The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

This and the companion pieces are less reviews than they are a sort of reader's diary of my experiences encountering Stephen King's monumental fantasy/western/science fiction tale The Dark Tower. It's made up of seven books, each of which I read at different times in my life. These are some reflections on the separate volumes, and I will be assuming that the reader has already read them or does not care if what he or she reads spoils the books or their endings. That is, of course, assuming that these little exercises have readers to begin with ;-) 

Again, and I will stress this so that no one may find the experience of learning Roland's story and reading The Dark Tower lessened by knowing what comes next, THERE BE SPOILERS HERE.

You've been alerted.

After an almost 30-year journey that started in the pages of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Roland Deschain's quest for the Dark Tower would close in 2004. Just a few months after Song of Susannah was released, the seventh and at the time final novel of the series was published on Sept. 21, author Stephen King's birthday.

The Dark Tower begins pretty much where the placeholder book Susannah left off. Jake and Callahan are preparing to assault The Dixie Pig, a restaurant that the vampires, Low Men and other servants of the Crimson King use as their base in New York City. They're trying to rescue Susannah Dean, who's been possessed by the demon Mia and driven to the New York reality in order to give birth to her demon-child, sired by Roland himself. The Crimson King has plans for this child, called Mordred.

Deep within the Dixie Pig are tunnels that cross into some of the other realities that have some bearing on Roland's quest for the Tower. Susannah has been brought through them and is now fully separate from the Mia, whose now-physical body gives birth to Mordred. The demon-child's first act is to morph into a spider form and eat his mother. Susannah tries to kill him, but he escapes. She kills the other agents of the Crimson King who've been holding her, though.

Only Jake survived the attack on the Dixie Pig, as Callahan sacrificed himself so that the boy could reach Susannah. He and Susannah are reunited, and Roland, Eddie and Oy the billy-bumbler catch up to them there after leaving 1977 Maine. They've purchased the lot containing the mystic rose that represents the Tower in that hub-world, making it safe from the Crimson King's agents that wanted to buy the lot and destroy the rose. Whole again, the ka-tet sets out through the ancient ruins of the high-tech city of Fedic to reach Devar-Toi, where psychics employed by the Crimson King are breaking the Beams that hold the worlds together and anchor the Tower. Brain material from the stolen children of Calla Bryn Sturgis was used to augment the psychics' abilities but even without that help, the group is close to breaking the last two Beams.

The psychic Breakers are held captive by the Crimson King's agents and would stop their work if they could; the story of one's escape attempt is the focal point of the novella "Low Men in Yellow Coats" from Hearts in Atlantis. With his aid, the ka-tet frees the Breakers from their captors and stops the breaking of the Beams, ending the Tower's immediate danger. But Eddie is mortally wounded during the battle and dies several hours later. Roland and Jake leave Susannah to mourn her husband and jump to the hub-world holding the mystic rose, but in 1999. They're going to try to save Stephen King, the author whose Dark Tower novel series is vitally important to the success of their quest for the Tower. A news item showed King dying after being hit by a van, but if he dies they believe the quest will fail. Jake pushes King enough out of the way so that he is merely injured but is fatally wounded himself. King, of course, was seriously injured in a real-life accident like the one he describes in the book. The ka-tet is down to Roland, Susannah and Oy, and Roland returns alone to the other two after gathering information from allies they had made in the rose-world that most resembles ours.

The trio now begins the final leg of their journey to the Tower, traveling across a cold wasteland for many weeks. Along the way they learn that the Crimson King, believing Roland will now kill him, has killed himself so that he can survive as an invulnerable spirit-being. The psychic vampire Dandelo tries to lure them into a trap, but the author King drops a literal note from the author into the book in time for Susannah to recognize the danger and save them. They discover the vampire has been holding a young man named Patrick Danville prisoner and when they release him, they find that he has the power to draw things that become real. When he heals a potentially fatal sore on Susannah's mouth by erasing it from the drawing he made of her, they learn he can un-make things as well.

Susannah and Roland decide that she should leave and Patrick draws a door for her to another world. In this world, Eddie and Jake are both still alive and are in fact brothers. Susannah meets them as she enters their world and although the story leaves them there, we're led to believe they all live happily ever after.

