Tag Archives: Dark Tower

April 28, 2011 · 5:00 am

Review 120: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Well, here we are. After a long road – longer for some of us than for others – we have finally reached the end of The Dark Tower series. For some of us, it’s been twenty years in coming, so if you’ve only started reading this series recently, count yourself lucky. You don’t know how we waited for this book, the book wherein Roland would finally attain his goal, and we would see if all the sacrifices he made were worth it.

Were they? Kind of.

Art by Eredel on DeviantArt

I’ll get into more detail later, after I dutifully put up the “Here Be Spoilers” sign, but this is the book where everything gets resolved, and our heroes are given their reward for the hard work they have done. The bad guy is beaten, the world is saved, and all is well. Although “well” is a very relative term in this sense, and while the bad guy is beaten, it’s not very satisfying, and the reward that many of our heroes get isn’t necessarily the reward they would have chosen.

If I sound like I’m dancing around the story, that’s because I am. I have an aversion to spoiling books in these reviews, mainly because I know how satisfying it is to get into a good book and discover things. To see old characters appear from the past, and to witness the heroism of the characters we have come to love. To look at the journey they take and see their relentless pursuit rewarded. At the same time, I don’t want your experience poisoned by knowing the drawbacks to a book – the soft spots in the plot, the characterization problems, the disappointments and the heartbreaks. [1]

Art by lilbenji25 on DeviantArt

This book contains all of these, and if I avoid talking about them, then this review will be awfully short. So, Constant Reader, I tell you this: you can stop here. You can click away to another page, perhaps to Amazon to buy the book and read it yourself (I recommend the Kindle edition if you can – I have the hardcover and it is quite the doorstop), perhaps to put off the reading of the book for a while longer. You don’t have to learn things that will taint the journey of discovery that is reading , and you can live on with a vision in your head of how The Dark Towerseries should end, instead of how it actually does.

Would you stay, then? Very well. After this point, there is no turning back. What is learned, as they say, cannot be unlearned.

This is not the book I wanted. It is unbalanced, hard to get through, and disappointing in many ways. There are also some beautiful moments, and some interesting ideas which, upon post-reading reflection, make the whole story more meaningful. But my overall feeling was one of great disappointment. Let’s start from afar, shall we?

Art by DiosBoss on DeviantArt

The structure of this book is rather lopsided. The most climactic event in the book, the battle of Algul Siento, is quite exciting and fun in that it is what we readers expect from a climax – gunfire and death and the saving of worlds. By freeing the Breakers from their work on the Beams, Roland and his ka-tetdo indeed save the macroverse from complete dissolution. They have literally saved the world and, as we learn later, have completely thwarted the evil designs of the Crimson King. The story could end there, the characters could go on their separate ways, and all would be well.

The problem is that this occurs in the first half of the book. It’s followed soon after by a minor climax – Roland and Jake saving Stephen King from certain death by drunk driver – but even that is done a little more than halfway through the book. Stephen King is safe, the New York Rose is safe, and we find out later that not only are the last two Beams intact, they are regenerating and will probably regenerate the other four. Reality has been saved.

But the story goes on, because saving reality was never Roland’s goal. It was only, in the parlance of Dungeons and Dragons, a side quest. There’s a larger quest to be resolved.

This wouldn’t be so bad if there were an even bigger climax waiting for us at the end, but there isn’t, and this is where I feel kind of betrayed. When Roland gets to the Dark Tower, we know he will have to face the Crimson King, who has been held up as the incarnation of death, evil and chaos. He has been the main antagonist throughout this whole series. His reach is long, his power vast, and his hate for Roland of Gilead is as focused as a laser and as hot as the sun. He is as close to the Devil as we can get.

Art by morganagod on DeviantArt

So, when Roland finally makes it to Can’-Ka no Rey, the great field of roses within which the Dark Tower stands, who do we see? A “satanic Santa Claus” who throws explosives from the only balcony of the Tower he’s been able to reach. He’s generically ugly, screams like a madman, and talks in villain cliches – “GUNSLINGER! NOW YOU DIE!” or “YOU DON’T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON’T DARE! EEEEEEEE!” or “EEEEEEEE! EEEEEE! STOP! IT BURNS!” On top of all that, the Crimson King is finally defeated not by Roland’s guns or some great battle on the physical, intellectual or spiritual plains, but by a guy with a sketchpad. He is simply erased from afar. And thus ends the reign of what was supposed to be the greatest horror of all worlds.

What’s more, their meeting at the Tower was not acually the defeat of the Crimson King – he conceded defeat way back during Wolves of the Calla. We find out that, with the defeat of the Wolves, the King foresaw the end of the Breakers and thus his plan to unmake creation. So, he broke his Wizard’s Glasses, killed nearly everyone in his castle. killed himself by – for reasons I still don’t understand – swallowing a sharpened spoon, and then, undead (which I also don’t understand), rode off for the Tower.

Even then, though, he couldn’t win. In order to enter the Tower he needed either Roland’s guns or Mordred’s birthmark, neither of which he had. So he climbed up into one of the Tower balconies with all the weapons he could carry and just waited. If Roland hadn’t come to the Tower, he would have waited there forever and never harmed anyone again. By bringing his guns, Roland raises the possibility that the Crimson King could still triumph. So, by continuing his quest, Roland endangers all existence.

Art by Michael Whelan

As much as I hate to call out authors on what they “should have” done, I feel like I have to here. A hero is only as good as his villain, and the Crimson King, in the end, turns out to be a pretty crappy one. I wish King had made their meeting worthy of the image he had built up. The same goes for one of our favorite characters, Randall Flagg (or whatever name he chooses to use). He has floated through this series and others like a cancer, bringing nothing but death and pain with him. He’s a charismatic madman who revels in chaos and is probably one of the most enjoyable characters King has created. So how does he die? He gets killed by Mordred, the bastard son of Roland and the Crimson King, of Susannah and Mia. He gets killed and eaten without much of a fight. I think a lot of fans would agree that Flagg deserved better.

