Dark Tower reread pt. 10: The Dark Tower

"The ka of the rational world wants him dead; that of the Prim wants him alive, and singing his song. (For) the first time since the Prim receded, all worlds and all existence turns toward the Dark Tower which stands at the far end of Can'-ka No Rey, the Red Field of None." 

"Rey" is Spanish for King, so Red Field of No King? He wishes. 

Well, well, here we are, approaching the clearing at the end of the re-read path. I've been dithering with this review for what feels like months. I gave myself an end-of-June deadline, but real life intervened and here we are. Only a few days behind schedule. 

I read this last volume with a sense of detachment. In an attempt not to harp on things already harped upon too much, let's start with:

I'VE ALREADY TALKED ENOUGH ABOUT...

- MIA. The situation does not improve here, except that she gets eaten by her spider-chap, which I suppose is mildly gratifying. 

- THE DUBIOUS GUNSLINGERNESS OF ROLAND'S KA-TET. Especially Jake "Docker's Clutch" Chambers. Things get even worse here with all the over-the-top narration and agonizing eve-of-battle remarks where they all get to pretend how battle-weary they are and hardened for the fight, etc. Ugh. 

- THE WHOLE CALVINS/ TET vs. SOMBRA THING. I meant to save my thoughts on that until this post, but I guess I mentioned it all last time: I'm ever so slightly incredulous about how the side with the positronic machine-guns (even if they don't work, but they also have time travel orbs, so uhh, they could've used one of those to go back to when NCP was making fresh-off-the-assembly-line sneetches, etc.) and vampires can't seem to get the drop on a bunch of septuagenarian book nerds. I mean, as an English major, it's a lovely idea - and it's not like believability is exactly a concern at this point in the series - but sheesh. 

Speaking of the banality of evil:

- BUMBLING VILLAINS. The whole robot-fire-team wiping out the security staff at Devar-Toi is supposed to be this ironic or comedic scene. And yet, it's also supposed to be this bad-ass scene where we say goodbye to Eddie and Susannah and Jake go into berserker rage, etc. The tone is so incredibly mismatched. But mainly I just want to go on record as saying the monsterdom of King's Dark Tower-verse is not so good. Whether it's the taheen (who literally eat boogers) or the low men (who are never as good as they are in "Low Men in Yellow Coats") this all strikes me as GRRM-level "look at me subvert expectation! Anything goes!" territory. 

BREAKERS. Again, what the hell are the Breakers supposed to be doing? And how long have they been at this? None of this makes any sense. 

- KING'S EPISTOLARY OBSESSION. Why does he always add so many letters and diary entries to his books and make absolutely no effort to differentiate the tone/ voice of the letter/diary writer? From The Plant to The Stand to David's note to Irene, here, or the Author himself's diary entries at the end of bk 6, everyone sounds exactly the same. I will never understand King's editor's job. 

- POINTLESS PORTENT. Like not revealing what the Turtle fountain says for 10 pages ("Given by the Tet Corporation" changed on 6/19/99 from "in memory of Gilead" to "in memory of Edward Cantor Dean and John Jake Chambers, can-a-cam-blah blah, gan-delah.) Why does an author of King's stature and ability rely on such cheap tricks? 

- TOO DAMN LONG. This would have worked way better as two books, the first one ending round pg. 670 or so when real-world King (or King's fake-real-world King) has his conversation with Marlowe (the corgi, may he R.I.P.) And if you omitted all the narrative whimsy, maybe that'd have knocked off another 50 pages. Speaking of:

When they cast Miley Cyrus as Jake, at least there'll be some precedent. Also, wtf with Oy in this picture.

THE VOICE

What is going on with King's narration in this story? It's so odd and at odds with the voice in the other books. Granted he has invaded his own story, referencing "Have you ever been Carrie at the prom?" (A Darmok/ Children-of-Tama allusion no one has ever made) as well as "a certain paper boat, it passes out of this tale forever", but it's not even consistent in its ringmaster-ness.  He goes from "See this, do I beg ya" in spots to long asides and old-time-radio narration with swelling strings ("Having been given so, so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?" FFS.) 

It adds nothing and actually disrupts an already struggling pace. In fact, it sounds very much like a man who realizes on some level that he has blown it and is throwing whatever he can into the proceedings to achieve some kind of epic tonality that should be there and is not. 

