Come-come-commala.
It’s been over ten years… but I’ve finally come to the clearing at the end of the path. I have finished Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. In fact, I read over six hundred pages today; I couldn’t put it down. You remember how I thought the sixth book kinda sucked? Well, this one didn’t. It tied up loose ends and hurtled from action sequence to action sequence with a speed that left me shaking my head. (“Snookums, he spent all of that last book setting up cliffhangers that were resolved in the first forty pages!”) When the ka-tet was finally broken about halfway through the book, I sobbed like a baby for half an hour. I’m still tearing up just thinking about it. (“F**king ka!”) I found King’s inclusion of himself as a character much less irritating this time around, mostly because he wasn’t in it much. I liked finding out what happened to Randall Flag, Ted Brautigan, and Patrick Danville. And as for the ending, which probably pissed a lot of people off? I think what happens to Roland makes a weird sort of sense. It’s not exactly satisfying but it’s not the cop-out I feared. I’m left with hope. As for the rest of the ka-tet… I think that was a bit of a cop-out, but I’m still a sucker for a happy(-ish) ending.
Man, I hope the Harry Potter series ends as well.