And while we’re on the topic – Mordred.

One of my measurements of good characterization is a question: If this character did not exist, could the story have ended the way it did? With Jake and Father Callahan, Susannah and Eddie, with Oy and Flagg and Cuthbert and Susan and Cort, the answer is, of course, No. Each of those characters contributed something vital to the story, something that no other character could have done. To reach the same end without one of those characters would have meant a vastly different story.

Art by Michael Whelan

The same cannot be said of Mordred. Of the people he kills, only two matter to us: Flagg and Oy. Flagg should have been the penultimate End Boss, the final challenge for Roland before reaching the Tower and the Crimson King. And there are many ways to kill a Billy-Bumbler – I think King could have thought of one that gave Oy the same honorable and heartbreaking death that he got trying to save Roland from Mordred. Other than that, Mordred had no impact on the story at all. He just followed Roland, Susannah and Oy, shivering and whining and feeling sorry for himself. He kept telling us that he was meant for great things, but never showed even the slightest hint of that potential. He follows Roland like Gollum follows Frodo, but at least Gollum turned out to be important.

The one thing we do get from Mordred is a frustrating bit of knowledge – that the Crimson King and Roland are both descended from the mythical king Arthur Eld. In that way, their battle is between cousins, and Mordred represents a unification of two bloodlines – demon and human. If their conflict had been framed in that context, it could have been so much more interesting when we finally got to the end.

Speaking of the end. We, like Roland, didn’t know what to expect when we finally got into the Dark Tower. And I don’t think anyone expected that the series would loop around to the beginning again, dumping Roland back in the Mohaine Desert to follow the Man in Black once more, unaware that he had already done so so many times before. It was an unsatisfying ending at first, but upon reflection, it does work, and there are two ways to look at it.

The first is that Roland is being taught a lesson, one which he still has not learned. He’s being taught to value life, to reset his priorities. From his youth, he was so focused on the Tower that he let all else fall aside – his friends, the girl he loved, and the sacred artifacts of his forefathers. He brought death with him, and passed it on to all whom he loved, and ended his quest as alone as he began it. And so, despite saving the multiverse, Roland failed his true quest – to learn how to love others and share who he was with them – and had to be sent back to start again. In appreciation of his effort, however, he was granted a change: the horn of Eld, which he had previously neglected on the field of the last battle of civilization. Perhaps it will make a difference.

The other way to look at this ending is a more metafictional one, something that Stephen King himself finds distasteful. Like it or not, though, one of the overriding themes of this series is the impact that fiction has on reality, and vice versa. To readers, a character might be more real than real people. We learn lessons from them, we have kind or unkind memories of them, and in many ways, our fictional characters possess a special reality. To a writer, this is even more true. Ask any writer and they will tell you about how their characters talk to them, sometimes appear in front of them, or even take over their bodies for a little while. A writer will discover things about a character that she never planned, as if the character himself were revealing them. The Dark Tower relies on this kind of ur-reality of fiction, up to and including fictional characters saving the life of their own writer.

So, by connecting the end of the last book with the beginning of the first, perhaps King is implicating us, the Constant Readers, in Roland’s suffering. Roland cannot rest as long as there are readers reading him, and we are all guilty of making him go through it again and again. While King may have created Roland and his quest, we propagate it, and every new reader ensures that it will never, ever end. [2]

Art by Chesheyre on DeviantArt

In the end, we have a series that started off strong, and then kind of careened to an unsatisfying end. Having been written intermittently over the course of thirty years, I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising. Ideas which seemed like good ones at the time served only to cause trouble later down the road, and loose ends that needed to be tied up took up far more time than they should have. Perhaps with a clearer vision of the journey at the beginning, King could have held it together better. And perhaps without his brush with death in 1999, he wouldn’t have felt compelled to get the last three volumes out as soon as he could.

It does, however, gift us with some wonderful characters, a rich and brilliant world, and a fictional cosmology that holds together all the worlds that King has created thus far. It’s an examination of the importance of fiction in our lives, and the way that stories can reach out and touch so many more people than the storyteller ever intends. If you are a fan of Stephen King, and you haven’t read this series yet, then you should. For all that the last couple of books disappoint, there is still much good to be found in the whole series, and the first five are generally really well done.

Art by Deviata on DeviantArt

There is more to read, if you’re interested. King’s assistant, Robin Furth, has put together an excellent Concordance, detailing pretty much everything you want to know about the series – characters, places, history, language and concepts. She has also written a series of graphic novels for Marvel Comics which detail Roland’s youth, starting with the events told in Wizard and Glass and going up to the terrible battle of Jericho Hill. So if the original series leaves you wanting more, there’s certainly more to be had.

That’s it, then. Long days and pleasant nights to you all.

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“Even when you were in the shadow of death there were lessons to be learned.”
– Jake (narration), The Dark Tower
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[1] To be fair – this book was published back in 2004. If you haven’t read it by now, I doubt you’re really going to be chuffed by some spoilers, and you have no one to blame but yourself if you haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

[2] A third option is suggested by his short story, “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French” from Everything’s Eventual, wherein a woman riding with her husband in a car on vacation keeps re-living a terrible accident. It is implied that she is dead, and that hell is the eternal repetition of one’s mistakes. It is possible that Roland is dead, and that this series is his Hell.

