Product Description

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. The final book opens like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127971 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743254564
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
At one point in this final book of the Dark Tower series, the character Stephen King (added to the plot in Song of Susannah) looks back at the preceding pages and says "when this last book is published, the readers are going to be just wild." And he's not kidding.

After a journey through seven books and over 20 years, King's Constant Readers finally have the conclusion they've been both eagerly awaiting and silently dreading. The tension in the Dark Tower series has built steadily from the beginning and, like in the best of King's novels, explodes into a violent, heart-tugging climax as Roland and his ka-tet finally near their goal. The body count in The Dark Tower is high. The gunslingers come out shooting and face a host of enemies, including low men, mutants, vampires, Roland's hideous quasi-offspring Mordred, and the fearsome Crimson King himself. King pushes the gross-out factor at times--Roland's lesson on tanning (no, not sun tanning) is brutal--but the magic of the series remains strong and readers will feel the pull of the Tower as strongly as ever as the story draws to a close. During this sentimental journey, King ties up loose ends left hanging from the 15 non-series novels and stories that are deeply entwined in the fabric of Mid-World through characters like Randall Flagg (The Stand and others) or Father Callahan ('Salem's Lot). When it finally arrives, the long awaited conclusion will leave King's myriad fans satisfied but wishing there were still more to come.

In King's memoir On Writing, he tells of an old woman who wrote him after reading the early books in the Dark Tower series. She was dying, she said, and didn't expect to see the end of Roland's quest. Could King tell her? Does he reach the Tower? Does he save it? Sadly, King said he did not know himself, that the story was creating itself as it went along. Wherever that woman is now (the clearing at the end of the path, perhaps?), let's hope she has a copy of The Dark Tower. Surely she would agree it's been worth the wait. --Benjamin Reese

From Publishers Weekly
A pilgrimage that began with one lone man's quest to save multiple worlds from chaos and destruction unfolds into a tale of epic proportions. While King saw some criticism for the slow pace of 1982's The Gunslinger, the book that launched this series, The Drawing of the Three (Book II, 1987), reeled in readers with its fantastical allure. And those who have faithfully journeyed alongside Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy ever since will find their loyalty toward the series' creator richly rewarded.The tangled web of the tower's multiple worlds has manifested itself in many of King's other works— The Stand (1978), Insomnia (1994) and Hearts in Atlantis (1999), to name a few. As one character explains here, "From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed... very few of the things Stephen King wrote were 'just stories.' He may not believe that; we do." King, in fact, intertwines his own life story deeper and deeper into the tale of Roland and his surrogate family of gunslingers, and, in this final installment, playfully and seductively suggests that it might not be the author who drives the story, but rather the fictional characters that control the author.This philosophical exploration of free will and destiny may surprise those who have viewed King as a prolific pop-fiction dispenser. But a closer look at the brilliant complexity of his Dark Tower world should explain why this bestselling author has finally been recognized for his contribution to the contemporary literary canon. With the conclusion of this tale, ostensibly the last published work of his career, King has certainly reached the top of his game. And as for who or what resides at the top of the tower... The many readers dying to know will have to start at the beginning and work their way up. 12 color illus. by Michael Whelan.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
The long march to the Dark Tower began in 1970 when Stephen King, still a fledgling writer with outsized ambitions, was an undergraduate at the University of Maine. It was then that he wrote the opening chapters of the first book in the series. The project faltered for a while, was eventually revived and has since proceeded in fits and starts, with gaps as long as six years between installments. Recently, in the aftermath of his near-fatal accident in 1999, King turned his full attention to this long, protracted saga, producing three large volumes in rapid succession. The seventh and final volume, The Dark Tower, should more than satisfy his voracious readers. It is an absorbing, constantly surprising novel filled with true narrative magic, a fitting capstone to a uniquely American epic.

Inspiration for that epic comes from all points of the aesthetic compass. The primary source is Robert Browning's narrative poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," which provided King with his central motif and a name for his carved-from-granite protagonist: Roland Deschain of Gilead. Other sources include J.R.R. Tolkien, L. Frank Baum, Clifford D. Simak and the work of filmmakers such as John Sturges, Akira Kurosawa and -- most centrally -- Sergio Leone. Leone's sprawling "spaghetti western" "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," created the template for Roland -- a distinctly Clint Eastwood-like figure -- and for the alternately brutal and beautiful landscape through which he journeys.

That journey begins with the memorable opening sentence: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." Roland, a lineal descendant of King Arthur, is the last gunslinger in a rapidly decaying world. He has embarked on a quest for the eponymous tower, which stands at the nexus of all times and places, binding together an infinite number of parallel worlds. The tower, held in place by a number of intersecting "beams," is under attack by a psychotic entity known as the Crimson King, who plans to tear it down and rule forever in the chaos that will follow. Roland's twin goals are to preserve the tower -- and, by extension, the worlds it supports -- and to climb to the room at the top of that tower, where an unknown fate awaits him.

