Ben: Well
if you had wanted me to not jump right into the coda maybe you should
have left a Stephen-King-style meta-narrative post-it note on that page
instead of texting me four hours after I finished the book.
Ben: But I will do my best to think back and put myself into the shoes of my past self as I deliver this, my final book report.
Ben: Are you ready, motherfucker?
Ben: First let's jump back to Eddy dying
Ben: because I have some choice things to say about this
Ben: and I think this might be a recurring theme in this review.
Ben: Which
is to say, the difference between an outcome that is justified, and an
outcome that is satisfying, and an outcome that explicitly scolds you
for not being satisfied at the fact that it is allegedly justified.
Ben: So Eddy's dying sucked.
Ben: Not in an emotional way
Ben: but it a way that just sucked.
Ben: It was meaningless.
Ben: Oh
and also as you're reading this I'll give you the chance to start
formulating your rebuttals in case I've overlooked some grand theme that
makes all of these pointless actions worthwhile or brilliant.
Ben: So tell me, what was the theme of Eddie's character arc?
Ben: He's
a strung-out junkie who's drug muling for some bad dudes in an attempt
to redeem his brother on a course that will eventually get him
inevitably killed, and then he gets pulled into an alternative dimension
to be a plucky comic relief and falls in love for reasons that are not
adequately explained (other than, maybe, "I've got a pee-pee and you've
got a va-jay-jay, wanna get married?"), pushes a wheelchair for ten
thousand miles and then gets shot in the head by a D-list villain.
Ben: His character arc AFTER he gets pulled into the story is less interesting than before he got pulled into the fucking story!!
Ben: And
Stephen King attempts to justify this by saying that ka is trying to
balance or something for the fact that Walter is dead? Okay, whatever,
but WHY IS WALTER DEAD.
Ben: Okay,
well maybe we can justify Walter's death by saying that getting
sacrificed to save Mordred is necessary for the character of Mordred,
but first of all that requires us to care about Mordred (which we might,
barely), but also it now demands that Mordred's own character arc
actually be satisfying because, transitively, it is Mordred's fault that
neither Walter nor Eddie have satisfying endings.
Ben: But of course, we'll get back to Mordred.
Ben: But
okay, maybe we can just say that Eddie died because King wanted us to
acknowledge the fragility of life, or the peril of the quest, or show us
that now we are beyond ka and all the character shields have been
removed.
Ben: But that's also bullshit, because once you do that you can't keep having deus ex machina save the day you huge dingus!!
Ben: It
only further drives home the fact that King killed Eddie for no other
reason than "Roland has to be alone when he gets to the Dark Tower."
Ben: Which,
okay, I can deal with, because I think that has good opportunity for a
satisfying character arc for Roland, and also because you've been
foreshadowing that fact for books and books now.
Ben: But
saying "rocks fall, everyone dies" in order to fulfill that prophecy
just diminishes the portentousness and makes you look like an amateur.
Ben: Okay, since we're on the subject of death let's back up further.
Ben: Callahan got a good death in this book.
Ben: I mean, sort of.
Ben: I guess Callahan's death was more satisfying than justified.
Ben: For anyone who's read 'Salem's 'Lot it was a well-won conclusion to his story, four hundred real-world reader years later.
Ben: And
I think Salem's Lot might be alone among all of King's books in having
characters featured prominently in this series, since it was like king's
first book ever.
Me: Second book after Carrie
Ben: If Carrie was in this series it would have been rad.
Ben: But yeah, Callahan gets moidered, finds the faith he lost ages ago, and makes time for Jake to escape.
Ben: It's a very good callback.
Ben: Except like, why didn't he just fucking go with Jake? He didn't need to stay in the fucking room.
Ben: At best it's just a plot hole. maybe I'll go easy on this one thing since there's so much more to criticize.
Me: But you are forgetting Insomnia which introduces Patrick Star and Crimson King, the central villain of the series.
Ben: Oh, we'll get to Patrick Stewart.
Me: And The Stand which introduced Walter O'Flagg, Roland's greatest nemesis.
Ben: Mordred's greatest meal.
Me: And the old guy from Hearts in Atlantis who did something.
Ben: Oh right, I forgot that guy was in this book.
Me: And that dude what poured pennies down a storm drain and played a redundant role to that old guy.
Ben: I really have no idea who this is supposed to be.
Ben: Hahaha
Ben: It has been TEN YEARS.
Me: The guy from Everything's Eventual.
Me: The eponymous story.
Ben: Everything's Eventual had that one story about collecting graffiti in bathrooms.