The Dark Tower on Wikipedia
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March 31, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 116: Song of Susannah

Song of Susannah by Stephen King

I think that every long series has to eventually include a book like Song of Susannah. It’s the weak book, the one that you have to have, but would rather you didn’t. The one that pretty much exists to get you from Point A to Point B, which resolves some earlier issues and sets up some later conflicts, but which – by itself – isn’t nearly as good or as much fun to read as the books that either preceded or followed it. I call it a “bridge book,” and I suspect that they are somewhat inevitable.

But before getting into all the heady analysis ‘n stuff, let’s see what this book is about.

Book art by Darrel Anderson

Directly following the end of Wolves of the Calla, our ka-tet is split. Susannah, possessed by that strange spirit who calls herself Mia, has taken the supremely powerful Black Thirteen and used it to open a magic door to New York. It is there that she hopes to have her child and have the raising of it, before it grows up to destroy the world. Everyone else, of course, is concerned for her safety, but there is one other thing that needs to be done – the vacant lot in Manhattan and the rose that grows there must be protected. This rose represents one of the two Beams that remain to hold up the Dark Tower (and thus all of existence), so its safety is paramount.

The other Beam just happens to be Stephen King himself. But we’ll get to that….

Roland’s party splits up – Roland and Eddie go to rural Maine to find Calvin Tower and secure proper ownership of the vacant lot. Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan follow hot on Susannah’s heels to New York City to try and save her from the horrible death that no doubt awaits her there. Horrible death awaits all of them, truth be told, but one does what one must in pursuit of the Tower.

Jake, Oy and Callahan’s story is the far more straightforward one. They go to New York and follow Susannah/Mia’s psychic trail to Black Thirteen, which they dispose of in a manner that should bring a grim smile to all 21st-century Americans. They then go on to the Dixie Pig, a restaurant-slash-portal to a dimension of hell and pain, where they expect to be gunned down the moment they go through the doors. Pretty cut and dried, really.

Roland and Eddie, however, have the much more mind-bending task of meeting their maker. Literally.

Book art by Darrel Anderson

As a side-quest to securing legal possession of the vacant lot, they learn that King lives nearby and decide to pop in and pay him a visit. This kind of freaks King out, but rightfully so. To him, Roland is a character who haunted his mind, and a few pages of a manuscript that has languished in storage for years. King had given up on The Dark Tower, and never expected to pick it up again. Until, of course, its main character showed up, insisting that his story be finished.

To me, this was the most interesting conceit of the entire series. The idea of characters breaking through the fourth wall and entering “the real world” is nothing new, nor is having them ask some rather pointed questions of their creators. But it’s another thing for those characters to not only meet their creator, but to do so before he’s actually written about them up to the point where they’re meeting him.

(re-reads that last sentence)

Right.

In short, not only is King the embodiment of one of the last Beams holding up the Dark Tower, he is also an avatar of Gan, the primal force of order and righteousness in the universe. Through King, and the story of Roland and his ka-tet, Gan is trying to keep the Tower up against the forces of Discordia, as embodied by another King, the Crimson King. These two Kings – one unknowing, the other knowing – are locked in a fight to the death, with the universe at stake.

Book art by Darrel Anderson

Throughout all of this, Susannah is having her own troubles in New York. Mia has gained control of her body – to the point where she is able to manifest the legs that Susannah lost long ago – and is determined to have her child. She has an appointment to keep with the agents of the Crimson King, and she believes that she will finally achieve that holy state for which she had gladly given up her immortality – motherhood. Susannah, on the other hand, knows that whatever is brewing in Mia’s belly is a threat to Roland, and will do whatever she can to stop the birth, or at least turn Mia against her chosen destiny.

Depending on the kinds of books you like reading, Song of Susannah will either be tolerably good or downright unpleasant, and this is mainly due to its rather fractured structure. The three plot threads don’t intersect directly once everyone leaves the Calla, and don’t have any kind of resolution once you get to the last page of the book. As a friend of mine put it, “There’s no ‘there’ there.”

The other volumes, like most standard-issue novels, has a resolution at the end. You can close the book and be able to tell people, “The characters achieved this, and it was fairly conclusive and interesting.” Of course, a series always has a greater conflict – the series-level conflict – that won’t be resolved until the last volume, but each individual book needs to have its own setup, conflict and resolution, with enough loose ends to get us into the next book.

Song of Susannah doesn’t really do this. The matter of the vacant lot is a fairly simple legal matter, which is not only easily resolved but also kind of dull, once you compare it to everything that has gone before. The problem of Black Thirteen is done away with pretty easily as well, which doesn’t really befit an artifact that we have been told possesses immense evil power. And while Susannah doesn’t prevent Mia from making her appointment at the Dixie Pig, she does manage to plant the seeds of doubt in the woman’s mind.

Art by Klaimko

In short, what is achieved in this book is not up to the level of what we have come to expect. The dramatic escape from the decaying city of Lud, the horrible tragedy of Roland and Susan in the Mejis, the valiant stand against the Wolves – all of these are proper climaxes and proper resolutions. The sole purpose of this volume is to bridge the gap between Wolves of the Calla and The Dark Tower, and the only reason it ended where it did was because, well, you have to end it somewhere.

Having said all that, I enjoyed reading this book, and tore through it at record speed. I thought Susannah’s chipping away at Mia’s confidence was well-handled and made a lot of sense. Jake, Oy and Callahan preparing for their Last Stand and their likely deaths was great, and the whole meta-fictional issue of characters meeting with their creators is just the kind of thing that really digs into my brain and gets it going. And while the book may have been less carefully focused than the other editions of the series, it must be remembered that I am a long-time veteran of the Wheel of Time series, which has so many sub-plots, side-plots, secondary plots, divided parties, prophecies, histories, secrets, societies, ancient enmities, mythical forces, Artifacts of Unimaginable Power, questionable plot elements and unanswered questions that it makes The Dark Tower look like one of Aesop’s fables.