The first few volumes focus on Roland's efforts to draw a trio of prospective companions from three different versions of 20th-century America. The first of these is Eddie Dean, a heroin addict rapidly running out of hope and chances. The second is Odetta Holmes, a crippled civil rights activist with multiple personalities who eventually becomes known as Susannah. The third is Jake Chambers, an 11-year-old boy who returns from the dead to join Roland's cadre of apprentice gunslingers. These three form the core of the "ka-tet" (i.e., sacred fellowship) that will accompany Roland on his quest. They are joined, at various stages, by many others, including Father Donald Callahan, a central figure in Salem's Lot (1975), and a popular (and endangered) novelist named Stephen King, who has a crucial story to tell.

By the time the final volume opens, the ka-tet is closer to the tower after surviving a daunting array of pitched battles, supernatural encounters, out-of-body experiences and journeys between worlds. On the heels of the multiple cliffhangers that ended the previous volume, Song of Susannah, a number of critical developments are under way. Jake and Father Callahan move toward a fateful meeting in a Manhattan restaurant called the Dixie Pig. Susannah gives birth to a murderous, shape-shifting entity named Mordred. Roland himself, accompanied by Eddie Dean, travels to the town of Lowell, Maine, where the border between worlds has grown thin and permeable. In time, the diminished ka-tet reassembles, resuming its increasingly treacherous journey. Their path leads from Algul Siente, where imprisoned "breakers" chip away at the two remaining beams, back to Maine, where Stephen King awaits his life-altering encounter with an out-of-control Dodge Caravan. From there, the path moves through a blighted, wintry landscape leading to a field of roses where the Tower awaits.

King combines these diverse elements into an archetypal quest fantasy distinguished by its uniquely Western flavor, its emotional complexity and its sheer imaginative reach. In the course of nearly 4,000 pages, the Dark Tower saga fuses slightly skewed autobiography with an extravagant portrait of an imperiled multiverse. The series as a whole -- and this final volume in particular -- is filled with brilliantly rendered set pieces (including a stand-up comedy routine that turns unexpectedly lethal), cataclysmic encounters and moments of desolating tragedy. In the end, King holds it all together through sheer narrative muscle and his absolute commitment to his slowly unfolding -- and deeply personal -- vision.

As King notes in his afterword, the series has become his "ubertale." As such, it has gradually established a web of connections with much of his earlier fiction. The most prominent example is the reappearance of Father Callahan, who was last seen in ignominious retreat from the vampire-infested village of Jerusalem's Lot. In his new incarnation, "Pere" Callahan is an affecting, multidimensional character for whom redemption, which once seemed impossible, has come suddenly within reach.

Elsewhere in the series, Randall Flagg, architect of the apocalypse in The Stand (1978), shows up in a variety of guises, among them that of the man in black whose flight across the desert in volume one began the story. Also back are Dinky Earnshaw (Everything's Eventual) and Ted Brautigan ("Low Men in Yellow Coats"), who now work together as conscripted, ultimately rebellious "breakers." And Patrick Danville, who appeared briefly onstage in Insomnia, joins the ka-tet in the final stages of its journey and plays a pivotal role in the climactic confrontation with the Crimson King. Other, less overt references -- names, phrases and images that deliberately echo similar elements of earlier books -- are scattered throughout the text, creating the sense of a coherent, if loosely connected, fictional universe.

Although King's detractors -- a vocal, often contentious bunch -- will doubtless disagree, The Dark Tower stands as an imposing example of pure storytelling. King has always believed in the primal importance of story, and his entire career -- encompassing 40 novels and literally hundreds of shorter works -- is a reflection of that belief. On one level, the series as a whole is actually about stories, about the power of narrative to shape and color our individual lives. It is also, beneath its baroque, extravagant surface, about the things that make us human: love, loss, grief, honor, courage and hope. On a deeper level still, it is a meditation on the redemptive possibility of second chances, a subject King knows intimately. In bringing this massive project to conclusion, King has kept faith with his readers and made the best possible use of his own second chance. The Dark Tower is a humane, visionary epic and a true magnum opus. It will be around for a very long time.

Reviewed by Bill Sheehan
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Pure Drivel
After being seduced by the hard edged writing of the first three and a half episodes of the Gunslinger series I was more or less compelled to follow it through and buy/read the rest. I feel like a complete idiot paying for way overpriced pap by a writer that just went through the motions in these directionless and practically incomprehensible final issues. While the first three were tightly written and published in paperback at reasonable prices the author chose to "package" the remaining books in hardback and loading them up with meandering plot lines leading to a conclusion that had no meaning to me. There was no reason for this other than to get the price up by adding "perceived" value. Honestly, I feel insulted and made a fool of but very glad that it's over. Roland deserved better.

