There is a flash version of it if your into that… complete with annoying sounds.
And by absolutely he means “absolutely.”
Great journey getting there, however.
You can read only the first and last 100 pages of the 4th book and not miss anything at all from the rest of that book. The rest is backstory that would probably be best delivered as a special animated feature on a collectors edition DvD or something, not really worth bringing to screen.
What the hell?! That “back story” is not only the best thing that King has ever written but is the explanation to everything that Roland has done in the series up to that point. It’s the “why” of the entire series!
It also lacks most of the mystic overtones that made the rest of the series to that point enjoyable, brings the whole thing to a halt, is overlong by at least one hundred pages, and could have been effectively summarized in a paragraph. It’s basically a large, not-technically-necessary Western embedded in the middle of the series for no reason other than King apparently wanted to write a Western. It wouldn’t be a bad place to start, because it’s self-contained and not quite as strange as the rest of everything, and they’ve already got sort of a storyboard treatment, but I absolutely hated reading through it.
Plus, there was no tension at all because Roland was never in any danger. So, regardless of whatever might have happened in Roland’s youth, all the events that took place between the time between the back story and the re-telling on the train would remain exactly the same. Waste. Of. Time.
Christian Slater dual-role as both Roland AND the man in black!!! Epic.
I agree that the content in Wizard and Glass is weirdly placed in the overall narrative and kind of brings things to a crashing halt. I also agree that it’s one of, if not the, best parts of the series.
It does more then “kind of” bring things to a halt, it slams the pace of the main story into a wall. And I’d also argue about how important it is to the overall story, as I can’t say that I’m convinced you couldn’t just take the whole thing out and relay the few key things it does reveal in other, smaller chunks. Well written or not, it didn’t need to be that fleshed out at that point. As a side novel or as seperate novel it would have worked a lot better. It’s like the fact that we never get many details about the Battle of Jericho Hill, but we get enough to keep the story going and that was explored in the comics, as well as other things from Roland’s past.
I enjoyed Wizard and Glass as a stand-alone story, but it was clear to me that King wrote it because he wanted to issue another installment in the series but he didn’t really know where he wanted to take Roland’s ka-tet next in the larger quest. It was almost like he was stalling for time.
Which makes it really awful when you read the prologue and he talks about how he put off writing Wizard and Glass for so long because he was so far removed from that feeling of adolescent love or whatever.
I thought King actually admitted he didn’t know where to take the story for a long time. So we get a book of back story, and King himself making a terrible appearance in the series.
That was the fifth book.
I think the moral of the story here is that the movie should just be the third book and then nothing.
The sad part is that Wizard and Glass, while excellent, stalls for time… And then when King finally, many years later, comes back to the series, he takes it right off the rails.
me after I’ve taken my night meds
Am I the only one that was horribly disappointed by the ending of the series? I know he said “stop reading now”, and he meant it, because the end was crap.
The Talisman and Black House were much more worthwhile to read, involving the same universe, than the last parts of the Dark Tower series. It is also possible that I overdid it on King… I read all the books that he marked as having something to do with the Dark Tower series before finishing the series.
This really isn’t the place to go spoiling/discussing the ending in detail, but I’ll say this:
The ending itself didn’t bother me at all, and the more I’ve thought about it the more appropriate it has felt to me.
Several of the events leading up to the ending though really should have been handled differently, but this really isn’t the thread to go spoiling those either.
I read the entire series, absolutely loved Wizard and Glass, and wasn’t disappointed at all with how it ended. I’m not sure why people took such issue with…the new character introduced in book 5. It seemed to fit the whole ethos (right word?) of the series.
The only problem I had was with the disappointing confrontation in the end - but in terms of the ending (both the “real” ending and the part that came after), it also seemed to fit the general themes and style of the series very well.
I thought the ending worked out ok, and it made sense, even though I would rather have had something more conclusive happen. But then the whole series is full of things where I thought he was going somewhere exciting with and he ended up going a different, not always as exciting direction instead.
My biggest problem with the end was actually that after seven books he introduces a new character so late that ends up having such a big impact while the others we’ve travelled that whole way with aren’t part of that.
Just like Lost! I heard that JJ Abrams had optioned it awhile back for $19 or something with the idea of turning it into a mini-series. I think it would be really tough to do as a movie, or even a trilogy.