Category: Opinion

At last Roland reaches the Dark Tower, but will he be the only one? The Crimson King’s forces are pressing down on our divided heroes, there is only one beam left holding the Tower up, Mordred is born and viscous, and Roland’s Tet is running out of luck. They come together to save Susannah as she gives birth to Mordred, at first a lovely baby boy that quickly reveals the other half of his breeding, showing off his spider form. He immediately kills Mia’s living form and soon after brings an end to Walter finally. Susannah wounds Mordred but he escapes, bleeding, vulnerable, and dying. The group reunites, suffering the first casualty of Callahan to get to Susannah. They head towards Blue Heaven, a massive breaker prison working on shattering the last beam. The Tet launches a badass strike on the prison to free the breakers, tragically losing Eddie in the process. The goodbyes are heartfelt and heart-wrenching but sadly won’t be the first. The Crimson King plots to kill Stephen King via the real life crash and this time Jake sacrifices himself to save King. He’s injured but not dead; Jake dies in Roland’s arms. Susannah is heart broken, first losing her husband then losing the boy she felt for like a son; Susannah and Oy start to feel contempt for Roland. They go on through a perilous winter and sinister fiends along the way, being followed by a sad, enraged Mordred all the way. In a last ditch effort, Mordred strikes them while they sleep, but Oy rushes to fight him off. Mordred kills him but Roland finally slays Mordred. Susannah and Roland part ways ; Roland and a young man they rescued are left to battle the Crimson King and step into the Tower.

Dark Tower 7 has to be one of the best finales I’ve ever read. When I first read it, I didn’t appreciate the final ending much but now I’m older I can appreciate the message it’s meant to convey. The quotes from Hurt by Nine Inch Nails and Bad Company fit the story perfectly because it’s a huge tragedy. I’m not going to lie to you, but I did shed a couple tears during some of the main characters deaths; King brilliantly made them all feel like real people so their ends have a true weight to them. Many of the fights are badass and for all it’s worth, I’m glad Roland found the tower because in the end “The Man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed”. 

First I’m gonna say sorry this review as well as the final two installments of the Dark Tower saga are coming out later than the first four but so did the books too. Afraid he may never finish his magnum opus after being hit by by a car years before, Stephen King released 5, 6, and 7 back to back.

We pick up with the Ka-tet right after they left Topeka and weathered the starkblast (the event of Wind through the keyhole). Eddie has an eerily vivid dream about his New York; Susannah has dreams of a dark castle and strange appetites. She is pregnant but not by her husband Eddie, but by the demon that raped her when they drew Jake over. While her friends sleep she crawls off and while imagining a exquisite banquet in actuality she’s eating small animals. Roland has caught her strange new ritual. Meanwhile, they are being followed by people of a town bordering Thunderclap, called Calla Bryn Sturgess with a desperate need of there help. The Calla is ripe with twins, but every one of the pair becomes Roont by the Wolves that descend from Thunderclap once every twenty some years or so. The Wolves take a twin, and only a twin, and take them to the dark land and months later the child returns slow and malformed, forced to live out the rest of its days drooling in agony. Finally the Calla has had enough and yearns to fight back. Roland accepts the request because something tells him there’s more to there journey in the Calla. He quickly discovers the Calla’s priest Father Callahan has much in common with his own traveling companions, and he has the darkest piece of the Wizard’s Rainbow in his possession. He hears Callahan’s tale of the horrors that befell Salem’s Lot and the strange events that brought him to the Calla. But that is not all, there is a final door that no one can open. And so the countdown begins as mysteries of the Calla unfold and the Wolves descend upon them.

Such a strange book but damn if it ain’t cool in it’s weird ass way like the rest of the series. Our main characters are once again amazingly well done and honestly they keep you driven through the series. Andy the robot is a creepy secret villain, like finding out Alpha 5 from Power Rangers was secretly hoping the rangers would bite the big one so he could harvest there organs for money, like that kind of robot badguy. Callahan was a cool addition and I enjoyed his story of all the crazy shit that went on after Salem’s Lot. The story at times is a little hard to follow if you paying attention to the minute details, which I can’t stress that enough. Also I found the final battle a little anticlimactic but it definitely ain’t a twilight finale. Overall pick it up if you read the other four, like old school westerns, or a fan of Stephen King. May the Gaming Gods be with you all. You guys rock.