Ben: That's all I remember.
Ben: Was there a character from that in this book?
Ben: Anyway, let's get to Jake.
Ben: So Roland and Jake are in America.
Ben: They've got to save Stephen King from a DUI
Ben: or else the universe will be destroyed.
Ben: Oh btw in order to get to America they had to get Roland's friend from Mexico to send them there with his brain, in an act that they knew full well might kill him.
Ben: But it's okay, teleporting them to Maine didn't kill Sheemie.
Ben: Oh btw, a foot infection kills Sheemie off-screen anyway, so what the fuck was the point of all this.
Ben: Anyway, they find Bill Gates' wife in a gas station and get her to drive them to Stephen King's house
Ben: and then have a tense few scenes where they're trying to intersect with the drunk driver in time and telepathically trying to get the drunk driver to pull over and piss or whatever.
Ben: And then Roland, in complete violation of his character arc, tries to sacrifice himself to save Stephen King, and then his hip gives out and Jake dies instead.
Ben: Like, wtf Roland.
Ben: You had ONE JOB.
Ben: And that job was to SELFISHLY KILL JAKE IN ORDER TO PURSUE THE TOWER.
Ben: AGAIN.
Ben: Yes, I understand that you loved Jake as much as any man can love a boy--which is to say, you loved Jake as much as every other Stephen King protagonist loves his own prepubescent co-protagonist.
Ben: BUT LOVING HIM AND THEN STILL DECIDING TO SACRIFICE HIM TO THE TOWER WOULD HAVE ACTUALLY MEANT SOMETHING.
Ben: By forcing ka to sacrifice Jake instead, or whatever (I thought ka was the one trying to inexorably kill Stephen King in the first place?), Stephen King shows that he had no balls.
Ben: He was too afraid of angry letters from his constant readers calling Roland a cold, heartless monster to commit to his fucking character.
Ben: THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE STORY ABOUT ROLAND KILLING JAKE.
Ben: IT IS THE ONLY THEME THAT HAS SURVIVED FROM THE FIRST BOOK THAT YOU HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY ALLOWED TO WITHER AND DIE.
Ben: AND THEN YOU ALLOWED IT TO WITHER AND DIE.
Ben: So, ultimately, although Jake's death was more eventful than Eddie's, it was just as meaningless.
Ben: Well done.
Ben: Oh and of course the reason that Roland failed to make the jump in the first place was because of his arthritis or whatever, which MIRACULOUSLY GOES AWAY IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD because j/k it was Stephen King's arthritis all along!
Ben: So Jake dies for no reason.
Ben: Oh but of course as Eddie was dying he whispered something about DANDELIONS to Jake, and as Jake is dying he whispers the same thing to Oy or something.
Ben: So the dandelion man better be an important plot point later on, right? One can only hope.
Ben: So let's take stock of where we are.
Ben: Roland is on a quest to find the Dark Tower.
Ben: I honestly forget why at this point, or who set him on this quest in the first place
Ben: but w/e.
Ben: Somewhere along the way we discover that the Dark Tower is the axis upon which the whole omniverse revolves.
Ben: Oh and it is about to be destroyed by THE CRIMSON KING who has been working to destroy the six Beams which radiate from the Tower.
Ben: I forget in which book we learn about the Beams, maybe it is the second or third.
Ben: So we've got to deal with this Beam situation I guess.
Ben: We meet up with friends and now we have a ka-tet and at some point (book three?) Roland and Susannah get raped and she gets pregnant with a baby that is half-Roland's and half-demon or whatever
Ben: and then she runs off and gives birth at the literal climax of book six and this baby that has been in the works for a long time better be there for a reason so help me god.
Ben: And now it is book seven and Eddie and Jake are dead and both of the Beams are saved and--good news--by saving the Beams it means the other Beams will regenerate eventually too and the universe is find and peachy.
Ben: So now we can finally get back to the task of getting Roland to the Dark Tower.
Ben: But like, why are we going there? Do we know? All of the drama for the past five books now has been about saving the Beams. Going towards the Tower has only happened coincidentally to that goal.
Ben: But it's fine, whatever, we don't need to know, Roland is going there and sometimes strong-willed people are allowed to do things for no reason, especially if that's part of their character, which it is for him.
Ben: Except now it's just Oy and Roland and Susannah, and Stephen King will never forgive the Stephen King of 30 years ago for cutting off Susannah's legs and thereby forcing him to invent increasingly elaborate means of transporting a paraplegic thousands of miles in a medieval fantasy setting.