So I do have an unfair advantage.

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“I don’t think he needs to be immortal. I think all he needs to do is to write the right story. Because some stories do live forever.”
– Roland (speaking of Stephen King), Song of Susannah
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February 24, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 111 – Wolves of the Calla

Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Okay, before we get into this book, let me take a little survey: Have you ever seen The Seven Samurai? How about The Magnificent Seven?

The Three Amigos? GalaxyQuest?

If you’ve seen these movies, and any number of stories like them, then you know the basic outline of this book. Say it along with me now….

'We deal in lead, friend.' - Vin

Calla Bryn Sturgis, a small farming village on the far end of the world, is notable for a few things. Its rice, its peaceful people, and its abundance of twins. The farmers of Calla Bryn Sturgis want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, but their idyllic existence is threatened by invaders from the east.

They come from the evil town of Thunderclap, once a generation – the Wolves. Armored and cloaked in green, riding identical deathless gray steeds and armed with terrible weapons, the Wolves come to Calla Bryn Strugis to steal one child from every set of twins. They take them to their dark city, and when the children come back, they come back as damaged goods. “Roont,” the Calla-folk call them, and it’s an apt word for they are ruined indeed. Over the years, these children, whose minds have lost all of their intelligence and humanity, grow into pain-wracked giants, and then die horrible deaths years before their time.

No one knows why the Wolves come, and no one has ever even considered trying to stop them. Until now.

Word has come that Roland and his ka-tet – Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy – are in the area, and if anyone can stop the Wolves, it would be Gunslingers. If the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis can convince them to help, and are willing to fight alongside them, then they have a chance to repel the Wolves once and for all.

If only it were that simple.

'Once more, we have survived.' - Kambei Shimada

Interlaced with this this pretty straightforward tale is, of course, the larger story of the quest for the Dark Tower and the fight against those for whom the Wolves are merely agents. A new warrior in this fight is Father Donald Callahan, whom we last met way back in ‘Salem’s Lot as a broken and ruined priest, damned by a vampire king and sent out into the world to live or die as he pleased. Through his damnation, Callahan has found himself able to see things he shouldn’t be able to see, including the various classes of vampires and the Low Men – agents of the Crimson King who serve His interests in the various levels of the Tower. Callahan discovers a knack for traveling through the Americas along secret highways. In his ramblings from coast to coast, looking for peace – or death – he slips from one version of America to another, never knowing how or why.

In the end, he brings himself to the attention of forces far greater than himself. It leads to his death and reappearance in Roland’s world, but more importantly it puts him in possession of an object of great power and even greater peril – Black Thirteen, an inky sphere that could be the black eye of the Crimson King himself, and which has the power to send its bearer through a door to any point in space or time.

Roland and the others are going to need that door, too. While they’re busy planning their battle against the Wolves in Calla Bryn Sturgis, they have another fight to win, in another world. In New York of 1977, there is a vacant lot, and in this lot is a rose. The rose must be protected at all costs, for it is the other end of the Tower – one axis upon which all the worlds turn. This lot is in great peril, and it is imperative that our heroes keep it safe. By whatever means necessary.

'Oh GREAT!!! REAL bullets!!!' - Lucky Day

It’s a really good tale, and one that is actually better than I remember it being. The first volume after King’s near-fatal accident, it’s all put together very neatly, while getting us set up for events to come, even if some of them aren’t entirely clear, or seem a little random at first glimpse. For example, Roland discovers that he’s beset by the Dread Foe Arthritis. As it is now, it’s making him kind of achy, but should it spread to his precious shooting hand, then it’s all over for him. Why King decided to afflict Roland with something as mundane as arthritis isn’t entirely clear (although to be fair, Roland is technically over a thousand years old and could be considered due for a few of the ravages of old age).

Perhaps it is a sign of Roland’s encroaching humanity. In The Gunslinger, mention is made of his ability to detach himself from his body somewhat so as not to feel thirst. In that book, he is largely mechanical, only showing any kind of real emotion when he finally faces the Man in Black. Over the course of the series, Roland has become more tuned into what it means to be a person and to feel, y’know, feelings and things. This gives him the bond with his ka-tet that he needs, but it also comes with a price. Perhaps the arthritis is the first price he must pay for allowing himself to feel.

Mention must also be made here of poor, beleaguered Susannah. I mean Detta. Odetta. No, wait – Mia.

'Never give up, never surrender!' - Jason Nesmith

Out of the seething cauldron that is this poor woman’s mind, a new personality has emerged. Mia, Daughter of None is still something of a mystery to us. As far as we know, she has only one ambition – to protect the child growing in her belly. This child was not fathered by Eddie Dean, Susannah’s beloved husband, but by the cold and unnatural demon that Susannah held at bay while the two men pulled Jake from his world to theirs. Growing within her now is something horrible, something that Mia was born to protect, even at the expense of the body she inhabits. Right now, that’s all that she is, and her greater purpose is yet to be revealed.

King does a pretty good job of juggling the various plot lines in this book, making sure that we aren’t left hanging for too long on any of them. Of course, they feed into each other as well – Father Callahan’s tale interweaves itself with the story of New York in ’77, and its ultimate conclusion allows the plot to progress through this book and into the next. I actually enjoyed Callahan’s story a great deal, and thought it would have made for a wonderful stand-alone short story. Not a novel, as there’s a whole lot of “I walked around for a few years and did manual labor” in there, but the story that he told to Roland and the others would have stood on its own quite nicely. He’s an interesting, complex character, and I look forward to seeing what awful thing happens to him next.