(The very, very end? Epic tonality in spades. And you'll notice the cutesy shit falls to one side during it. No "See Roland climb the steps if it please ya! Commala-hey, Commala-hi!")

PSIONIC ACTION TEAM SQUAD ADVENTURES!

I decided to give this its own section even though I have certainly harped on this enough, but good lord, the shortcuts of telepathy and todash King allows himself in this one are ridiculous. It starts early where Roland projects himself across time and space to yell at Jake through Callahan's mouth. (What?) It continues when Jake mind-swaps with Oy to get out of a mind trap (double what?) and reaches new heights of absurdity in the whole assault on Algul Siento/ Devar-Toi when we're reintroduced to Sheemie, who (naturally - as he is slow-witted) now has teleportation powers. (One wonders if deep down King actually believes that the mentally handicapped all have some kind of wild psionic talent. I'm betting he does.) This last one is all the more irritating because Wizard and Glass would have gone differently had Sheemie actually had teleportation powers and not just gifted them here in book 7. 

I did enjoy Roland's sudden realization. ("Magic doors! That's what teleportation means!") 

TED TALK

Ted B. and Dinky are somewhat welcome sights. But Ted's backstory is kind of too much. Like Callahan, he just goes a-wanderin'... but, from the 1920s through the 1950s? Really? That's kind of a long time to be walking aimelssly about, "doing odd jobs." There's too much missing. I realize he had to fit this into Hearts in Atlantis timeframe - except, he didn't, not really; time moves differently all over the place in these books so there's real need to make Ted a WW1 vet, and to be honest, "1922" aside, King doesn't have a handle on this era very well. Ted seems like a baby boomer, like King. All of King's characters seems like baby boomers. 

Anyway all this 'THEY'RE KILLING THE LITTLE MAN!' stuff never comes up in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and, like Sheemie's M-O-O-N-that-spells-magic-doors it would have had it been part of Ted's backstory and not something that King decided to just throw in here. And the fact that this is all relayed by a stack of reel-to-reel tapes Ted recorded for the ka-tet to listen to in the cave adds to the disbelief.

LET'S TALK INDIVIDUAL FATES

- Roland. Obviously, the big one. I liked his resolution, and the little touch of having the Horn with him this time around. Could things go differently?

- Eddie, Jake, and Susannah (and Oy, sort of) end up in a whole new reality. Does Callahan? Do Jake's parents? For that matter, where does Mia go one she's consumed - back to the Prim? To the way station? Back to Fedic?

- What the hell happens to Patrick? I kind of wish there'd been a Duma Key tie-in, given Edgar's similar abilities, but I'm equally glad there isn't one. 

- Walter. Okay, this is more of a next section issue. Let's go to:

BABY MORDRED

I mentioned a couple of things about this last time, namely that this whole idea - and its late-innings intro - don't work too well for me. But I found myself liking these sections a lot this reread. Spider-baby is cool, even if his intermittent awareness of all things around him (and way beyond him) is ridiculous. He knows motivations and history, because telepathy, but is just a baby when convenient. Okay. Anyway, I liked his being the hand (or spider-appendage) to end Walter's life; this is a 180 from my first read when I thought it was the worst decision ever. I still think it's too late a development in the series to truly be good (and I think King realized this and brought Walter back for TWTTK) but I just mean the actual scene where he kills him is good and kind of a great scene for the Man in Black, outwitted at last. 

I was amused that King felt the need to make even Baby Mordred vaguely racist; as with telepathy, he just can't help himself. ("What the others heard in major, Mordred heard in minor.")

METAFICTIVE

"Many of my fictions refer back to Roland's world and Roland's story. It seemed logical that I was part of the gunslinger's ka." 

I don't know if "logical" is the right word for that, but sometimes things strike King in a way that seems utterly backwards from reality. Like the "impossibility" of thinking about Trump while watching Chernobyl, (re: his tweet a few weeks back) I don't know if it truly is impossible. It seems a very revealing word choice. King is the kid from The Regulators possessed by Tak. The end of the series (bks 5 through 7) is King's attack on the inner sanctum of his own mind. Roland's lesson is the one he either learns day to day, Memento-style, or the one he wishes he'd learn.

"Brautigan had gotten off onto some rambling, discursive sidetrack."

All the Bryan Smith stuff is stupid. In real life, too, I guess, but good lord. I mean, the guy kills Jake, and then Roland side-of-the-road King have a stop-and-chat. 