Mordred has been tracking Roland since they left Devar-Toi and finally makes his move after Susannah leaves. But Oy's ferocious defense delays the demon-child, now mostly grown and still capable of changing into a spider, and Roland is able to kill him. Oy is also fatally wounded in this battle. Roland and Patrick find their way to the Tower blocked by the Crimson King, an invulnerable spirit armed with what seems like an endless supply of the explosive sneetches used by the Wolves of the Calla. Although Roland's gun prevents any sneetches from reaching the pair, he knows that he can't keep that up forever, and besides, the Tower's call is so strong he must fight the urge to simply walk towards it and allow the King to kill him. Patrick draws a picture of the Crimson King and erases it, destroying him. Roland at last comes to the Tower after setting Patrick back on a path towards populated areas. There, he shouts the names of his companions and others as he had promised to do and he enters the Tower.

In an afterword, King suggests that the reader stop there, with everyone at the end of their respective quests. But for those who don't want to, he offers the end of Roland's story. Which, as it turns out, is also the beginning -- after climbing several levels of the Tower and encountering reminders of different stages of his life, he reaches the top and sees a door like the others below, only this one has his name on it. Opening it, he finds himself drawn back into the desert where we first met him. He realizes he has reached the Tower many times before, but his memories of his quest vanish and he is once again pursuing the fleeing man in black.

There are several ways The Dark Tower is an end for the Dark Tower series, and some of them work better than others. On the one hand, the idea that Roland is somehow sentenced to an eternal quest seems fitting. And, interestingly enough, not too far off many Christian ideas of evil and hell. C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, offers a Hell that each person in it creates for themselves by trying to make their own paradise, only without God. Roland, having made his quest for the Tower the center of his life, is given that quest, repeated endlessly until he might one time learn that there are more important things. There's some hint that he's slowly progressing each time, gaining understanding until he might reach that point, so this would be more of a Purgatory than Hell, but the parallel is interesting.

King probably does better at characterizing Roland in The Dark Tower than at any other point in the series. I'll confess I read the ending of the book when it was released, several years before I read the actual book itself. So, knowing what was coming for Roland offered a real aura of pathos as one by one his ka-tet is taken from him by death or by leaving.

But as an ending to the overall story, The Dark Tower carries a lot of flaws. For one, remember the Man in Black? The guy we started out chasing, the guy who we later learned had an affair with Roland's mother and tricked the gunslinger into killing her? The guy who we eventually learn is none other than Randall Flagg, a bad dude from several of King's novels, most notably The Stand? The guy who killed Roland's childhood friend Cuthbert Allgood? He gets dispatched pretty early in this book, almost offstage and certainly without any real confrontation with Roland, when he is mind-controlled and eaten by Mordred. Morded himself, after three books and a ret-conned conception's worth of buildup, lurks in the background for most of the story, makes one scream-and-leap stab at his pops and fails epically. The Crimson King is the last obstacle between Roland and the Tower, but he disappears when Patrick Danville draws him on a pad and erases him. Susannah gets sent to another world for a reunion with an Eddie and Jake like the one she knew when Patrick draws a door to that world. But why, when Patrick's magical drawings can create doorways that never existed and cure medical illnesses, does the author King not have him DRAW SUSANNAH SOME FRICKIN' LEGS?

The Dark Tower, like a lot of the last half of The Dark Tower series, suffers from lazy storytelling that undercuts its good qualities. Some of it's just some undisciplined yarning that needs to be reined in. Some of it's some plot holes that a little bit of thinking through could help cover up. And some of it's a possible change in approach that King took during the creation of the series that will be the subject of the next post.

PS -- The Dark Tower saga may not end with book 7.  King said in several interviews in 2009 that he's been considering the idea of another novel, or series of connected novellas, set in Roland's Mid-World, although Roland himself may or may not be the focus of the book. Tentatively titled The Wind Through the Keyhole, it has a possible publication date of 2011 or 2012 and is either A) set in the time between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla or B) involve a younger Roland while his friend Cuthbert Allgood is still alive.