Ben: And despite hating him for getting Eddie killed due to his DARK FATE Susannah still goes with Roland because she loves him or whatever?
Ben: And Oy goes with Roland because Jake loved Roland, for whatever reason? I guess Jake is allowed to love Roland because his real dad was also shit, and Roland was marginally less shit as a dad.
Ben: And now we're in Snowtown.
Ben: And this part of the book is actually good, just them struggling to cross the cold lands with no warmth.
Ben: We're back to a good old-fashioned journey.
Ben: And Mordred following them makes it a tense time.
Ben: Very creepy, a good plot device.
Ben: And Mordred keeps aging at an accelerated rate, soon he will be a man and for sure you think that he will pose an interesting challenge to Roland, or something.
Ben: And then they get to FRASH WOLFDAR's house and have a spooky scary monster time, and survive due to Susannah's dreams of Eddie and Jake shouting DANDELO YOU STUPID BITCH at her, and also a literal and very meta deux ex machina from Stephen King.
Ben: And at this point I'm just like, okay Stephen King, even though you said earlier (via your stupid self-insertion) that you can't influence the outcome of story, whatever.
Ben: But mostly what I'm mad about at this point is that a bit earlier in the book, after Roland saves Stephen King, he delivers some line along the lines of "now that we have saved the universe we are beyond and outside of ka, and every outcome is of our own making."
Ben: Which at the time is a cool thought because it implies that there won't be any more of this get-out-of-jail-free bullshit.
Ben: And then after they kill the Dandelion King Roland is like j/k I guess ka is still here after all
there's something so much less satisfying about a story where everything is supposed to be predestined by fate.
Ben: Even if in our heart we KNOW that the good guys are going to win, the uncertainty is what creates tension
Ben: and finally being done with ka would have brought that tension back for the first time in a long time.
Ben: But of course no it was all bullshit.
Everything that happens isn't because we worked hard for it, but because it had to happen this way (and if we did work hard for it, it's because that had to happen that way too).
Ben: And at this point Susannah comes to the same realization that all of this is bullshit and gets the fuck out of Dodge.
Ben: Her riding off into the sunset is a pretty cool moment, at least she didn't die pointlessly.
Ben: And now it's just Roland and Oy, and also some other character that we don't care about.
Ben: And now that Susannah's left, Roland has to stay awake one more night before they get to the Dark Tower.
Ben: And he is just super fucked and knows that Mordred is going to make a move
Ben: and tries to get the useless character to not be useless and almost dies in the process.
Ben: But it's okay, because Oy saves Roland from Mordred and gets killed in the process and Mordred is now dead.
Ben: Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh hey Stephen King WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING
Ben: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW TO WRITE A FUCKING ANTAGONIST
Ben: YOU CAN'T JUST HAVE ALL THE FIFTY DIFFERENT ANTAGONISTS KILL EACH OTHER AND THEN HAVE THE LAST ONE STANDING JUST FALL IN A FUCKING FIRE AND DIE.
Me: Roland trying to save Jake shows his characters progression from the first book where he sacrificed his surrogate son for his quest.
Me: He has learned the value of friendship and not to repeat his past mistakes.
Ben: Bullshit.
Ben: If he had any progression he would have STOPPED TRYING TO REACH THE TOWER AT ALL.
Ben: He kept trying to reach the tower even KNOWING that it was going to get all of them killed.
Me: I think Roland finding the tower is just him wanting to know what's at the top.
Me: I don't remember if they say why.
Ben: I am willing to accept that Roland seeks the Tower because the Tower calls to him.
Ben: Like, whatever, the Tower is an alien god, okay, it can do what it wants.
Ben: Some things are allowed to be ambiguous.
Ben: Ultimately the Tower is more important to Roland than anything or anyone, which is why it's bullshit that in the scene where Jake dies that he would try to do something that would kill himself rather than let Jake die.
Ben: Because Roland doesn't give a fuck about saving the Tower if he can't get to it afterward.
Me: Don't they have to save Stephen King? So Roland going back to questing for the Tower after Jake dies isn't a contradiction of him loving his boy more than the Tower.
Ben: You can't just rewrite his entire character like that.
Ben: It's not progression, it's a cop-out.
Ben: What, does Roland think that Jake is going to seek the Tower after he's gone?
Ben: If you don't give us a reason for Roland seeking the Tower then you force us to conclude that he seeks it for inexorable and unknowable reasons that preclude any other purpose.
