fantasy ends with two weak books.

Have you read any series that had a really bad book you had to push through? Let me know in the comments!

Challenges: This counts for the TwentyEleven Challenge as an Adult Book and the 2011 Original TBR Challenge

The Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Title: The Wolves of the Calla
Author: Stephen King
Paperback: 736 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year Published: 2003
Rating: +++++

Stephen King delivered another masterpiece with this book.

I just finished the fifth book of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and of the first five, it was my favorite. That is a big statement because I loved four out of those five. I don’t want to give a summary of this one like I usually would because it would ruin parts of the first four, and that is no fun. I will talk about some of the great aspects of this book.

The first is the characters. Each character in this gigantic novel, from Roland, our dinh, to little singleton Aaron has a purpose. There are not flat characters or spare characters that are just there to add more people to the crowd. They have distinct personalities and motivations for everything they do. Our band of four main characters have some of the toughest decisions they have had in the series. Should Jake tell Roland what he has seen? Do they all tell Susannah about the demon inside of her? Can Susannah fight Mia and be able to help her ka-tet? The reader gets to see how each character makes their decision and why, which might be part of the reason readers get attached to these characters.

The setting makes one think of an old-fashioned Western movie. There are farmers and ranchers, there is a decision to be made and the town is split in two, and there are four strangers and a bumbler who come waltzing in to save the day. But there are also robots that warn of the wolves coming, yet always seems to be laughing at the humans. There is an old man who knows what The Wolves truly are and has told no one. There is a priest whose story seems awfully familiar and comes from the same place as Jake and Eddie…but more on that later. It seems like it could become cliche, but it never comes close.

I don’t want to really give much away because some of the discoveries that characters make are what make the book. I will touch on the priest, Father Callahan, who escaped to this world after being bit by a vampire and running for years from Jerusalem’s Lot…known to Stephen King readers as Salem’s Lot. Near the end of The Wolves of the Calla the character finds this book and starts to read it. At one point he says “but I am a real person!”, he is reading his story and is flabbergasted. How is his story in this novel, this piece of fiction?  I won’t get too detailed in my analysis of what this may mean because I know it is an important theme of the next two books (where Stephen King becomes a character), but I will pose this question. What is a character in a book really? We have all read books where the characters seem like friends of ours and what happens to them impacts us emotionally. Can you imagine how this would be for an author, the one who breathed life into these characters? I look forward to reading the next two books and going deeper into this issue with all of you!

One final note, you may not know this, but I am a huge Harry Potter fan, so when there was a weapon called a Sneetch that was manufactured by Harry Potter, it made me smile!

So go read all The Dark Tower books! When you read them, try to get the editions that have the great illustrations in them.  The first one is a little hard to get through at first, but push yourself, because, so far, it is worth it!