Continuing the year of re-reading, I went through the Dark Tower series after I finished Harry Potter. My brother is probably going to kill me, but whereas the re-read of Harry Potter increased my appreciation for that series, this re-read made me drop my opinion

It starts out well enough. The first book, while fairly clunky, still has an air of mystery and does a fairly good job of capturing what I think King set out to do. The second and third books, while not perfect, take away the clumsiness of the first book and also build a broader world. The story doesn’t move along extremely well, but each book has its own strength and in general the sense is that the journey to the Tower is moving forward.

The fourth book is an interesting one. It’s absolutely the strongest in the series, and the backstory is good to get, but ultimately the backstory doesn’t have much place in the overall tale. It actually suffers from there not being more backstory in the rest of the books. The story of Susan is complete and helps define Roland (though it doesn’t necessarily play into his quest enough), but Cuthbert and Alain need more told about them. I’m actually planning on tracking down the graphic novels that Marvel has put out for the Dark Tower, because it seems like those fill in this hole exactly. Still, Wizard and Glass is a high point, not just in this series, but among all King’s works.

After that, though…after his accident, Stephen King ripped through the remaining books of the Dark Tower, and I’m not sure things worked out for the best. I always find it very difficult to know how much to believe regarding what King says about his writing, but he has said many things often enough that I tend to believe him and I think I understand his thinking to an extent. As far as wrapping up his magnum opus, I don’t think full inspiration came to him, but rather he felt an imperative to finish things up before another accident might happen and he never had a chance to finish. It seems like he felt compelled to finish it, both for his readers and for himself (I don’t think he would have done it just for the readers).

As a result, the final act suffers. The story rambles and introduces elements that should have been there all along. New pieces get introduced with little explanation, other than they seem to move plot along or help the characters out of a jam. And ultimately, things don’t end well. In the Harry Potter series, I thought a lot about the mythology and the ending, and that series worked well because of both. This series isn’t as strong because of both. I may have been spoiled by reading the other one first, but I ended up being disappointed in the Dark Tower series.

However, I will say this. King set out to write the Dark Tower series as his version of The Lord of the Rings. Which I also didn’t like. So it may be that there is something about the tale of an epic journey that I simply do not appreciate. Certainly the motivations of King and Rowling were very different. I’m still looking forward to the upcoming Dark Tower book, because I enjoy King’s writing and I do enjoy that world. But as a series, it just falls short for me.