Ben: He killed Jake once, he should have WILLINGLY (if unhappily!) killed Jake again.
Ben: Ka is a fucking wheel, motherfuckers.
Ben: That still would have been progression, because the first time that he killed Jake, both he and Jake were apathetic about the whole ordeal.
Ben: Also, with regard to that whole arc, I'm flabbergasted that in the afterword that Stephen King completely neglects to mention how it was based on him literally getting hit by a car in real life.
Ben: Instead he just lets us believe that it's masturbation for the sake of masturbation
anyway, now Mordred is dead, and for no good goddamn reason.
Ben: I was hopeful that he would be the actual final boss of the series, since the Crimson King is a dipshit who nobody cares about.
Ben: And since Mordred's life had no ultimate purpose other than to kill Oy, and since he would have died were it not for Walter dying, and since Eddie died on account of Walter's death, none of this was for anything.
Ben: It's a great toppling house of cards of suck.
Ben: So now it's just Roland and Mute Picasso
Ben: and they walk to the Dark Tower and find that the Crimson King is just Dumbledore Santa Claus, stuck on a balcony like a college-age Ben stuck outside your dorm room, chucking Quidditch balls at Roland to kill him.
Ben: I wish I could say this was the most disappointing primary antagonist in Stephen King history, though it isn't.
Ben: Honestly, I would have been happier if he were a spider.
Ben: In fact, after seeing Mordred transform into a spider, I was really, honestly HOPING that the Crimson King was a spider
Ben: if for no other reason than there's a really, really old post on KA IS A WHEEL about how if the Crimson King turned out to be a spider I was going to burn your books, and I was honestly looking forward to doing that.
Ben: I'll also remark here about how little Stephen King seems to care about this story.
Ben: Like, this, the final encounter, isn't any sort of actual confrontation between Roland and his nemesis.
Ben: It doesn't involve Eddie or Oy or Susannah or any of the other characters we've come to know over the years.
Ben: It all comes to down to Patrick, who is introduced 2/3 of the way through this book, and is a throwback to a SECONDARY character from a book not even in this series, looking through a pair of binoculars at the Crimson King, a mile away, drawing him, and then erasing him.
Ben: All Roland does is shoot the Quidditch balls out of the air.
Ben: what the fuck were we doing for the past ten years if none of these fucking characters even mattered for the god damn climax????
Me: Did you cover the part where the three Stephen King doppelgängers exposit how the CK committed suicide by swallowing a spoon to make himself invulnerable to Roland's guns?
Ben: Oh lol, right, I forgot about the spoon.
Ben: Impeccable logic.
Ben: But wait how could he talk??
Ben: With a spoon gouging out his throat??
Ben: Whatever, fine, sure, contrive some plot device to justify why your GUNSLINGER can't sling his fucking guns at the final boss.
Ben: I thought the real challenge was going to be about how the Crimson King wanted to get a hold of Roland's guns so that he could ascend to the top?
Ben: Because his guns are SIGULS?
Ben: And there's this whole exchange about how if Roland never goes to the Tower at all then the CK will just be trapped there forever?
Ben: And Roland decided to go anyway?
Ben: Except the CK seems to have no plan for retrieving Roland's guns other than, I guess, hoping that an explosion from a mile away will lob the gun across the entire field of roses and conveniently into his hand?
Ben: And also we know for a fact that the CK was capable of getting into the Tower anyway because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get up on the balcony in the first place, so he actually didn't need the gun at all?
Ben: And also Mordred had a SIGUL as well that was capable of opening the Tower so Mordred could have just gone directly to the Crimson King and let him out instead of trying to kill Roland?
Ben: I can forgive the last bit because the CK was supposed to be crazy and Mordred is supposed to be young and naive but I mean come on, none of this makes sense.
Ben: It really just drives home how Stephen King really didn't think about how he was going to plan out the conclusion to this series, or really plan out any events of this series at all, despite having 40 years to do so.
Ben: And I know that he's just like "oh the words flow through me I am just the messenger" and I'm like bullshit you hack, good storytelling is about TELLING A GOOD STORY EVEN IF IT'S A LOT OF HARD WORK, not just rambling stream-of-consciousness nonsense even if you do think that you're Gan's gift to pop-culture horror fiction.
Ben: So Patrick saves the day and Roland bids him off and walks alone speaking the names of his dead friends as he goes to the Tower's entrance (and he has way fewer dead friends that you'd think given that he's like a zillion years old) and the door slams shut and that's the end of the story except not.
Ben: That's enough for now, I'll give my epilogue report later.
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