What’s more, there’s a wonderful meta-fictional element to this book as well, and it introduces that idea of a story that is aware of itself being a story. For example, in the beginning of the book, Eddie notices that time has started up again. While it is true that time, like everything else in this world, is unreliable, I found it interesting that he should make mention of it at that point, right when their story starts up again after a break (from our point of view) of six years. From the characters’ points of view, on the other hand, the time between books is indeterminate, but Eddie notices that they don’t seem to really do anything in that intervening time. It made me wonder about what happens to fictional characters when they’re not being written about, a train of thought for which I am not adequately medicated.

Think about it....

More importantly, the impact of real-world fiction becomes painfully obvious in this book. For one, Stephen King is established as an as-yet-unseen character, which comes right on the heels of a very serious existential crisis for Father Callahan. The Wolves themselves are explicitly noted to be rip-offs – er, homages to fictions ranging from Marvel Comics to Harry Potter. Whatever else Roland’s world is, it has a very close connection with the fiction of our world, and that connection may offer important clues as to the true nature of their quest.

So, what purpose does this book serve in the greater series? Well, there are many out there who see Roland’s quest as being not so much for the Dark Tower as for redemption. After the loss of his love, his friends, his family and his homeland, Roland made himself into something that was only technically human. Over these books, he has had to learn how to re-connect, first with individuals, then as a small group, and now with a community. In this book, Roland has to come to grips with Calla Bryn Sturgis not just as a hired gun but as their leader, if only temporarily. He has to see himself as part of a greater whole, thus becoming – as I mentioned above – more human. Each book forces him to be more and more connected with those around him. The only question is if he can hold on to this new humanity before his quest for the Tower destroys him.

All in all, a good read, which moves ever-so-smoothly into the next book….

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“First come smiles, then comes lies. Last is gunfire.”
– Roland, Wolves of the Calla
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January 27, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 107: Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

So. Now that we’ve put three books behind us, and sit at the pivot of the series, it is time that we settle down and have ourselves a little palaver about Roland, the Gunslinger.

We know little about this man, the protagonist of our epic series. We know he’s a hard man, the kind of man who can cross deserts, brave oceans, and kill entire towns if need be. We know he’s a dedicated man, who will follow his quarry wherever they may flee to. We know he is single-minded, the kind of person who would allow an eleven year-old boy to fall to his death if that meant getting another foot closer to his precious Dark Tower. He is a hard man, Roland Deschain is. He is the Gunslinger.

But who is he really? Who was he before he started on this mad quest for something that may or may not exist? How did he get set on this path that could determine the fate of worlds, this quest that led to the deaths of everyone he ever loved? Who is he?

Blaine the Mono (art by Revenant42)

Well settle down, boys and girls, because this is where we get to find out. In between destroying a sentient monorail at a rigged game of riddles and facing off against the darkest Dark Man there is in a mock-up of the Palace of the Emerald City, Roland tells his ka-tet the tale that shaped him and set him on his path. It is a tale that begins with his entry into manhood – a trial by violence where he bested his teacher, Cort, in a duel to the pain, and ends with Roland’s soul nearly destroyed.

Roland and his companions, Alain and Cuthbert, have been sent by their fathers to the most out-of-the-way place they know – a small village called Hambry in the Barony of Meijis. Their alleged purpose is to count things, more as a punishment than a mission. They seem to be three boys who got into trouble, and who now must pay by spending their summer doing menial work. They don’t want any trouble, and they hope that no one will give them any.

They say there is a monster in the Citgo fields. Green, mayhap.... (photo by Cogito Ergo Imago)

That’s the story, anyway. In reality, they’re looking for evidence of the workings of John Farson, also known as The Good Man, who is leading a popular revolution against the established order in Roland’s home country, In-World. Hambry has an oil field, the work of the Great Old Ones, which is known to locals simply as “Citgo” Should Farson get enough oil – and the means to refine it – he will be able to revive ancient war machines and bring death to all of In-World. With Roland, Alain and Cuthbert as spies for the Affiliation, the Gunslingers in Gilead hope that they can stall, if not stop, Farson’s rebellion.

That would have been great if only Roland Deschain hadn’t met Susan Delgado, the daughter of a deceased horse-breeder and soon to be the promised girl of the mayor of Hambry. As soon as they meet, their destiny is clear: it is true love. No more able to stand against their fate than a tree in a whirlwind, Roland and Susan do as all young lovers have done, and risk discovery and death in the process. In every corner there are those who would stand against them: Susan’s spinster aunt, Cordelia, who hopes to make some money selling her niece off to the mayor; the Big Coffin Hunters, three mercenaries who work for Farson and who mean to see every last drop of oil gets in his hands; and Rhea of the Cöos, a horrible witch who possesses a crystal orb that lets her see all the malicious things that people do. Against these arrayed forces, Roland and his friends must not only foil the plans of John Farson, but also escape Meijis with their lives.

With the first, they are successful. With the second, not so much.

Dark Tower fans that I have talked to generally agree that this is the best book of the seven, for many reasons. First, we get to see Roland before he became all tall, gritty and scary. We see him as a callow youth, a boy of fourteen who is in way over his head, tackling responsibilities that would be better handled by a grown man. They’re on the losing side of a terrible war as it is, as they’re up against the combined cunning and guile of some very bad people. In many cases it is luck as much as skill that leads them to their eventual victory.

Roland and Susan (art by Jae Lee)

What’s more, we get to see Roland in love, and this is really where King shines in this book. He says in the afterward that he was dreading writing this book, mainly because he knew that he would have to portray teenage love – first love – in a realistic fashion, which can be hard to do when you’re several decades removed from being a teenager. All the madness that comes with teen love – the longing, the furtive trysts, the absolute certainty in what you are doing and that no one can stop you. The way that the person you’re in love with is all you can think about, and the only thing you want is to be with them again, if only for a moment. The way you freely and willingly lose your mind for love.