"Resolution demands a sacrifice,' King says, and although no one hears but the birds and he has no idea what this means, he is not disturbed. He's always muttering to himself, it's as though there is a Cave of Voices in his head, full of brilliant - but not necessarily intelligent - mimics."

Roland's anger at King is weird. Handled okay I guess, but it's like all the anger at poor Calvin Tower. There are easier ways to analyze oneself than this. King once mentioned (in that old Playboy interview) how he refused to see a shrink because he psychoanalyzed himself through his writing. The Dark Tower books bear testimony to this, but they're also very taxing in this regard: some things should be worked out in the privacy of one's own mind and not masquerading as epic fantasy. 

GOOD ROBOT

Is there a bad robot after Andy? I've asked before, and I don't think there is. Here we get two. The first, Nigel, is great. I love when he breaks in with his "Pardon me, sirs..." after Mordred consumes Mia; that's lol-territory. Or any of his "I HAVE BEEN BLINDED BY GUNFIRE!"s.

Stuttering Bill, the robot who plows the snow on Tower Lane, is great as well. Call me an idiot but I completely missed the It connection here. Stuttering Bill! Good freaking lord. 

INSOMNIA

One connection I both missed and didn't miss is the Insomnia one. i.e. I couldn't really not miss it, since it's pointed out literally and Susannah is reading Roland the book on the trail (although we don't really see or hear this or learn what Roland thinks of it) and yet the actual point of the Insomnia / Book 7 overlap is, like the Colorado Kid or the origin of the monolith on the moon, a complete mystery to me. It seems like this is a loose end. 

And ditto for Patrick Danville and the whole role he plays in dispatching the CK. I'll admit: all of this just kind of went over my head. Either King thought "hey screw it, this is a fun idea" - in which case, I think it's all incredibly self-indulgent and sloppy - or there's some brilliant fourth-dimensional chess going on, such as the kind people find in Trump's - or King's, for that matter - tweets. (Just to be clear: I am not one of these people. I despise and find infinitely more dangerous the media-academe narrative about Trump more than I despise Trump/ King's tweets, but there's no shortage of despising for all of it. Everyone involved should be less dumb/obsessive.) 

Whatever it is, it's over my head, and I guess I'll just have to live with that. 

SOME FINAL RANDOMS

- "Bango Skank, the great lost character." 

- Much of the things Fumalo, Feemalo, and Fimalo (grrrr) say contradict or complicate things already established. But hey, it's probably all ka, bro. 

- "All the Crimson King cares about is to beat Roland to the Tower." Uhh.. what? Why? He lives right next to the fracking thing; Roland had to walk towards it for 20+ years. And when the CK decides to go there he leaves his castle and travels in a portable storm (which is kind of cool) and heads down Tower Lane. So, it's not like the distance/ time was manipulated or anything. 

- I liked Dandelo a little more this time around, but it's still damn odd all of this happens. I mean... if King is leaving notes in medicine cabinets and all, I mean wtf. Why any mystery? This is all such muddled thinking to me. He leaves an actual note in Dandelo's medicine cabinet? Why not a .45? Or a bunch of erasers for Patrick? Also, how did he get there? The whole thing - as does his leaving cryptic clues for Jake - raises questions that don't need to be introduced, especially at this late hour of the saga.

FINAL THOUGHTS, SCORES AND RANKINGS

Well! We made it. I can't see myself reading these again. Things start off so promising with the Dark Tower series and then end so unsatisfyingly. I admire King for taking a road all his own (so to speak) but can't say in all honesty I enjoyed myself after awhile. 

Here's how they currently shake out for me:

8. The Dark Tower

7. Song of Susannah

6. Wolves of the Calla

5. The Waste Lands

4. The Drawing of the Three

3. The Gunslinger

2. Wizard and Glass

1. The Wind Through the Keyhole

I'll throw "The Little Sisters of Eluria" and "Low Men in Yellow Coats" in as tied for number one, as well. 

~

Thanks for reading; what did you think?

The Dark Tower reread pt. 9: Song of Susannah

"Was it God that made magic, 

or was it magic that made God?"

A reasonable question.

When last we met on the Path of the Beam, I mentioned how it was (usually) a drag to write negative reviews. That goes even more for installments of a series where the worldbuilding doesn't really matter anymore but the author keeps right on worldbuilding. And this is just book 6! Book 7 is twice as long. As the last volume in a saga should be, but it's just difficult to stay vested in worldbuilding once certain pacts with the reader (namely fourth wall one) are broken. 

