Climax

"You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you. You are the unfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the paltry squirt that comes to end the lovemaking (the orgasm is, after all, God's way of telling us we've finished, at least for the time being, and should go to sleep)...You say you want to know how it all comes out...For an ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ upon...And so, my dear Constant Reader, I tell you this: You can stop here...Endings are heartless.

Ending is just another word for goodbye."

When I started Stephen King's seventh and final book of the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower, I knew that I had to take the book slow. I knew that I had to savor each paragraph, each sentence, and enjoy the experience. Because I knew that the ending could never and would never live up to what I wanted.

I won't bother you too much with what I wanted. Suffice it to say, it was along the lines of a philosophical and psychological battle at the top of the Dark Tower between Roland and Randall Flagg. I was hoping for something along the lines of the climax of Michael Crichton's Sphere. But it would be silly for me to expect an ending like that out of King. He has his own style and voice, and that is why I like him.

I've come to the realization that my favorite writers are sort of like friends. There are many things I love about them, and then there are the human imperfections that they have. There are little ways of writing the odd sentence or expressing a specific emotion in a scene that bother me about the writers I love. But like a friend who has a quirk that can be annoying, I'm starting to learn to accept these little idiosyncrasies because they are part of how that writer writes.

So, the ending of The Dark Tower is a very horror/B-movie/pulpy kind of ending, but what more can be expected out of Stephen King? I finished the Epilogue of the book late at night, and vowed not to read the rest (the Coda and the complete Robert Browning poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came") until the next day. However, my curiosity got the better of me. I read the Coda, which includes the quote I have up above. I wish I hadn't read it.

At all. I mean, I wish that the novel ended with the Epilogue. The Epilogue is perfect, it resolves the subplot of the piece. The chapter before that SPOILERS START has Roland walking up to the Tower SPOILERS END. I honestly feel the piece could have ended there, with the rest of the story a mystery. I am sure King would have gotten tons of angry letters and death threats that way, but it would have been a better ending. It calls back to the endings of The Waste Lands and Song of Susannah, with their dramatic climax that sort of has an "Until next time!" feel to it. I would rather not have known what happens in the Dark Tower than have read what King gives us. The Coda, as King warned it would in a very Lemony Snicket Unfortunate Events sort of way, hurts and fails to satisfy.

When the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion ended, fans were disappointed and complained so much that Hideaki Anno presented an alternate ending in the movies where pretty much everyone dies and Anno gives the finger to his fans. I loved the series ending.

I've spoken more on the ending than I would have liked. The point is, that despite my feelings towards the ending, it is a great book. I have my beefs with the introduction of new characters and the exits of older characters, but for the most part I really liked it. In fact, as an ending to the Dark Tower series and to a lot of other loose ends in King's writing, it fits perfectly. All except the actual ending. In a way, that is kind of amusing. Parts of the book got me teary eyed. Parts of the book made me grin. Despite my attempt to enjoy the book slowly, I devoured it. But I still savored it, trying not to be the glutton at a fine cooked meal who fails to stop and taste what he's eating because he's too busy shoving it down his throat. If you read this book, savor it as much as you can. Enjoy the ride as much as you can. The lovemaking is in the pages leading up to the ending, not in the paltry squirt that follows.

Finish your business as soon as you can.

Stephen King's dedication at the beginning of Song of Susannah says, "For Tabby, who knew when it was done." If Tabitha King, Stephen King's wife, is responsible for the pacing and cliffhanger ending of Song, then I must say, "God bless you please, Mrs. King, Jesus loves you more than you will know. Oh oh oh."

There is so much right with the sixth book of The Dark Tower series. Many of the imperfections of the previous volumes (at least what I felt were imperfections) have been ditched here. This is just great storytelling.

It is one of the shortest books in the series (544 pages compared to the previous The Wolves of the Calla's 921), but it certainly doesn't feel too short. It escapes the long-windedness of some of the previous volumes. As a result, this book feels more like one story with one theme and central plot, unlike some of the others which were going in too many directions at once. And although the plot sidetracks us from the Dark Tower a little, it mainly functions to serve it. After all, all things serve the Tower. A quote, on page 12, summarizes this succinctness of this novel:

"Her eyes looked at him calmly. She still had hold of his left hand, touching it, culling out its secrets. 'Finish your business as soon as you can.'

'Is that your advice?'

'Aye, dearheart. Before your business finishes you.'"

I also love the way that the character who is the central focus of this story, Susannah, doesn't pop up for 60 pages or so. It is very much a detective story.

The action sequences in this book are just what I've been longing for in this series. There is a shootout with Eddie and Roland in Maine that involves a storefront and an overturned log truck that had me flipping to the next page almost before I finished the previous. This is the sort of high octane, Western inspired material I wanted but didn't get from Wolves and even Wizard and Glass.

King's explanation of how technology has become a poor replacement for magic, and the machines are failing, is something I think few other authors address. In this society, we assume magic and science are the same, but King asserts, much the same way I do, that they are far from the same. One is a weak imitation of the other that eventually runs down as mandated by the rules of Entropy.

If there's one criticism I have of the book, it's the scene in the hotel lobby full of Asian tourists described as having yellow skin, cameras, and King even notes they all look the same! The way they talk, as written in the dialog, is almost as uncomfortable as Mickey Rooney's role in Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn.



I admit, that those sort of 1960s stereotypes work sometimes, like Peter Sellers in Murder by Death, but not often. Often they're the sort of bad jokes a friend might declare loudly in front of a giant group of people, only to be met with dead silence. Who feels more awkward in that situation? You, or the friend?

There's a lot more of King working himself into the story, and I am still out on whether or not that actually works. I'll have to read the last book to know for sure.

This book ends with a cliffhanger much like The Waste Lands did. There's mention in Song about readers getting angry over the ending of Waste Lands, but I loved it, and I loved this ending. Maybe it's because I don't have to wait for the next volume. It's already been written; I just have to pick it up.

Bring on The Dark Tower!