"It was all of a piece he realized now; all part of some awful, decaying whole, an incomprehensible stone spider. All of Mid World had become one vast haunted mansion in these strange latter days, Mid-World had become the Drawers, all of Mid-world had become a waste land, haunting and haunted."
First time around, I really loved this book. This time, I was surprised to discover I was much more conflicted on it. An awful lot happens, so there's excellent momentum, and we begin to get some answers (plus many more question) about Roland's world. But is it a good stand-alone book? And is it a good book 3 of a 7 part saga, given how certain things end up happening in later books? Most people think so. I'm unsure.
If you're new round these parts, this is a spoilers-laden/ no-plot-summary re-read of the Dark Tower. And away we go with:
THINGS THAT
I MOSTLY LOVED
(1) Blaine, obviously, and the ALL CAPS super-city "Velcro Fly" apocalyptic-Lud Buck-Rogers-pilot fury that goes with him. Here's a spoiler alert for next time: I kind of hate the way King ended this confrontation with Blaine in Wizard and Glass. (Another thing that surprised me.) So I'll get to the disappointments with Blaine next time, but here, he is foreshadowed well throughout, and the payoff is well-earned. Fantastic cliffhanger, and the whole Cradle of Blaine the Mono is appropriately epic.
(2) King answers my 'why would his enemies guide Roland to the doors' question from my Gunslinger reread handsomely enough with the paradox, i.e. by saving Jake in The Drawing of the Three, Roland created a causal loop where he is experiencing both realities simultaneously, the effects of which are driving him insane. So, it stands to reason that the Man in Black and Crimson King hedged their bets on this one - either Jake dies, or he lives with a good chance Roland goes too crazy to do anything with him.
And knowing how the series ends, it made me wonder: how many variations of this Tower Chase have played out? This time around, the plan was to try and drive Roland insane. Not that I think it was an absolutely intentional thing, or that the MIB and CK are any more cognizant of the differences between their many times around this rodeo than Roland is. But: they don't have to be; each time the pieces are re-arranged.
Could the right combinations, the right variations, of this endless journey repair the universe? It'd be lovely to think so, if an eternal and eternally heartbreaking quest for Roland himself.
It does raise a problem with me, though regarding the role Patrick Danville is to play later on. But I guess we can hold off on that for now.
THINGS I DIDN'T LOVE
BUT DID NOT DISLIKE
"The Beams saved it; other say they are the seeds of the world's destruction."
The first time I read this, the whole beginning with the Bear and the Beams was a steady succession of "Holy shit!" moments. Absolutely loved it. Some of the murkier aspects of the series came into focus, plus there was this big fuck-off bear infested with parasites sneezing on Eddie and all the rest. Far be it from me to discount such readerly delights as those. And I still mostly love the whole opening - it's only in context of the rest of the series that this time, I had some issues.
"When everything was new, the Great Old Ones - they weren't gods, but people who had almost the knowledge of gods - created 12 Guardians to stand watch at the 12 portals which lead in and out of this world. The Great Old Ones didn't make the world, but they did re-make it. Some tale-tellers say the Beam saved it; others say they are seeds of the world's destruction. (They) created the Beams... lines which bind and hold... not just magnetism, but... gravity and the proper alignment of space, size and dimension."
Okay, so I get that it's all a big mystery and there are no answers. But does not North Central Positronics grow from an earth very much like our own? One with "Velcro Fly" and "Hey Jude" and Citgo? It's hard to square such a world with one where there's a mystical tower at its center, vampires, and magic. Has it always been there, or did it start to appear the way thinnies did, and as a result only of the NCP machinations? Somewhere after our own recognizable time, this tech super-consortium built all the machines of Roland's world, then poisoned it so comprehensively they had to... well, here the story gets murky. Roland relays some possibilities above and then characteristically changes the subject.
As any sci-fi fan knows, a technologically advanced civilization would have things that would resemble magic to those from less technically-advanced civilizations. This part of me is fine with the Bear and the Beams, even if it makes certain other things to come a little... odd. But what about the demon speaking rings and the magic jawbones and ka and all the rest? I think ka and the Tower exist independently of NCP, but if the Beams and these Portal Guardians are the work of NCP, something seems off with that.