Let's see if I can unpack that a little.

MIA AND THE PRIM 

AND KEEP IT MOVING

Here's how I wrote it up immediately after finishing this re-read:

"The basic gist is that roundabout 10,000 A.C.E. the technology/ magic of the world went kablooey and the Prim/ monsters now had access to the world. All of the Pennywises, the Wolfmen, the Draculas, the bug-like monsters of the Mist, you name it. Among these monsters are the can-toi, whom the Crimson King has promised to remake the world in their image. Walter is pretending to work with the Crimson King,  who either knows and is biding his time or is too focused on his own insane ambitions to notice. Walter's doing this because he likes secrets. Maerlyn's globes all pass through his hands, but hey. Walter and the CK are working together, though, on this weird magical pregnancy with a midwife they created from Prim mists and bad vibes. They graft this onto Susannah (somehow) because all prophecies have the protagonist slain by his red-headed progeny. Like literally that is their reason: it sounds good in these old books. Of course, all of the above only has to make the loose sort of sense a skimming-of-King's-unconscious might; we're waterskiing on the random echo-waves of everything he's ever taken to the brain. (Like that J-Lo movie The Cell. Mash-up with King's Cell? Too far.)"

As aforementioned, it's asking a lot of an audience to sit still for more of this stuff - even if prior to the meta-walls crumbling down, more-of-this-stuff was what I eagerly wanted to read - after the author's already yanked the curtain down. Not everyone agrees this is as much of a problem as I do. But personally, the balloon just kind of deflates a little further each time he gets into this stuff - if I was there I'd do the move-it-along-dude Roland finger-roll thing *- or throws beamquakes or other dangers at the characters. There's no real danger or suspense anymore, just a patient curiosity to see how it will all end up. And since I know that already, the re-read for these sections is a lot like the alien / smoking-man storyline in The X-Files. Who gives a crap? Plot developments (or plot derailments) of the series itself already made this stuff moot, and it's the sort of thing that only works if it remains very-much-not-moot.

* Does Roland do this anytime in The Gunslinger or did he develop this affectation after he lost several fingers on his other hand? Or does he do this gesture with his afflicted hand? Even better. "Let my absent fingers remind you of time you'll never get back."

Again, not everyone agrees. (About that aspect of the X-Files, neither.) It's worse here though because King carries on with the conceit that these are characters moving towards a goal in a universe with rules. All the whole extra worldbuilding, all the mystical pregnancy stuff retconning the speaking demon sex scenes, and the various timelines-hopping and interdimensional mental projection: I'm just waiting it all out. It doesn't matter if it makes sense; you move beyond judgment, beyond good and evil, once you turn down the "why don't I put myself into this story?" path. Throw one Harry Potter sneech and look what happens. 

ALL THAT SAID...

I actually enjoyed reading this much more than I did the first time. I wasn't disappointed by the mystery unfolding in directions I didn't like, since I knew what was going to happen, so I could just enjoy some of the moments. And there's plenty of fun scenes and sequences, especially once John Cullom - one of King's everymen - and Jack Andolini and his pals show up. 

The illustrations by Darrell Anderson are kind of cool. My least favorite book in the series (perhaps) gets my favorite illustrations. Weird. 

ROSALITA, ROSALITA...

that stout-of-heart, wide-of-hip, Oriza-throwin', Beams-knowin' woman of the borderlands.

I got nothing here, the description just amuses me. Roland's range of romantic action is kind of odd in the Dark Tower books. From a few different whores to the love of his life in Mejis to Rosalita to the strange affair with Irene Tassenbaum in bk7. And the one semen-swapping demon of course.

...eww

FUN LINE

"It hurt like the veriest motherfucker of creation."

MORE OF THIS STUFF

"Once upon a time all was Discordia, and from it, strong and crossing at a single unifying point, came the 6 beams (...) There was magic to hold them steady for eternity, but when magic left from all there is but the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines began. They created the machines which ran the beams, and now the machines are failing. The Crimson King's breakers are only hurrying a process that's already in train." 

I hate to even get wrapped up in this after deciding none of it matters anyway, but how long exactly have the Breakers been at this? Several generations of Calla folken at least. What exactly are they doing? Magic built the beams and the Tower - or they themselves are manifestations of magic - and then men built machines to bolster them, and now Breakers are using squiggley-doodles and tele-Sudoku to un-beamify the multiverse?