It’s something which, thankfully, we grow out of as adults. Frankly, if I ever felt like that again, I’d probably throw myself under a train.

King has done a fantastic job with the relationship between Susan and Roland – it’s as realistic as he can make it, without being mawkish and overly romantic. We are never allowed to forget that, like so many doomed lovers before them, they are risking everything with their love – their mission, their friends, and their lives – and we know that even the slightest misstep can mean disaster. Mixed with the other, more adventure-driven elements of the plot, it’s incredibly tense, and it’s handled very well.

The romance aside, there are some wonderful characters in this book, and as is the case with so many Stephen King novels, the best ones are the bad ones. Susan’s aunt Cordelia is a bundle of jealous paranoia, and you can feel her mainspring winding up every time she shows up on the page. Eldred Jonas is a laid-back killer, an old man who has buried countless young men, and means to bury Roland and his friends. And Rhea is just palpably foul. You can almost smell her when she shows up, which is a great accomplishment – and you can’t wait to see her again.

Rhea of the Cöos (art by Jae Lee)

As an aside, Marvel Comics has been doing comic book stories of Roland’s youth, and the first one re-tells this tale. It’s called The Gunslinger Born, and while it’s not bad, there is a certain emptiness to it. It’s not easy to compress hundreds of pages of character and plot development into a seven-issue comic series. I don’t know how it would read to someone who hasn’t read this book, but to me it looked like it was missing a whole hell of a lot….

As I said, this book is the pivot on which the series turns, and it is essential to understanding Roland. We have to know who he was and how he became who he is. While there are still questions to be answered, and stories to be told, the big story is out. Now he and his ka-tet can continue in their quest for the tower, confident that they know a little more about this man who yanked them from their worlds into his. For us, the character and his world become richer, more full of meaning. Things that we might not have thought about in the first few books become more meaningful, and we can better appreciate the history of his dying world. Most importantly, we can begin to understand why it is so important that he find the Dark Tower, and we pray that he knows what to do when he gets there.

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“I’ll pay ye back. By all the gods that ever were, I’ll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!”
– Rhea Dubativo of the Cöos, Wizard and Glass

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December 30, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 103: The Waste Lands


The Waste Lands by Stephen King

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The way this book started really threw me when I first read it. It was too… alive.

The Gunslinger takes place entirely in a desert – featureless, dry, unchanging. The Drawing of the Three takes place on a beach – featureless, slightly less dry, unchanging. With this book, a few months have gone by and Our Heroes are in a rather lush forest, without the privation that they had gone through in the previous books. They weren’t desperately racing the clock to try and find food or medicine or water, but rather were going at their own pace, according to what they wanted to do.

It felt weird to me, honestly.

All it needs is the little radar dish on its head. And maggots. Lot of maggots. (photo by Eric Bégin)

In any event, that is how the book begins – Roland has taken Eddie and Suzannah (formerly Odetta/Detta) under his wing and is training them as apprentice gunslingers. They’re learning to shoot, to hunt, and to trust the instincts that they have so long let lie dormant. When they accidentally awaken a gargantuan insane robot bear named Shardik, they discover the path of the Beam, which finally sets them on their way to the Dark Tower.

But all is not well. There is a problem, you see, one having to do with the very nature of the events that have gone before us, and it has to do with young Jake Chambers.

In The Gunslinger, Roland meets Jake, who has been transported to Roland’s world after dying in his own. The last thing the boy remembers was being pushed in front of a speeding Cadillac while on his way to school, seeing a strange man in black who claimed to be a priest, and then waking up in the dusty way station in the middle of the desert. Roland befriended the boy, took him along on his journey, and then sacrificed him to gain an audience with his own Man in Black. Without Jake, and Jake’s double death, Roland could never have made it to the beach where he pulled Eddie and Suzannah out of their worlds.

But there was a third door, remember? Through that door, Roland learned the true identity of the person who killed Jake – a man named Jack Mort, whose hobby was making people die in accidents. By taking possession of, and eventually killing, Jack, Roland erased Jake’s first death. He was never pushed in front of a car, never died, and never came to Roland’s world.

Something like this....

Except that he did.

Or rather, he didn’t.

But he did.

This paradox is driving both of them insane – Roland in his world and Jake in his. Their minds are trying to reconcile two irreconcilable histories, two versions of events that are both true, even though only one can be said to actually be true. In order to save them both, Roland and his ka-tet need to get Jake to their world, where he belongs. Doing so will take all of them risking their lives against agents of unspeakable power.

That’s the first half of the book, and this is another big difference between this book and the two that came before it. If he had wanted to, King probably could have split this book into two smaller ones, and they wouldn’t have lost much. Once Jake is rescued, we are granted a moment to breathe, a moment to appreciate the work and energy that went into making sure Jake and Roland came through the event with their sanity intact. Once we take that moment to breathe, which in the book consists of a wonderful dinner with the few residents of a dying town, the group finds themselves in terrible danger again as they enter the dying city of Lud.

Would you kill for him? Yeah, me too.... (photo by Kasra Ganjavi)

All through the series, it is said that “The world has moved on.” People talk about the civilization that has just collapsed (of which Roland is a final relic) and the one that came even before them – that of the Great Old Ones. The city of Lud is held up as a prime example of their prowess and their poisoned legacy. Within it dwells the tribal descendants of whose who fought over the ruins of Lud, sacrificing their neighbors at the sound of great drums that echo through the city (which are, oddly enough, the drum track from ZZ Top’s song, Velcro Fly), and living like rats in its crumbling walls.

