I finally finished The Dark Tower on the train trip home.

My thoughts:

The series as a whole incorporates so many ideas, themes and characters, that it theoretically shouldn’t work.  I’m pretty sure when Stephen King started writing it, he had no idea where he was going.  And as he wrote each volume, he rode the waves of ideas that came to him and meshed the ideas and themes from his other books to create the Tower.

It’s the story of Roland Deschain of Gilead.  Once you finish the book, you’ll realise just how fitting the name Deschain (‘of chains’, or ‘in chains’) is for Roland.  He starts off, pursuing the Man in Black across to Mohaine Desert.  Eventually he chases down his prey and spends a moonlight eternity palavering with Walter, the Man in Black.  When Roland awakes, Walter is nothing but bleached bones in the sun.

This starts the journey that is the Dark Tower.  I’m not going to even attempt to summarise the story here, because that would cheapen the experience.  It’s part Western, part love story, part science fiction, part fantasy and everything else you can think of to throw into the mix.  As Roland grew to love his newfound family, or ka-tet, I grew to love them.  As he lost them, I wept, and I grieved.

It was a hard journey for me, as well as the characters in the books.  I was wondering just what the hell was going on even more so than they were.  I guess that was the biggest attraction to this series for me.  You never knew what was going to happen.  I was shocked when our favourite author made a guest appearance.  But as he said, it only made sense to include himself in his own magnum opus.  And in this fool’s professional opinion, it worked, and it made sense.

Some people may argue that the ending is disappointing.  I agree wholeheartedly with what Stephen King said at the end of the book.  It’s the journey that’s important, not the destination.

I’m either a very narrow minded reader, a very devoted reader, or a reader who knows what he likes.  I’m devouring any Stephen King book I can find.  I just picked up Four Past Midnight from the Salvo’s Store for $6 and I’m halfway through a story called The Langoliers.  It’s quite good.

I’m also reading On Writing, his book about, you guessed it, Writing.  I’m taking a lot of the advice that he gives on board and applying it to my writing.  I never realised there was a right way and a wrong way to write a sentence, but my eyes have been opened.  I’m not writing as much as I used to.  I want to start another writing project soon, but the writer’s block, otherwise known as the lack of inspiration, has returned.

But the wheels are turning, and something will be happening soon.  Watch this space.