All of these epic sagas square protagonists up against the undoing of everything from some ultimate force/ evil; I don't need it to be literally spelled out in every detail. But I need to understand more than I do here. I need something more tangible than "To Break is divine". I guess these are more Book 7 thoughts. Mark your calendars!

Speaking of:

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

It doesn't get more tangible than the author having a few beers with (in front of, I guess, while they look with a measure of awe and embarrassment) his creations.

This is another section I liked more than expected. King comes across well, and I'd be curious to hear from those who know him (or knew him in the 70s) if he got himself right. Storytelling-wise, the todana-death-bag and other foreshadowing works pretty well. It doesn't get the pay-off it deserves in bk 7.

King's diaries that end the book are an interesting narrative device for the penultimate book of the series, but the voice is off. He doesn't sound like the guy we met earlier in the book, or the King we know from countless intros and endnotes. Okay, let's say he has different voices for different tasks. Problem is, this King sounds like the diary writer from countless other King works (The Plant, "Survivor Type," The Regulators, etc.) Could he actually be commenting on his tendency towards sameness of diary-voice? It seems impossible. Could he be that much a master of meta-puppetry?

A FEW LAST THINGS

- I haven't even commented on the title character too much. I didn't care for the Maid of Constant Sorrow refrains, or the jailhouse/ answering machine of the damned motif, although I guess that was an effective way of straddling various timelines. (I liked it better in "1408," though.) 

- King's hostility towards Calvin Tower continues to crack me up, both in-story and meta-wise. I guess this is pretty much the high point of it all. All the characters abuse him to a degree I never quite understand. But it feels very meta. There's something going on here, some reaction to his fame or marketability or both. I bet there was a scene where Roland pistol-whips him that Tabby made him take out.

- The sköldpadda (the item in the lining of the bag teased throughout the last act of Wolves of the Calla) is awfully convenient. More magic items from the man behind the curtain - is King commenting on himself here, too? Ka. Anyway, like all such magic items, they'd have come in useful elsewhere or are not utilize beyond getting the characters out of certain scenes.

- I covered the fake language stuff and how much it bugged me by this point in the series, so I won't spend time on it, do'ee kennit? Kra? Twim. 

- I didn't read a single one of the "commala" stanzas that end every chapter. I hope there's gold in there - the secret to the universe, even. I'm happy to die missing out on it from skipping these. Two can play the stubborn game, Mr. King. 

FINAL VERDICT

All in all, a better read than I remembered, but my original opinion (what the hell did you do to your series, dude?) remains unchanged.

~ 

The Dark Tower Reread pt. 8: Wolves of the Calla

"There's really nothing here that bothers me." 

- Dog Star Omnibus, 11/15/2012

So I said six and a half years ago. This time around? I found plenty to bother me. Let me tell you all about it.

First, though: it's kind of a drag to write negative reviews. Some things trigger a passionate negative response. Those things are easier, because it's fun to be mad at those kind of things. Then there are things like Wolves of the Calla, or Stephen King in general. These things give me no joy whatsoever to be negative about (and we're just going to have to live with dangling preposition). And not necessarily because I feel so attached to King or the Dark Tower to not be critical; I have and never had no trouble sharing my opinion on things I like or dislike out there in the pop culture candyland. Mainly the joylessness comes from the extra work involved, because I feel like I really have to footnote myself. It's not enough to say "it's crap" for things you actually care about, and I do care about King's work. And what's the point of just saying "I don't like it"? Well, who cares? Why write the blog? Why did I get myself into this? 

Let me start with what worked for me and move out from there. 

THINGS I LIKED

"First the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."

As an episode of the larger series, it's mostly a pretty enjoyable one. The central idea I mean (defending a town from rapacious robots) and all the usual mix of sci-fi with fantasy and traditional gunslinger fare. Not much happens compared to something like The Waste Lands. It has more or less the same structure as Wizard and Glass, except the slow burn western adventure takes place in the present and not in flashback. Both end with meta-mash-up-gone-amok. 

Is it a little strange to basically just repeat the structure of bk 4? Maybe. I can't really get worked up about it.

