The Dark Tower - Epic?

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

What a rocking good start! As loaded, pregnant, and full of possibilities as the first line of any epic fantasy can be. When I read it – imagination junkie that I am (although not an eminent one), I sat back and basked in the myriad of possibilities that line promised. I speak of course, of Stephen King’s epic 7 volume “Dark Tower” saga, inspired in part by Robert Browning’s poem titled “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came…” (Yet another wonderfully pregnant set of words).

So yeah, just before I flew back home I finally finished all seven books in this fantasy epic (much to Shishir's consternation). And as sad as a comment it is on either my diligence or my optimism, I cannot say I am happy with the way King turns it out. So this is part a review of the series, and part a discussion of what essential elements of the “epic” form it lacks...

I must warn you that if you haven’t read these books but plan to, this review is going to be something of a spoiler – I’ll try to keep it as spoiler-free as I can until the very end, but no promises.

The Dark Tower saga is the tale of one Roland Deschain of the lost nation of Gilead, a Gunslinger (sort of a knight, but with guns) who is the last in the line of Arthur Eld, king of All-world. Roland’s driving mission in life is to arrive at the Dark Tower, a mystical nexus of a multitude of probabilistic universes that stands at the heart of creation. But something is wrong with the Tower and the "Beams" that hold it up – a dark entity called the Crimson King is slowly working toward the corrosion and fall of the Tower, and therefore the end of reality as we know it. Roland will let nothing – not love, not friendship, not loyalty, nor fate (ka) itself stand in the way of his quest. The man in black, in some ways his arch-nemesis, is only the first step in his quest, which will take him across many worlds, some that have “moved on” (degenerated) and some that have not, including New York city in our world at various times.

It is, as I said, a rocking premise, and one full of promise. King also delivers in huge chunks of juicy meat that you can sink your teeth into, but the fabric of the tale runs away from him, and the denouement is (to put it mildly) smart, but not the cat’s pajamas.

The first three books absolutely rocked – the first, “The Gunslinger” is a masterpiece where at the end Roland catches up with the man in black, and has a tarot reading to end all tarot readings done by him.

The second “The Drawing of the Three” is arguably more compelling, where Roland “draws” from our world his ka-tet (sort of his group of destiny, his team) as the man in black prophesized. From New York in the eighties, he draws Eddie Dean, a heroin addict with a destructive relationship with his brother Henry (described as a Great Sage and Eminent Junkie – a description I love). The second is Odetta Holmes, a schizophrenic, legless black civil rights activist whose alter-ego Detta Walker seems to comprise the ‘third’ in the drawing.

The third, "The Waste Lands" finally completes Roland’s ka-tet when he draws the actual third – Jake Chambers, also of New York (and eventually his pet billy bumbler Oy – a sort of talking dog/ raccoon hybrid) and the ka-tet meets one of the most compelling characters King has created in the saga. This character is an insane mono-rail called Blaine, (who is a pain), and the sub-plot of this character, which resolves between the third and fourth volume (Wizard and Glass) is one of the best pieces of crazy fiction I have read.

But "Wizard and Glass" is the pivotal volume, primarily a flashback to the start of Roland’s quest, before he was chasing the man in black across the Mohaine desert. It gives form to a back-history to Roland that was so far only hinted at. We learn of his ka-tet – the first, before Jake, Susannah (an amalgam of Detta and Odetta), and Eddie – and how it frayed, bent and went extinct in the path to the Tower. But most of all, Wizard and Glass is a love story. And what a love story it is, as we see Roland, who now seems made of rock and flint, falls innocently in love with Susan Delgado of Meijis, the "girl at the window" hinted at in "The Gunslinger"! It actually makes the saga of Aragorn and Arwen pale, in some respects, because it has no happy ending. Easily the best love story woven into a fantasy saga. Ever.

But “Wizard and Glass” is pivotal in more ways than one. It doesn’t merely serve up exposition of Roland’s battered past, but also sets the stage for the last three volumes – The Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and the final volume, The Dark Tower. Things are accelerating now, and the end is near.

And here my lengthy description of the plot must stop, because ahead of this is spoiler territory. This is also the point where, not to put too fine a point on it, the series jumps the shark… My problems with the series begin right here.

