Review: 7 Series Novel : Book/Media Reviews - Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Review: 7 Series Novel

by knoppix2004 » Thu 15 Sep 2005, 04:20:02

Imagine you are a huge fan of some novel series since 1982. You have been reading the novel series and enjoying it through out twenty two years of your life. Everyone in the media and literature community describes the series as “magnum opus”. You consider yourself very lucky indeed. You have read the all the series, and you are about to get the final series of the novel.

What do you expect from the author? You surly want to know how the plot was constructed, and how it came to its final conclusion? If the series was a horror novel, you surly want it end with some constructive message, a moral message, and something that give you something to think about. Right?

Now, imagine author end the story without completing? He is scolding you the twenty two years old faithful fan to be wasting his time, and buying his highly expensive books. He then tells you I’M ONLY WRITING THIS G-D DAMN ENDING SO YOU MORON WON’T BE SENDING ME ANY LETTER OR FOLLOW ME!

Believe it or not this did happen. I am talking about very popular Dark Tower series written by Steven King.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Series name and publishing date
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (1982)
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991)
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997)
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003)
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004)
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004)

Even Wikipedia mention fans' anger...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(2004_novel)

Read what King's fan have to say about final book. Reviews are from Amazon.com

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ot only is "The Dark Tower", Book 7 a bad way to end this once great series of books, but it's also a bad book period. I mean real bad. One of his worst books.

The main problem with this book is the inclusion of himself, Stephen King, as a character. Not just any character, but a main character. I think that he actually refers to himself as God as one point. When King first inserted himself into "Song of Susannah" (which was no War and Peace in itself, mind you), the event was relatively brief and really didn't bother me at all. Actually, I thought that it was kind of a neat idea, one that I hadn't seen before. If you haven't read Book #7 yet but have read the reviews on this page, you might get the impression that King is only briefly in this book as well, but that is not the case. Stephen King is mentioned repeatedly from the beginning of this book to the end, and let me tell you that he makes a very dull and uninteresting character. King thinks highly of himself & his accomplishments, and he seems to make it very clear that he does not like the trappings that come with being famous, especially when he is recognized by fans. Buddy, that's just too bad - if you don't like it, take the millions of dollars that you only have because of your fans and move to Mexico.

Some other observations...
* What's with all of the ridiculous forays into dialect and black-speak? I became so tired of all the "say thank-ya"s and "gawd-bombs"s and the numerous "dat"s and "dem"s and "dos"s that I wanted to throw this book though the nearest wall.

* (spoiler) I'm not sure why, but King chose to kill off the interesting characters (Eddie, Jake) early on and keep the most annoying one, Susannah. When I say "most annoying", I mean the most annoying ever! The entire Detta Walker personality thing was just flawed from the beginning, and any dialogue generated by this horrible entity was inadvertently laugh-out loud funny initially and just plain bad later on.

* What about the ending of the book and hence the series... Was I disappointed? No, not at all. The reason that I wasn't disappointed is this -- since the last 3 books in this series were so crummy, by the end I didn't care how this series finished-up. I was just glad that it was finished, period.

* Finally, get a load of that Afterward! Stephen King disses his fans twice on one page. First, he says something like "don't bother writing me if you don't like ending, because I won't answer". Then, later he tells us not to try to find his house based on the fictitious descriptions in the book because his fans have invaded his precious privacy too much already. It's not these statements themselves that are the problem, it's that fact that he felt it necessary to actually include them in the book! What kind of ego does this guy have? I mean, does he think that all of his fans are 4 years old and from West Virginia or something?

Really, if this series had been limited to about 5 books, it might have been remembered as a great work of modern fiction. However, towards the end, it became long-winded, tired, and trivial. One thing to remember here is this: just because an author can churn out a series of 7 long books over 20 years doesn't make him a great author.

Most of the reviews I have read have been detailed enough
in their intensity. I will say only this...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')pon completion of book #7, I went into the back yard to find a dog turd to eat to get the taste out of my mouth this book left me with. I still love ya Stephen, but give me something that I'm not embarressed to display on my bookshelf.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')somewhere, Stephen King is laughing..., March 2, 2005

Reviewer: pray_for_mojo (a van down by the river) - See all my reviews
Many a writer has tried their hand at multi-volume works of fantasy fiction, and many a writer has ended up falling on their own sword in the process, the most recent victim being Stephen King.

The trap King fell into is a rather classic one, at least as far as these things go: his story simply boated beyond his control. You can tell that by the end of book 3, he really didn't know what the heck he was going to do about it all. He had the back-story to contend with, along with an ever growing cast of characters in the front-story, all placed within a world growing more and more complicated. Think about how long a gap there was between the release of books 3 and 4. When book four finally came out, we see that King does a major retreat: the current plot he barely advances, while giving us more back-story on Roland. The result is a wonderful back-story (some of the best work of Stephen King's career) and the beginning of the degradation of the front-story into random drivel.

Then there was another big time gap between book releases. None of King's problems were solved by book 4, but at least people were pacified for a while. Eventually I think King just said "to hell with it all." This is pure conjecture, but I think Stephen King grew to HATE the Dark Tower books, and their characters, and most of all their clamoring fans.

He didn't know how to fix it, but he DID know that could not just walk away, not with so many people watching, not with so much already invested. Like a painful wisdom tooth, he just wanted the damned thing OUT. So what did Stephen King do? He just drove to the finish in a straight line - do not pass go, do not collect 200$ (more like collect a couple million). The last three books are filled with easy answers, easy solutions, and unbelievable coincidences. Characters are forced into situations for no other reason than to make them easy to deal with. King doesn't even bother to create new characters, grabbing retreads from other books instead. He stole main plot of book 5 from "The Magnificent Seven" and of course there are the infamous "Harry Potter Sneetches" (and this is just the obvious stuff, folks). King even inserts himself as a character to provide a few direct "deus ex machinas" and to mock the reader while he's at it.

An old, angry writer just going through the paces. "The Dark Tower" is by far the most condescending book I have ever had the misfortune of reading.

For me, the whole thing is sad more than anything. Stephen King has discredited himself, discredited his finest novel (that being the original version of "The Gunslinger" upon all the rest is loosely based) and discredited a large chunk of his life's work - books that now revolve around the dreadful mess known as "The Dark Tower."

But I don't think Stephen King cares.

Review: 7 Series Novel

Review: 7 Series Novel

Who is online