Pere Callahan enjoys the distinction of being something I simultaneously like and dislike about Wolves. I like the way he's written and for the most part enjoy his backstory. I'll save the dislikes for the appropriate section. He's a fun addition to the ka-tet, and even though the whole Lamerk Foundry spiders-web of interdimensional tunnels and bridges never really makes sense, it's a cool idea to have this guy wandering about, killing vampires, slowly drawing their power against him, then ending up with the free range folken of the Calla. 

He's a drunk in recovery (the best kind: exile in another dimension. He and Eddie Dean have that in common) and that allows for some AA "Wisdom of the Book" stuff like "It's hard to hear a small voice clearly when you're shit-ass drunk all the time." Or "You could miss the elephant in the room if it was a magic elephant with the power to cloud men's minds." That last one reminded me of two other Kingthings: (1) The Regulators, with the magic elephant in the room being the television, and (2) the bk7 fate of the Man in Black to come. 

I liked Andy. I liked Jake's journey to the Dogan. 

Finally this is probably the only Jericho Hill stuff we're ever going to see, but I kind of wonder what the heck happened with Alain. Maybe the answer is in the Browning poem, I haven't checked. (If you wanted to do a book-length last stand of Gilead/ The Alamo sort of deal, Sai King, I say go for it. Put Holly Gibney in it if that's what it takes.)

KING META FICTIVE

"Someone or some force had carried them over or through the thinny and back to the Path of the Beam." 

There's plenty I could put in this section, but I figure with the way bks 6 and 7 go, I have plenty of time to get to it all then. So just a couple of things:

- It really does seem like King is very aware of some of his reoccurring tics doesn't it? Giant-folks, telepathy, self-referencing, the "magically simple", conversational solipsism, storm/ thunderclap, etc. Did he have a copy of my Bingo Scorecard when he wrote the last 3 books? 

- Calvin Tower. So much hostility with this guy! I guess we'll get into this more next time, too, but sheesh. King really lets loose on this poor bookseller and - in his own equally important way - caretaker of ka. It's an interesting development considering the self-reflective qualities of the series. (Flashforward to King himself telling Roland in a hypnotized panic in bk 6 "I DON'T WANT TO BE GAN!") As The Dark Half and Misery explore some of King's complicated feelings with fandom, this character perhaps suggests an antipathy with the industry of fandom. 

THINGS I DON'T MUCH LIKE 

BUT DON'T WANT TO HARP ON

These things will be happening with increasing frequency and urgency for the rest of the series, and I don't want to spend any time on them in the remaining posts. So let me just get it all out of the way now.

- Mia. Probably at the top of the list. The pregnancy never makes sense and just gets more and more complicated and crazy the more he tries to nail it down. The plot development also nullifies all of that Detta being the reigning blue balls champ of wherever the hell it is, too, which like everything involving Detta was all just very painful to read. But read it I did, so hey! Thanks for that. Who cares but sheesh. If you circle Mia on my list of problems worksheet, there's a lot of subsequent material that is default bullet-pointed beneath it. So, that's a drag for me, especially in bk 6. Here, though: I mean... doesn't Susannah's hair get wet when Mia's diving into the mud? I know it's magical and all, but that's the whole thing: the whole Mia/ pregnancy / Mordred thing relies on way too many Rube Goldberg angles.

- Nineteen/ the doubling/ coincidences. It just isn't interesting enough to keep coming back to. 

- Commala. Holy crap! I had enough of this by halfway through Wolves, and, as if he was waiting to hear if it annoyed me, he added it another million times, amping it up in bk6 to come. All of the "If the dinh-da be kai-mai, than aye, delah" stuff just got to be too much. Granted it's a genre trope but holy moley does it go skidding off the rails and then it's just an errant boxcar in the countryside, destroying crops, downing power lines, smashing baby carriages and pedestrians, totally out of control. 

- Jake as gunslinger. I mean, I was already wary of Eddie and Susannah, and now Jake's always got a steady gunslingin' eye and one finger on the docker's clutch, which was King's trigger-word-association this time around. Anytime Jake is "on the case," his hand drops to the good ol' docker's clutch. Also, Jake as "carrier of the touch." It just never gelled for me so everytime either is referenced I'm less and less vested. I've kind of already written Jake out of this story in my head.

- It's difficult to understand why Sombra or any of the bad guys would take this cautious step by step approach to the rose. Like possession of Black Thirteen, why give our heroes such time, opportunity, and assistance? I know they're kept in check by the Tet Corporation, who collect kick-ass paintings and stage cool corporate retreats and have a bunch of interns poring over King books for Dark Tower references, so you know, they're formidable opponents for a bloodthirsty, magical, gazillionaire outfit. Staffed with low men and vampires and magical interdimensional devices. Seems like they had a lot more firepower than they even bring to bear on the situation. 


