"The Dark Tower"

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." The immortal words by Robert Browning, that spawned a masterpiece of works by Stephen King.

I am really having a hard time putting my thoughts together for this review. I think by far this will be my most difficult. I have been a fan of Stephen King for many years, and I have read probably 90% of all of the books he has published, but this series of books "The Dark Tower" or "The Gunslinger" is a culmination of 22 years of writing for Stephen, and the final installment is a simply put, a work of art.

I am going to try once again to do the impossible. I'm going to review the entire Gunslinger / Dark tower series in a single review, so this may be a bit long winded, so please be patient.

Roland Deschain, son of Stephen “of the line of Eld”. The best description of this character would be a cross between a young Clint Eastwood in the old spaghetti western "High Plains Drifter" and Russel Crowe (Cort) in "The Quick and the Dead." Roland carries two large caliber 6 shooters with sandalwood hand grips, inscribed with intricate scroll work along the barrels. To say that accuracy when shooting said smoke wagons is precise, would be a joke of an understatement. He has been raised since a child to shoot (and kill) with his heart, and not with his hands. As the books often refer to a certain mantra spoken by gunslingers "To kill with ones hands, and not his heart, is someone who has forgotten the face of their father" Kind a spiritual reference to the fore fathers that the began the legend of the gunslingers, as well as the actual true father of person saying the mantra.

Roland is traveling the earth, in search of the only thing that his heart truly desires, and that is to find the dark tower, and climb its stairs. He travels through many worlds, times, places, whens, and where's to reach his final destination. Along the way many other characters appear throughout the books, and some even are taught by Roland to be gunslingers themselves.

The gunslinger treks through time, has many battles, villains, good guys, and bad, but what is interesting about the way he travels to different times and places, is through different doors. Doors that hang in the air appearing to float with nothing in front of them, and nothing in back, but are as solid and sometimes locked as solidly as a metal vault unless the right circumstances arise in which he is allowed passage through to the other side. Something straight out of a Twilight episode.

In the final book of this series "The Dark Tower," the master writer Stephen King, does something that I have never seen before. While some Authors have written themselves into their own scripts in the past, to my knowledge, NONE have ever done it in this fashion. Stephen writes himself into this script, and takes part in the actual story as himself! Here is the most unreal part. The characters in the book are made aware finally that they are in fact just characters in a book written by this man Stephen King! They actually seek him out at his residence and talk with him. They are self aware that their very existence hinges on him continuing to write the next books in the Dark Tower series!!! I can't continue to divulge the part that Stephen plays in this book because I don't want to spoil anything, but the shear madness it must have taken to write oneself into a story in this way is shear brilliance.

This series has 7 books in total, and each book is a master piece unto itself, but do not make the mistake I made by reading any one of the books out of order. While waiting for a plane at the airport, I ran into the book store, and picked up "The Drawing of the Three" which is actually book 2 by mistake not knowing it was a series. While the book fascinated me, I soon found out that this was a series, and I need to go back and start all over. I finally did, and read (or listened) to all 7 books in order until I just finished the final book not 2 days ago. let me say this. If 7 books seems a little bit of a journey (which it is) all of these books are available on audio CD, and they bring a quality to the story's that just can't be felt when reading.

Roland and his Dark Tower quest is the longest reading / listening undergoing I have ever taken on, and the journey it took me through was magical. With the three books I listened to on Audio CD I would find myself stuck in my car driving endlessly around my neighborhood just to listen to one more chapter. As for the books, I spent many nights flipping pages until the early morning hours, knowing full well I should just put the book down and go to sleep.

To the true Stephen King fan, this review is meaningless because you have already taken this fantastic journey, but this review was not meant for you. This review was meant for the many "Passer by" Stephen King fans that have read a few of his books, but have not decided to take on the daunting task of a 7 book series that spans 22 years. To these Stephen King fans, I implore you! Start this series, and you will not be disappointed, and you will not stop until the last page of book 7.

This is a first for me and my blog so read closely. I rate this series 10.00 out of 10.00!