The group is split at this point, with Roland and Oy (a doglike animal whom Jake befriends) trying to rescue Jake from the decaying clutches of a pack of murderers, and Eddie and Suzannah hunting through the city for Blaine the Mono, a monorail train that could be their only way across the horrible irradiated wastelands just outside the city.

It’s an exciting book, I’ll tell you that much, and let me tell you right now that you’re going to hate the ending. At least you would have if you were reading it when it first came out. You see, King admits that The Dark Tower is one long story which, for various practical and financial reasons, has to be split up into multiple books. This means that there isn’t always a practical and clean place to break off the story so the readers can wait for the next one. With this in mind, Kind decided to end The Waste Lands with one hell of a cliffhanger – Roland and his ka-tet aboard Blaine the Mono, an insane, sentient computer train that wants nothing more than to end its life. If they can defeat Blaine, they may live. If not, they’ll all die when Blaine slams into a wall at the Topeka terminal at 900 miles an hour.

Suck it, me in 1991! (photo by me)

This isn’t too troubling today, when you can just turn to your bookshelf after you finish, pick up Wizard and Glass, and keep reading. But put yourself in the shoes of the first readers of this book: they had already waited four years for this book to come out, and it would be another seven before Wizard and Glass was finally published. Even worse, I knew a guy here in Japan who was a huge Dark Tower fan, and he not only had to wait for King to finish writing the book, he also had to wait for it to be translated. My heart went out to him….

But I digress. This book finally sees our heroes on their way – walking on the path of the Beam, as it were. After two and a half books, the journey has finally begun, and if this book is any indication, it’s not going to be an easy one.

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“Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don’t you get it? You’re killing each other over a piece of music that was never even released as a single!”
Eddie Dean, The Waste Lands

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November 25, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 98: The Drawing of the Three


The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

I have a soft spot in my heart for world-crossing stories. Perhaps it’s the remnant of the same childhood fantasy that everyone has – you know the one, “My family is not my family, my hometown is not my hometown – I’m really a lost prince of a strange magical kingdom and one day my true identity will be revealed and I’ll be able to go do something more fun than this….”

Escapist fiction of this sort usually does really well, mostly because so many of us are unsatisfied with the way our lives are going right now. Harry Potter blew everyone away for the same reason that, say, Star Wars did – they spoke to that desire that we all have for a destiny, a reason for being in this benighted universe other than to consume, procreate, and die. It’s a very powerful dream, that dream that we can lead a life better than the one we’re living now, and it’s one that very few of us get to realize. So we turn to fiction to realize that dream for us.

Of course, nothing comes without a price. In hopping from world to world, you may have to resist the temptations of a Snow Queen or fight off the forces of Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada. You may discover that your father is the greatest force for evil in the universe, or that you’ve been born into a genetic cohort that scares the hell out of everyone. Crossing from one world to another – whether literally or figuratively – always comes with a price.

For Eddie Dean, Detta Walker, and Odetta Holmes, that price could very well be their lives.

When last we left the Gunslinger, Roland was sitting by a vast and gray sea at the end of the world. He had already sacrificed young Jake Chambers for his quest, and had been shown a vision of the universe that would have blasted the mind of a lesser man. Without any other direction, Roland continues on his journey – but not without some difficulty.

Wounded and ill, Roland has to go through three strange doors and draw out new companions to replace the ones he lost so long ago. If he is successful, he will draw out a new ka-tet – a group bound by the forces of destiny – that will stand with him on the way to the Dark Tower. If he fails, he will face total obliteration, to say nothing of being devoured alive by huge mutant lobsters.

Through door number one, Roland meets The Prisoner – young Eddie Dean, a junkie who has to bring a couple of pounds of cocaine through customs at JFK airport in New York. If he can do that, then the men holding his beloved big brother will let them both go, well-paid and well-loaded with the drugs that they so desperately want. Eddie can’t do it without Roland’s help, however – help that turns out to make the whole endeavor much more complicated and lethal than it might have been before.

Through door number two, Roland must bring the Lady of Shadows, a woman who is two minds in one body. One of these minds is Odetta Holmes, an upper-class African-American woman (though in her era of the early sixties she would probably prefer to be called a Negro) who has thrown her efforts and her fortune behind the growing civil rights movement. She is cultured and civilized, a little bit snobbish and prudish, but far, far better than her alter ego, Detta Walker.

Detta is the dark half, the evil twin who relishes in her misdeeds and embodies the worst qualities that can be found in a person. She likes to hurt people, to break things – partly out of the sheer enjoyment of hurting and breaking, but also out of a cruel sense of revenge for the ills the world has done to her. For the brick that was dropped on her head when she was a child, for the train that robbed her of her legs when she was an adult. Of all the people Roland has met so far, Detta Walker is the one who poses the most danger to him and his quest. Only by bringing the two women together can he have any chance of making it to the Tower.

Through door number three, Roland must meet death – but not for him – in the form of The Pusher. The aptly-named Jack Mort has a hobby – anonymous murder. Planning and executing the suffering of others is what brings joy to his heart and a stain to his jeans, and he has intersected with Roland’s quest even before Roland reached the beach. He was the one who pushed Odetta Holmes under a subway train. He was the one who pushed Jack Chambers in front of a speeding Cadillac. Now, Roland has control of this man’s body and will use it to get what he needs from our world so that he can carry on in his. A little poetic justice along the way is just icing on the cake.

If Roland succeeds, he and his new group will push on to find the Dark Tower and do… whatever it is that Roland needs to do there. If he fails, they will all die, and the hopes of Roland’s world will die with them.