- Combining aspects of both of the above: this habit of just giving characters super powers to cross dimensions and project telepathically when the need demands - but simultaneously keeping up the conceit that it's exceptional, etc. or a plot device complication - is kind of irritating. Black Thirteen is one of many such conveniences. Shouldn't it exact worse toll for its usage? Although (in bk6) I guess the implication is that its toll is ultimately 9/11, right? That's that, I guess. 

- The ammo problem still bugs me. 

- Roland's finger-twirling gesture and the subsequent text-explanation every time it appears... plus, it almost never really makes sense. There's not the sort of conversational meandering and time waste etc. going on to provoke it in most spots. Also, it seems a vanity for Roland to do this, and Roland's not a vain man.  

Okay. There we are, then. I'll try not to bring up any of the above in subsequent reviews.

THINGS I DAMN WELL AM GOING TO HARP ON

All right, back to Pere Callahan. Converting Salem's Lot (and vampires) into an adjunct of the Dark Tower verse doesn't really work for me. I'm fine with it here in bks 5 through 7 because what choice do I have? But I simply forget all of this back/future-story when I read or think about Salem's Lot. Thankfully he's never put a new edition of Salem's with Dark Tower stuff digitally inserted. 

Callahan's whole rambling drunk Todash highway vampire killer story is interesting, but it's all so weirdly overcomplicated. I liked the slow encircling of the Low Men but most of the rest (the Hitler Brothers, Lupe Delgado, maybe a few too many stops and starts) didn't really add anything. And then Walter nabs him and gives him Black Thirteen? It just seems weird to me that Walter can anticipate so many different things and play chessmaster like this but somehow never suss out how things actually go. Or, if not weird, uninteresting. 

The Sisters of Oriza. Fine. Contrived - Men can't throw them? Does this seem at all realistic? A factory on the outskirts of Amish Central makes titanium-alloy-grade memorial plates that also just so happens to be the one thing that can decapitate the bad guys? A multi-generational sisterhood (plus Jake) of Oriza-throwing markswomen? An old codger who knows the secret but says nothing except to Eddie Dean? - but fine. 

"TATERS AND GRAVY!"? Nope. Somewhere in the annals of literary history an entry will exist on this book, and I hope whomever writes the entry just quotes that and nothing else.

The portent is a little out of control in this book. On pg. 367 Eddie hears the secret of all gray horses from Gran-Pere (another in a long line of homages to King's Uncle Oren, who even makes a brief appearance while The Author's under hypnosis in bk 6. that is held back from the reader (but not to Roland) util pg. 666. To me that's just kind of useless portent. He does that more than a few times, actually - it seems like a form of cheating to me. There's no real interest or tension built up from holding it back, just the kind that comes from having it deliberately withheld. Ditto for with the object in the lining of the bag. (More on that next time.)

Then, as Wizard and Glass did, the meta-madness goes into hyperdrive in the last 30 pages, with the Harry Potter sneech models and the Doctor Dooms wielding lightsabers on motorized horses. I've been talking about the 2 narrative frames for Dark Tower stuff: one is storytelling that is supposed to hang together somehow, and the other is this meta-fictive self-analysis King is doing of himself as a storyteller, as a son, as a father, as a man of his time. I'd say this is where the first frame is obliterated for good. This is for me the proverbial jump-the-shark moment. It's even the first of several jump-the-shark moments to come, which is unfathomable to me.

Clearly, then, some other narrative frame is needed. The second is still very much intact; in fact, these sorts of universe-folding-in-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain moments even make it better. So, for the next few posts I'll try my best not to pick at anything from a "does this make sense?" angle except "does this serve the only Beam left shining, i.e. the meta-fictive one. This creates a whole new set of problems for me. Man! I thought a re-read would be less work.

THE WORST THING KING MAY EVER HAVE WRITTEN

Roland gets a Rosalita in bk 5, which is fine enough, but in one section, as they go off to hook up, King writes:

"He came with her willingly and went where she took him. She kept a secret spring surrounded by sweet moss, and there he was refreshed." 

Ewww. I mean, what the christ, This flowery stuff is so tonally off with passages elsewhere, in addition to being wtf-y. 

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