First of all, understand that King has made The Dark Tower the keystone in his body of work. The way he puts it, everything he wrote before he wrote book 7, is in some way connected to the world and the tale of Roland Deschain. His books “The Stand”, “Hearts in Atlantis”, “The Talisman”, “Salem’s Lot” and more are integral to understanding the Dark Tower saga. While this is an ambitious idea indeed (that all a wordsmith’s tales are subsets of a larger tale), because the saga got written over so many years (nearly three decades) it is inconsistent and the plot is at the least, helter-skelter.

Some things hinted at or promised turn out to be damp squibs. Other things seem extremely witty, but are also acts of sheer indulgence – at one point Stephen King weaves himself, and his personal life into the story in a pivotal role, which leaves me with mixed feelings.

Prophesy; what usually makes up a lot of the myth and charm and ominous atmosphere and shivers up your spine in any fantasy saga; seems either overused or misused here. Events that were built up for decades never happen – in particular, I hated how the man in black (Randall Flagg of “The Stand”) meets his end.

That being said, this flawed epic is still a powerhouse – even through the last three volumes. The breathtaking action never lets up, and in the final volume, you come very close to tears when the characters in Roland’s ka-tet begin to meet their resolution (in particular, the way Oy meets his end in the tale touched me no end).

Which brings us, at last, to what to me is the flawed ending. Once again, I warn you, heavy spoilage ahead, unlike the relatively benign text above. Go read this, if you find your interest piqued, and come back and read this review when you're done. Say please, I say thankya.

For when Roland Deschain of Gilead finally stands in the field of roses before the Dark Tower, and he says the names of those that fell in the quest for him, and when finally the Tower’s doors open to him with a mighty blast of a horn, to the last heir of Arthur Eld, Stephen King steps in with a warning.

This is the end he says, as far as the quest is concerned, and Roland has found his Tower, and perhaps he will climb to the room at the top (God’s room, in some ways) and perhaps he will find it empty and perhaps he will occupy it himself… but King entreats us to let the end be. Endings are like the useless tails of a tale he says, like the orgasm at the end of lovemaking – a necessary event perhaps, but not the whole point of the exercise. He begs us to stop right then and there…

And for once, believe me, you are tempted… I certainly was.

But for curiosity; alas, we are all cats to King’s creation, and so I read on. Once again, spoiler warning – I am about to name the key to the Dark Tower saga.

When Roland opens the door at the top of the Dark Tower (after a journey of reminiscences as he climbs the various levels of the Tower, each of which represents some significant point in his life), he realizes something that struck an enormous gonging chord with me… At this point, Roland is like Icarus in my own poem “Ad Infinitum” – he realizes that his quest is a loop, and that by opening the door at the top, he is in a way drawing himself once more into his quest, the way he drew Jake, Eddie, and Susannah… suddenly, he finds himself back at the beginning – not quite so far back that he can change any significant detail, but the beginning as we knew it nonetheless. He is fated to quest for and find the Dark Tower in an eternal cycle perhaps, and the last line in the saga, is the same as the first…

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed”.

There is hope of course, because some things are different this time around – Roland now has a horn that he had lost in a battle many years ago, and maybe that means that this time, when he opens the door at the top, something different will happen. King however, is done with the tale.

I don’t know what to make of this ending really. In some ways I understand how it can be the only possible ending – how, to otherwise explain what lies on the other side of the door, King would have to cheat his own muse and go into proselytizing territory…

On the other hand, I have always hated those sci-fi tales where at the end, because of some paradox, it turns out that the events that we read about are made to never transpire, thereby averting catastrophe. I also as a rule hate – despise – anti-climactic writing.

So yeah, in summum, the Dark Tower saga has the following flaws to me –

1. It rambles, and is not consistent in plot across the board – King went overboard with ad-libbing it, and with establishing far fetched connections to his other work.
2. The end is not one I can wholly buy; it’s a love-hate thing.
3. And finally, when I think about it, Towers in general are such old hat in the fantasy world. :) I mean, can anything possibly top Barad Dur and Orthanc? (But I'm nitpicking now...)

But then no regrets – this is compelling high fantasy at it best. The character delineation is alone worth the trouble of reading it, and the macabre mix of gore, thrill and metaphysics certainly appealed to me.

Ah well… enough rambling. Say true, I say thankya. Big big.