Like I said, I enjoy tales of crossing worlds, and so this book felt good to me. I liked seeing not only how Roland dealt with the unfamiliar reality of New York in three different decades, but how the stories of Eddie, Odetta/Detta and Jack intersected with each other. At one point in his section, Jack thinks, “Who was to say he had not sculpted the cosmos today, or might not at some future time? God, no wonder he creamed his jeans!” Crude though it may be, Jack is more right than he knows – a few simple pushes altered the destinies of not only the people he pushed, but those of entire worlds. So if you think small actions can’t have big consequences, well, look to Jack Mort.

Actually, his section of the book was my favorite. While Roland vs. Eddie was an action-packed shoot-em-up, and Roland vs. Detta was a hostage drama, Roland vs. Jack was almost a dark comedy. Taking over Jack’s body and keeping the man’s mind at metaphorical gunpoint, Roland carves a swath of confusion through New York City. The mental disconnect people have between Jack Mort’s appearance as a well-off CPA and his behavior as a seasoned gunslinger is enough for some moments of gold.

By the end of the book, we’re not much closer to the Dark Tower than we were at the beginning, but we are very nearly ready to get started on the journey. Not quite there yet, but Roland now has people he can count on when things turn bad. And they will turn bad, you can set your watch and warrant on it.

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“Well, what was behind Door Number One wasn’t so hot, and what was behind Door Number Two was even worse, so now, instead of quitting like sane people, we’re going to go right ahead and check out Door Number Three. The way things have been going, I think it’s likely to be something like Godzilla or Ghidra the Three-Headed Monster, but I’m an optimist. I’m still hoping for the stainless steel cookware.”
– Eddie Dean, The Drawing of the Three
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October 28, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 94: The Gunslinger


Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

There’s really not much more you need to know about this story except what’s right up there. That’s the essence of the whole thing – a chase. A man in black, who has obviously done something terrible, and a gunslinger, who is obviously going to set things right.

If, by “set right,” you mean “kill a whole lot of people,” then you’re pretty much on target.

This is the beginning of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, a story told in seven volumes that manages to be the lynchpin for all the worlds that he has created. It’s a story that was 22 years in the writing, and almost never got finished. It’s an epic story, all about the endless quest for the Dark Tower, the center of all reality, the axle upon which the wheels of creation move.

Roland, the gunslinger, is hunting for this tower. He wants it more than anything in the world. He has lost everything in pursuit of this tower – his friends, his family, his world – and yet he pressed on. The man in black has information for him, can set his path towards his goal. If only Roland can catch him.

On his way to the man in black, Roland finds a small town taken over by a mad preacher woman, a sympathetic hermit, and a boy who doesn’t look like he’s terribly local to this world. All of them help point the way to the man in black, and none of them make it to the end with Roland. Even he is unprepared for the terrifying reality that awaits him when he and the man in black finally have their palaver….

There truly is something magical about this book. Even if there were no other Dark Tower books, it would stand out as a good story, well told. Part of this is its deceptive simplicity – moving from point A to point B, with only a few flashbacks to fill in the backstory. Well, quite a lot of flashbacks, actually, seeing as how King did set this story in a featureless desert with a singular protagonist, and there’s only so much you can work with without dipping into the well of the past from time to time.

The glimpses of Roland’s past that we get to see are tantalizing – they tell of a rich and cultured world that is nonetheless hard and merciless. The gunslingers are all that stand between civilization and chaos, and there are precious few of them left. Roland and his friends know they may be the last of their kind, but that doesn’t deter them from pursuing their guns and growing up to honor their fathers.

The fact that we know from the beginning that they all fail just makes it all the more poignant to watch them try.

It’s hard to talk about this book without trying to talk about the rest of the series, and it’s even harder to convey the feeling of reading it when the series was still ongoing. My father, a huge Stephen King fan, had these books when I was a kid, and I eventually got into them, and was – like so many others – immeasurably frustrated by the pace at which King was writing them. I finished this book, which does not necessarily have a happy – or easy-to-understand – ending, and I wanted more. I wanted to know what Roland was going to do now that he’d had his palaver with the man in black, and I wanted to know if he would ever find the Dark Tower. Whom would he enlist in his quest, as the oracle had suggested? Whom else would he sacrifice, as he did young Jake?

Speaking of which, the relationship between Roland and Jake is an interesting one, especially as I got older and re-read it. When I first read the book, I was probably around Jake’s age – eleven years old [1]. Reading Jake’s story of how he came to Roland’s world was horrifying enough, but to see how their relationship would eventually end was even worse. The idea that there might be something more important to, say, my parents [2] than I was – well, that was horrifying. To think that a purpose might exist for which they would let me fall to my death…. That’s not the kind of thing an eleven year-old boy wants to think about.

From the point of view of an older person, a grown man, I found something uncomfortable about their relationship. The bond that formed between man and boy was instant, and intense, and having grown up in a culture where a strange man being that friendly to a young boy would be automatically colored with the taint of pedophilia, well, I had to work a little harder to stay in Roland’s head. The fact that I know that wasn’t where King was going with the relationship helps a little, but every reader brings his or her hang-ups along when they read and some of mine are a little more persistent than others. I’m sure any psychologist who needs to put a down payment on a yacht would be happy to help me work on it.

All in all, it’s an excellent beginning. What follows is a massive tale, a great quest that spans time and space and reality, culminating in Roland’s final understanding of who he is and why he exists. Not all of it is as good as this book, but it’s still worth reading, I say ya true.

So put on your good boots, don’t forget your hat and horn and donkey. It’s a long trip to the end….

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“This is not the beginning but the beginning’s end. You’d do well to remember that… but you never do.”
– The Man in Black
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[1] This is another example of the Eleven Year-Old Boy Rule: if you have a major character in your book who is not an adult, chances are that it will be an eleven year-old boy. King is a master of this.

[2] Because if Roland isn’t a father-substitute then I don’t know who is.

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