One 'Constant Reader' to another... NO SPOILERS
Technically this book is not low quality enough to merit one star, but if you've been with this series since Day One, and believe as I do that this book carries more with it than just itself as a story, to give it anything more than one star would understate the magnitude of its failure.
All of the problems with book six are extended and compounded here in book seven: the reliance on New York and Maine as settings for an adventure story that's supposed to be grander than any one time or place, the prominence of annoying and unwelcome new characters, King's overuse of unbelievable internal dialogue to cram exposition down our throats, his narcissistic inclusion of himself as an important element, (more on that later) and his lack of focus on any one element worth caring about. The bottom line is this: "The Dark Tower 7" is King at his laziest and least original, which is hard enough to sit through in his lower-quality stand-alone output, but shockingly unforgivable in what is supposed to be the center of all his literary creation (his words, not mine) and his bid for greatness in the eyes of posterity.
Perhaps writing the Dark Tower had become a burden not unlike the Tower quest itself. Unlike his character Roland, however, King jumps ship rather than stick it out. Consider the evidence: the books inexplicably marginalize Roland and the Quest the further they go. By contrast, pointless distractions and King himself (with a profound dislike for the burden of being author) appear and assume importance. Roland is relieved of many of his soul-testing responsibilities (sacrificing his friends, dealing with his foes) by cheap plot devices that cause them to disappear outside of any action of his-- even the Tower itself is made practically irrelevant by a series of contrived events and unimportant characters. Forgive me, but wasn't the great central tragedy of this series that he'd give up anything for the Quest, and has in the past? King spent quite a bit of books one, three, and almost all of four dealing with this-- why throw it out the window in the closing 300 pages?
In "Dark Tower 7" Roland sacrifices nothing-- he is LEFT BEHIND and made irrelevant; this is perhaps symbolic of what has happened to the Series on the whole. The final three books in this series have a lurching, breakneck pace and reach their end with all the subtlety of a dump truck hitting a brick wall. Is it coincidental that they were penned all at once, contrasting with the twenty or so years it took King to write the first four? Consider also the growing preoccupation with the Tower in his other works over the last few years. The overwhelming presence in the first four books was the slow decay of a many layered world, one like and yet unlike our own, with complex characters that were all just a little bit crazy from their own mental decay. In the final three books, this world gives way to the familiar rushing and business-like atmosphere of omnipresent New York. The characters we knew fade and are replaced by cardboard heroes or villains, doing what they have to do to bring the story to an end.
The Quest (and possibly King's concern for his own mortality) probably proved too much to bear and King wanted out. If so, that is his prerogative. I do not feel he owes me any duty to "finish the series right," although I can offer my opinion that it would have been better to leave it unfinished than to drop it off a literary skyscraper like he has. In a self-serving note at the end, King remarks that the problem with Constant Readers is that they never want to acknowledge that sooner or later they'll have to let go-- whether there's real closure or not, and that it's a tragic thing to be insistent on some kind of neatly resolved 'ending.' I would answer that he should have taken some of his own advice: in the rush to close and end this series he's given up its soul. Tragic, indeed, as the once-great "Dark Tower" books deserved better treatment than this. If you are (like I was) an enthusiastic reader of the series and began to smell a rat in places during Book Five, I advise you to stop and leave your impression of the books as intact as it can be. If you've already read book six and enjoyed it without any problems, you might want to continue. For everyone else: it only gets worse.

what happened...?
Imagine if you had to wait ten years in between each book of the Lord of the Rings. Then imagine after being entranced by the first two books, surprising in their originality, wonder and realistic depth, you wait another decade, pick up The Return of the King, and halfway through, J.R.R Tolkien walks into Middle Earth, shakes Frodo's hand, and proceeds to explain to him how he conceived of the idea of hobbits as a bedtime story for his children.

Then read on for a bit more, and find that Sauron, Lord of Mordor, is in actuality not evil incarnate, but just some pissed off guy, yelling on the balcony of his tower.

Then, just as Frodo walks into the tunnel leading to the Cracks of Doom, there's an interjection BY THE AUTHOR, telling you that it's time to stop reading now.

Imagine all this, and then you begin to get a good idea of how what began as a truly unique and genere shattering epic and potential genuine magnum opus can go out with a groan instead of a bang.

Anybody who loved this series in its entirety, I cannot fault you. But I can say that you were not as dedicated and engulfed in the world of the gunslinger and his new friends as the rest of us were. You are the guys who never watch the ballgames until it's on the news that your team's made the playoffs for the first time in 30 years, and then you go out and buy their hat to wear at the sports bar.

You liked it because you don't care. You liked it because you were expecting just another decent story, and that's what you got. For you it was never real.

The rest of us were expecting a revolutionary epic, because all those years ago when we first found ourselves in the strange world of the gunslinger, we saw all the makings of one.

We saw the potential for something truly magnificent, and we're sad and disillusioned and pissed off as we contrast what could have been with what has come to be. We wonder how something that started so good could end so badly.