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A while ago I promised to tell Örjan wether the Dark Tower series was worth continuing with, so this is that.
When I read the first book (The Gunslinger) I was instantly hooked on this story that was odd, and compeling, and unlike anything I could remember reading. It was full of light-enough-to-be-white skies and vast deserted vistas, and through it walked the gunslinger, Roland, with his baggage of hinted-at memories and past experiences.
In the preface King says that The Gunslinger reads as though it was written by a young man too new out of writer's class to have dropped his pretentiousness and become a good writer. And to some extent that's true, it is a little pretentious, and it is a little conceited, because there are many devices used, many literary tricks. But for me it works anyway, and I wish the older and more seasoned King could have kept a litle more of that style - in the later books he sometimes feels maybe too professional, too sleek and simplified.
I haven't read any other Stephen King, and I think that affects my reading of these books to a large extent. As the story goes on, more and more stuff gets woven into it from other King books, and I likely miss much of it because I haven't read those other books. But some is obvious, he tells you directly that they are refereces, and even goes so far as to write himself (or a version of himself) into the story. If that sort of thing annoys you (as it does me), you will be greatly annoyed.
Which is a fair summation actually - I found the series very good, very worthwhile and exciting, and very frustrating. The Gunslinger holds so much promise, so many hinted stories and such a vivid style and feel that I had a very clear image of what I wanted the story to be, I think. And then that's not what it becomes. The loner gets a family, the other world becomes our world... The whole thing kept twisting around and going in other directions than what I wanted. It was still very good - just not the story I had hoped it would be.
There's a lot more gore than I like, more twistedness and ugliness than I like, more cutesy meta-tricks than I like and a lot more real world and breaking the fourth wall than I like. But somehow it kept pulling me in, and those things that were especially irritating would get explained, or smoothed over, or I'd get used to them, and then it would be all good again.
But the series was written over the course of almost 30 years, and the books are uneven. The first one (The Gunslinger) I thought was brilliant. It's pretty thin, and written in a slightly confusing backwards chronology, and almost in short story form. I believe it was first published as a series of short stories too.
The second book (The Drawing of the Three) started out dissapointing me - Roland left the desert (which was almost a character in its own right in The Gunslinger) and started hopping between his own world and our world. And I don't really like that, when fantasy stories get muddled with the real world, it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Then he started collecting companions - that tired old cliché of fantasy. But all the characters were very well written, and interesting, so I stuck with it.
By the third book (The Waste Lands) the companions were as well established as Roland himself and felt competely natural in the story, the fact that it wasn't in the desert but started in a great forest, and the connection with the "real" world, had become established and didn't bug me so much anymore. Then came the next annoyance - old super-advanced sci-fi machinery from "The Old Ones" started showing up. Oh NO! Now it's some stupid post-apocalyptic crap - again, a genre I don't like mushed into my fantasy (I have a theory as to why this is, but it'll have to wait). But that too grew on me, and became natural, and an intrinsic part of Roland's world, and stoped being so irritating. (Also, I had to keep reminding myself that the last days of the frontier were pretty much in modern times and there were cars and machine guns back then too - I wrote an essay on The Wild Bunch once, I should know this).
The fourth book, Wizard and Glass, is the only one I really didn't like. It didn't work for me at all, because the central love story didn't work at all, imo. I had a completely different idea of what Roland's lost love would be, and I felt that they were much too young, and it was all much too trite and stupid. I feel that King slipped into writing of teen-age love not as a grown-up, or outsider, but with the grown up's sentimental memory of what it felt like as a teen. So everything is enormous, and earth shattering, and immature and really, really irritating. And that's the narrator's voice, not just the teens' own voices, which would have been an altogether different thing. If there weren't a few things in it that are actually plot relevant I might even suggest skipping Wizard and Glass entirely. But of course, that might just be me, Niklas didn't have nearly as much trouble with it.
The last three books were written in sequence, over a farly short period, and are more consistent in tone and style. They are all good, but I think Wolves of the Calla was the best one.
Wolves of the Calla (book five) is the one that comes closest to what I envisioned when I read The Gunslinger, and the most satisfying one for me. It's a sort of Magnificent Seven meets Mad Max type of thing and I think it's excellent. It's at the end of this one though that the meta-stuff starts really seeping in, and that really bothered me at first. Suddenly there are vampires and other horror stuff, that just felt out of place, and the name Stephen King pops up for the first time. If you are more familiar with his other books though, you'll have noticed it a lot sooner though, I'm sure.
Song of Susannah is again set largely in "our" world, and it's structured differently than the others. Niklas pretty much hated it (this is were King really lets loose with using himself as a character and so on) but I thought it was pretty good actually. Turning himself into a character actually made the meta-crap less irritating for me, because it was plain it wasn't realy pretending to be set in the real world, but in a fictional world a lot like ours, and the book-King wasn't really the real King. There is also a (wholly fictional? Partly?) bit at the end which is extracts out of King's journal, that gives a bit more perspective on why the story turned out the way it did, instead of the way it seemed it would in The Gunslinger. There are some annyances - like a Swedish diplomat with a dutch name for example, and the way King uses foreign (to him) words, but only minor things. (At least everything is supposed to mean what it really means, and the fictional language is actualy made up as far as I can tell).
The Dark Tower is the last of the books, and for once nothing much frustrated the crap out of me. This one rolls along at a good pace with all the trademark features of the series; New York is there, Maine, wastelands, companions, the lone gunman, the tower... it's all there. It is, I think, also a pretty satisfying conclusion to the story.