I want to stress - there's so much about Roland's world we don't know - and neither does he. I'm not demanding all the answers, just trying to work out why the same NCP that built Blaine the Mono also built a big fuck-off bear that occasionally terrorized the villagers, or where the magic jawbones and door portals come from. If there's this logical-NCP throughline, what's the magical throughline?
 |
| The Portal Guardian and speaking ring seem not built by NCP. But they could have been. Again, I don't see it as impossible, just kind of a rough fit. |
I think the answer lies in whatever plans King had for Maerlyn. There are strong hints King is laying in these books that Maerlyn was meant to be the MIB. But we know from The Wind Through the Keyhole that this is not the case, unless that was meant to imply that the MIB imprisoned Maerlyn and then impersonated him. Which could very well be the case. Aaaaarg. I wish there was a prequel trilogy to shake some of this out, but you and I both know if there was one, there'd just be more questions.
When asked about what these Beam terminus portals are, Roland gives some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo about how they don't go to a "where or a when we would recognize." And then he distinguishes them from the doors on the beach, which directly relate to the MIB/ka-tet's doings. So... who's making the doors and writing THE BOY, THE LADY OF SHADOWS, THE PRISONER, and THE PUSHER on them? Another gift from the Old Ones, peeking into their glass and seeing Roland with the lobstrosities (at least) two millennia in the future? (Actually, maybe it was - Maerlyn himself, peering into one of his rainbows, knowing he'd not be there to see it because he's read bk 7, and sending muddled clues and other assistance over the centuries.)
Two last things about the Bear: okay, so let's assume it was built to just keep people the Old Ones knew were lapsing into pre-NCP society (and how) from wandering into these Portals, whatever they are. Done deal. Who, then, is the "Sub-nuclear cells must not be replaced" warning for?
And two: we only see the Turtle and the Bear in King's cosmology. Is the Turtle in It a creation of North Central Positronics?
What King should do is commission a bunch of other writers to write tales of the other Portal Guardians. He can edit the book and write intros to the selections and even contribute one if he's so inclined. I know it'll never happen, but sheesh.
Before leaving this section behind: I can only imagine how contemporaneous readers of this must have thrilled at not just the sudden appearance of Randall Flagg at the end of The Waste Lands but also the revelation that he was the Man in Black from The Gunslinger. That had to be kind of cool to experience "live." (Bryant Burnette describes just such an experience here, and it's worth reading.) On the other, I can't help but wonder why the MIB would even bother with rescuing The Tick Tock Man. Looking back from the end of Wizard and Glass, what was the point? What was gained from this besides inserting Flagg into The Waste Lands?
THINGS THAT ACTUALLY
GROUND MY GEARS
In no particular order but since I picked Gasher and Jake for the header for this section, we'll start with that.
(1) To hell with Gasher and the 50-ish pages of unbelievably repetitive abuse he heaps on Jake. The payoff ("Gasher looked up. "You?" "Me," Roland agreed. He fired once and the left side of Gasher's head disintegrated. The man went flying backward, bloodstained yellow scarf unraveling. His feet drummed spastically on the iron grillework for a moment and then fell still.") is almost worth it but not enough. It's just overdone. And exceedingly unpleasant.
(2) The Tick Tock Man. Might as well stay in this part of the book. What is it with King and extraordinarily large characters? Particularly ones who throw other characters - comic book style - into walls? Someone needs to make a comprehensive list of traits King gives his villains too many times. Excessive height is one of them. At any rate, this whole thing is just odd. So, he's the great-grandson of a Luftwaffe pilot - who may be Lord Perth? I walked away from the book with this impression, but I think I was mistaken - and filled with impotent range, dubious lord of the computer bowels of a super-city he cannot begin to fathom or utilize in any way. He's in a cool setting, but in a way that makes it worse. He's just yet another brute in King's rogue's gallery. I get that this fits with King's personal conception of good and evil/ heroes and villains. But the saga could have used someone way more interesting here, and King does not deliver. (That Gasher is the warm-up act doesn't help.)
