are the books worth reading?
I read the synopsis on wikipedia and it feels like it's full on WTF:
>no coherent setting
>anything goes
>the plot introduce new/weird element at every chapter it seems
>motivations of the heroes are never explained
>ending seems unfulfilling as fuck
is it actually good?
The first four books are decent-to-amazing. (My personal favorite is The Waste Lands, though that doesn't seem to be a common opinion.) King wrote the rest after his near-death van accident and his obsession with almost dying took over the series and turned it to crap.
As a whole I can't reccomend it, but I don't not reccomend it either. If you like King, the Tower books catalog all his obsessions over the course of his career for better and worse.
>extremely annoying black chick who's multiple personalities are a) Uncle Tom & b) token New Orleans nigger
>Harry Potter snitches
>Stephen King as God self-insert
>Randall Flagg getting raped as a child by a filthy hobo
>The entirety of Jake's character
>Autistic new character beats bad guy by drawing him on paper and erasing him
>Ending literally restarts the series from the beginning
>All character deaths negated at the end
All I can say is be lucky you weren't one of the original readers waiting years for the next books to be released. Only analog I can compare this travesty to is GRRM's books
>ending seems unfulfilling as fuck
This. After the 4th, maybe 5th, book the story and writing go downhill anyway. I don't think he knew how to end it.
>I don't think he knew how to end it.
He didn't. King likes to make up the story as he writes it, which is why his endings tend to be terrible. A long time ago he once got a letter from a dying woman who wanted to know what would happen at the end of the Dark Tower series, what Roland would find up there, and he had to say he didn't know.
It's worth reading
is there even a reason why he is looking for the tower?
also do they ever explain what kind of world the characters are living in? like if he is a gunslinger isn't he supposed to guard is town or whatever?
It's very good. Starts off at a snails pace, but books 2-5 are where the story is phenomenal.
Theres also a scene where Rolands gf gets her cunny inspected by a witch and the way King writes it and his attention to detail made me cum buckets just by reading.
Never had that happen since. Ever. Was freaking amazing.
hit the nail on the head.
>is there even a reason why he is looking for the tower?
Yes
>also do they ever explain what kind of world the characters are living in?
Kinda. More like worlds though.
>like if he is a gunslinger isn't he supposed to guard is town or whatever?
It was very clearly explained why he can't do that anymore
There are some problems with the story, but those aren't among them
have you read the new ending?
he's re-released the final book with an extra few hundred pages. i haven't checked it out myself but i'm probably going to buy it, just to get the taste of salt out of my mouth over 5 years later
when did that happen?
Well, by its nature its convoluted. An epic melding all things sci-fi and fantasy (far more the latter) through multiples lenses and narratives, IMO rivaling LOTR.
But reading parts of it can be tiresome, and while I do think the second half (after book 4) is still good with plenty of genius, it becomes more of a sprawling meta-mess than it perhaps should've been.
I loved it though. The upcoming film will be okay at best, but its no hyperbole to say the novels are one of the most complex layering of settings, tones, themes, times, hell concepts, etc etc there probably is in all fiction. And part of the big underlying magic is about literature and books themselves, soooooo yeah it should've just stayed that way.
Actually, I kinda hope the movie sucks, so they don't further try and adapt something...way too rich for shoving into a box like a series of films or tv episodes. Unless King and crew found some clever way to make this movie connect amazingly, which has been slightly rumored.
It's some amalgamation of all of kings worlds overlapping or some shit. I think he's trying to find the dark tower to save his people that the man in black killed
this
>Flagg raped
Damn man,I dont remember this at all.
The first 3 books are amazing. The 4th is kind of tedious but still solid. I thought the 5th was OK but many don't like it at all; it's where "anything goes" as you put it and things get weird. The 6th was dull to me and by the 7th all I wanted was to finally finish the series.
I started the first books as a young lad though and finished the last 3 as they cam out, so maybe that's why I did not like them as much.
Read the first one. It's short and should give you an idea of what you'll think of the next 3 books. I don't want to spoil anything but if you've read other stuff by King you might have a greater appreciation of the series.
I'm in Australia, I saw it being advertised in a train station like 1.5 years ago. I'm looking for info online now but I can't find anything... I swear I'm not making this up
>trying to actually condense and "get the gist" of The Dark Tower because of the movie, like so many anons ITT
You'll never get what makes it good this way, and just spoil any greatness it could've had in the first place
For fucks sakes do you need a carrot hung on a stick or your hands held
so isn't this what Planescape Torment was based on? I can see tons of similarities
yeah maybe
I'm just wondering how easy it is to make a whole saga out of elements you make up as you go, especially when you can mix and match any idea in any fantasy / sci fi folklore
Well, asking this without sarcasm - how often do you try to write or create something fictional?
You seem skeptical of the story/series because it deals with so many things, thinking it might be cheaper or without substance.
It is so broad that some of the aspects are stitched together, but King puts such detail and thought in his work. It's inherently multidimensional. There's obviously long standing qualities that have shown readers to be enraptured, amazed, moved, interested, etc.
It'd be unfair to shove it aside as a gimmick because you doubt it. The first book was one of the driest I thought but by the end I was hooked.
idk reading the sumary it just seems weird as fuck. Example:
>At the way station Roland first encounters Jake Chambers, who died in his own universe (presumably our own) when pushed in front of a car, while walking to school in Manhattan.
so wtf ?
so all of a sudden, casually, a new character appear, but he is from our own reality and ended up in the dark tower's world? How do they introduce this concept in the story ? in the summary they just pile up moments like that where it seems there is no consistency at all and things happen because they seem cool
1-4 are GOAT. King had his accident after the 4th book and the writing visibly suffers from it. He also had to take on an assistant writer and that led to all kinds of fuckery concerning plot/characters etc.
I totally agree with you for the most part user. Not surprisingly, many of the problems you listed began with book V.
It is explained later. It seems that the summary you read doesn't detail events chronologically, as they happen in the books. If you've read spoilers though there isn't much of a reason to read the books.
When Mordred is about to kill Flagg, Flagg has a flashback to when he was raped while he was still a human.
Sorry user, if this isn't some pathetic bait, you are either really young, have very little patience, the dumbs, or a combination of the above.
How do you expect to understand why things happen in a story if you haven't read it? It's a story with pages in the thousands dealing with multiverses and supernatural shit. Do you expect every thing that happens in a more "real world" story to be explained or make total sense right away? Obviously not, so multiply that here.
Again, either your bait smells or you're really inept at understanding things. Good luck!