In short, and to repeat, yes Örjan, I think it's worth finishing the series.
When I read the first book (The Gunslinger) I was instantly hooked on this story that was odd, and compeling, and unlike anything I could remember reading. It was full of light-enough-to-be-white skies and vast deserted vistas, and through it walked the gunslinger, Roland, with his baggage of hinted-at memories and past experiences.
In the preface King says that The Gunslinger reads as though it was written by a young man too new out of writer's class to have dropped his pretentiousness and become a good writer. And to some extent that's true, it is a little pretentious, and it is a little conceited, because there are many devices used, many literary tricks. But for me it works anyway, and I wish the older and more seasoned King could have kept a litle more of that style - in the later books he sometimes feels maybe too professional, too sleek and simplified.
I haven't read any other Stephen King, and I think that affects my reading of these books to a large extent. As the story goes on, more and more stuff gets woven into it from other King books, and I likely miss much of it because I haven't read those other books. But some is obvious, he tells you directly that they are refereces, and even goes so far as to write himself (or a version of himself) into the story. If that sort of thing annoys you (as it does me), you will be greatly annoyed.
Which is a fair summation actually - I found the series very good, very worthwhile and exciting, and very frustrating. The Gunslinger holds so much promise, so many hinted stories and such a vivid style and feel that I had a very clear image of what I wanted the story to be, I think. And then that's not what it becomes. The loner gets a family, the other world becomes our world... The whole thing kept twisting around and going in other directions than what I wanted. It was still very good - just not the story I had hoped it would be.
There's a lot more gore than I like, more twistedness and ugliness than I like, more cutesy meta-tricks than I like and a lot more real world and breaking the fourth wall than I like. But somehow it kept pulling me in, and those things that were especially irritating would get explained, or smoothed over, or I'd get used to them, and then it would be all good again.
But the series was written over the course of almost 30 years, and the books are uneven. The first one (The Gunslinger) I thought was brilliant. It's pretty thin, and written in a slightly confusing backwards chronology, and almost in short story form. I believe it was first published as a series of short stories too.
The second book (The Drawing of the Three) started out dissapointing me - Roland left the desert (which was almost a character in its own right in The Gunslinger) and started hopping between his own world and our world. And I don't really like that, when fantasy stories get muddled with the real world, it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Then he started collecting companions - that tired old cliché of fantasy. But all the characters were very well written, and interesting, so I stuck with it.
By the third book (The Waste Lands) the companions were as well established as Roland himself and felt competely natural in the story, the fact that it wasn't in the desert but started in a great forest, and the connection with the "real" world, had become established and didn't bug me so much anymore. Then came the next annoyance - old super-advanced sci-fi machinery from "The Old Ones" started showing up. Oh NO! Now it's some stupid post-apocalyptic crap - again, a genre I don't like mushed into my fantasy (I have a theory as to why this is, but it'll have to wait). But that too grew on me, and became natural, and an intrinsic part of Roland's world, and stoped being so irritating. (Also, I had to keep reminding myself that the last days of the frontier were pretty much in modern times and there were cars and machine guns back then too - I wrote an essay on The Wild Bunch once, I should know this).
The fourth book, Wizard and Glass, is the only one I really didn't like. It didn't work for me at all, because the central love story didn't work at all, imo. I had a completely different idea of what Roland's lost love would be, and I felt that they were much too young, and it was all much too trite and stupid. I feel that King slipped into writing of teen-age love not as a grown-up, or outsider, but with the grown up's sentimental memory of what it felt like as a teen. So everything is enormous, and earth shattering, and immature and really, really irritating. And that's the narrator's voice, not just the teens' own voices, which would have been an altogether different thing. If there weren't a few things in it that are actually plot relevant I might even suggest skipping Wizard and Glass entirely. But of course, that might just be me, Niklas didn't have nearly as much trouble with it.
The last three books were written in sequence, over a farly short period, and are more consistent in tone and style. They are all good, but I think Wolves of the Calla was the best one.
Wolves of the Calla (book five) is the one that comes closest to what I envisioned when I read The Gunslinger, and the most satisfying one for me. It's a sort of Magnificent Seven meets Mad Max type of thing and I think it's excellent. It's at the end of this one though that the meta-stuff starts really seeping in, and that really bothered me at first. Suddenly there are vampires and other horror stuff, that just felt out of place, and the name Stephen King pops up for the first time. If you are more familiar with his other books though, you'll have noticed it a lot sooner though, I'm sure.
Song of Susannah is again set largely in "our" world, and it's structured differently than the others. Niklas pretty much hated it (this is were King really lets loose with using himself as a character and so on) but I thought it was pretty good actually. Turning himself into a character actually made the meta-crap less irritating for me, because it was plain it wasn't realy pretending to be set in the real world, but in a fictional world a lot like ours, and the book-King wasn't really the real King. There is also a (wholly fictional? Partly?) bit at the end which is extracts out of King's journal, that gives a bit more perspective on why the story turned out the way it did, instead of the way it seemed it would in The Gunslinger. There are some annyances - like a Swedish diplomat with a dutch name for example, and the way King uses foreign (to him) words, but only minor things. (At least everything is supposed to mean what it really means, and the fictional language is actualy made up as far as I can tell).
The Dark Tower is the last of the books, and for once nothing much frustrated the crap out of me. This one rolls along at a good pace with all the trademark features of the series; New York is there, Maine, wastelands, companions, the lone gunman, the tower... it's all there. It is, I think, also a pretty satisfying conclusion to the story.
In short, and to repeat, yes Örjan, I think it's worth finishing the series.
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