(3) I don't buy Roland's teaching Eddie and Susannah to be gunslingers.
 |
| With only the 3 boxes of ammo he got in NYC? No way. Am I wrong? He makes a point of buying only 3 in NYC at the end of DOT3. 3 boxes, 50 bullets apiece? Even if it was 500 bullets, though, I still don't buy it. |
Like Eddie's and Susannah's love and marriage, I can shrug it off. This sort of thing adds up, though: if I don't quite buy them as soul mates, lovers, and gunslingers, some of the ka-tet dialogue is not going to land with me, and as the story goes on and things hinge upon these things, I'm going to be removed where I should be engaged. King decided he needed his questing band to have this dynamic, so be it. Mainly, it's a logistics problem. With 150 bullets (and let's keep in mind Roland still has plenty, so it's more like 100 bullets) and one brief tongue-lashing he achieves what took Cort years and years of abusive instruction?
(4) I don't like the rose. I like the idea of the Tower and this field of roses surrounding it existing in every level of the universe but only visible in some, and the roses are temporal-radioactive or something, but this idea of one of them poking up through the ground in NYC bugs me. It adds a layer - protect the one rose in NYC! - that is just kind of silly. I get that I'm just supposed to trust King and give him his back-and-forth-to-NYC set-up, but I just think all the New Age Rosicrucian stuff is unconvincing.
 |
| But it's all crystal clear compared to the key. |
Roland throws the magical jawbone (NCP must have been one WEIRD company) into the fire and Eddie sees within a vision of the key he suddenly has to whittle. Oh yeah and he suddenly remembers how he used to whittle. Like the ka-tet's accelerated desires for marriage and ability for gunslinging and devotion to the quest, this whittling thing doesn't arise all that organically. The author is whispering to his characters that they will need this or that magic item later in the plot. These are things King does perhaps a tad too often. Knowing that we see a literalization of the author himself down the road, telling the characters things murkily (or they to him), compounds my unease.
(5) Detta: "Prime numbahs!"
"Any demon want to fuck wit' mme he goan find out he's fuckin' wit' the finest. I th'ow him a fuck he ain't necer goan f'git."
OMFG. This dialogue - all King's dialogue of this nature - is just terrible. I want to stress like last time: my objection is not from some "who is this white guy writing this" angle; I object because it is dumb. Just a bad idea, executed badly. Do not pass Go, Sai King; pay the fine to the center of the board and go to jail.
(6) Jake's goddamn "Blaine is the truth" mantra. It's nothing compared to Jake's "Blaine is a pain" stuff from next time. These are just dumb mantras. They keep popping up like King/ Jake finds them profound or cool to say over and over. They are not. Okay so he's a scared kid. But hey: I'm not blaming Jake.
(7) Sudden telepathy is always dumb, and I don't care how much khef you invent to justify it. The fact is, when the gang comes to an obstacle, Sai King gives them telepathy. I don't look the other way on this; I deduct the appropriate points-penalty. It's like King plays a game with himself when writing how long he can hold off bringing telepathy into it. Once surrendered, it seeps into everything else (as we see in each subsequent book of the saga.)
(8) Oy. Does it make me an asshole to not care for Oy so much? Perhaps all the above had combined by this point to annoy me rather than allow me to shrug it off. It just seems like King turned to the TV playing in the background and saw a children's cartoon and said "Hey! Snarf snarf!" ("The sudden appearance of a billy bumbler who remembers people doesn't seem completely coincidental to me," Roland says. Yeah. Me neither, Roland.)
IN CONCLUSION
Hey now! I mean, I didn't hate it. I'm just invested in the re-read now, and my brain is abuzz. I leave you with the evocative line with which I almost started this post, but I thought the haunted Mid-World one worked better as an opener. Perhaps this'll do similarly for an ender. Until next time.
"They left the bees to their aimless, shattered life in the grove of the ancient trees, and there was no honey that night."
