I remember in the Foreward to the first book, even King admitted that he’d probably never finish the series because he had so many ideas for it. I guess getting hit by a car will change anybody’s mind:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/07/10/stephen.king/index.html
Nice to see a cover, but there was precious little info about the next book. I love the Dark Tower series. I love all of the nutty criss-crossing story lines and elements that find their way into many of his books which lead back to “The Tower”. I am sure much of it does not match up and seems out of place to some, but I am excited to see how he winds it all up. Even if it is not perfect.
I think the Gunslinger is the best thing King has ever written, and an excellent book, but the series has gone downhill from there. The latest book reads like some sort of half-assed comic book crossover where he tries to meld together storylines from Talisman and The Stand. It doesn’t work. I finished it, which is more than I can say for his sequel to Talisman. But it didn’t leave me hungry for more.
The Black House was a definite let down. It built up OK and then sorta meandered its way to the ending. Not his worst, but far from the excellent Talisman book which I re-read before Black House came out.
I hope all of this time he is spending is being used to connect all the dots from all of the Crimson King references he liberally sprinkled all over the place.
I think the Gunslinger is the best thing King has ever written, and an excellent book, but the series has gone downhill from there
Agreed that it is his best, and that it goes downhill, but I don’t agree with the word “excellent” – I’d say that first book is just good, not really outstanding.
If it is intended to be a serious book, then the Samurai-Cat-like* ability to run through thousands of rounds of ammo is absurd. Really, I like the gunslinger’s initial taciturn character, and I think the idea of a martial art based on the colt .45 is brilliant, but there is no way he could cart around all that ammo even granting the speed-reloading-jutsu martial art… Of course that is a nitpick but it seems to be a kind of glaring silliness in a book that is sufficient self-involved and angst-ridden that it really can’t permit absurdity.
Anyway I don’t remember the books all that well anymore, but I do recall it getting worse and worse, and the transitions to the “real world” were particularly unpleasant. As the gunslinger character seems to get more normal and human he gets less and less interesting, and the other characters are all hopeless as I recall.
However, I don’t think I read the most recent (fourth) book, is it even worse than the one before?
*Samurai Cat > Dark Tower, ergo Mark Rogers > Stephen King?
I, uh, liked the board game. ?
Yet again proof that where art is considered everyone has a different opinion. I thought Black House was head and shoulders above the Talisman. Great book. Felt more like Straub than King, but that’s no problem for me.
If you haven’t read Mystery, The Throat and Koko by Peter Straub you really should.
Doesn’t King say in the interview that he has rewritten the 1st Gunslinger book?
Industry Dwarf
Yep, should be interesting. The original was brief when compared to King’s wordiness since. Maybe he added 500 pages. 
In Talisman, I thought the kid made a much more sympathetic hero. Don’t get me wrong, I still lliked Black House, I just thought Talisman was more imaginative and better.
[quote=“Tyjenks”]
Yep, should be interesting. The original was brief when compared to King’s wordiness since. Maybe he added 500 pages. [/quote]
Aw, Jesus. More unedited King.
Interesting to hear that, though. I wonder if the short story that appears in his last anthology, Everything’s Eventual, is part of the edited stuff. It takes place during the first book, a pretty creepy bit involving a “hospital.” A good short story, and actually most of the stories are good in that book.
BDR
If you read the books closely, you will see that Roland saves up his ammo after he has fired it to re-throw it, basically recycling his ammo. I believe this is talked about it the one where he goes through the doors to pick up the other characters.
Yeah, OK, but isn’t there some early scene in which he wades through some vast quantity of undead? I don’t really remember the books so well, but I remember thinking his barony or whatever it was must have had a real convenient lead mine, not to mention some sulfur springs (or wherever it is sulfur comes from :?: ) right at hand…
Two sections like that, the town where he slaughters everyone and the slow mutants under the mountains. At the end of the day all I can really say is that it’s just a book. I suppose though, that if you assume he’s really fuckin’ accurate then 200 shells would be more than enough in both sections. They come in quite easy to carry boxes (in fact he later buys that amount in New York saying that he can’t beleive that he will ever need that many shells) and wouldn’t take up much room in his backpack.
I seem to remember the scene in the town, he says that he killed 47 people with 48 bullets, or something like that. Hell, that’d fit on his belt.
Gunslinger was mostly a collection of stories (Dark Tower I that is) over a span of a long while, that he slung together and put in some extra connecting stuff. Then he did the Drawing of the Three.
Looks like Book V is coming in November - they just reprinted all the previous versions (the Donald Fine-edition hardcovers) in paperback.
— Alan
That cover really makes it look for all the world like a Hardy Boys Mystery. The Hardy Boys Meet the Wrinkly Old Thing In a Wheelchair, maybe.
Nope. In the first book, there are two major fights, when he kills everyone in Tull, about 27 people, IIRC, one shot each. When they get to the mines and the slow mutants, he quickly discovers that shooting them doesn’t do much, so they rely on speed more than firepower.
However . . .
The second and third book, where he starts training the others to shoot, is pretty ridiculous. He somehow manages to get a woman who’s never fired a gun to hit six targets, rapid-fire, on her first live ammo test.
H.
The man wrote 3 books, totaling, what, 2000+ pages? in about a year and a half. It doesnt really speak of quality to me given King’s 90’s and 00’s track record.
I might be optomistic about this whole thing but book 4 was a compete let down after such a long wait between it and Wasteland’s cliffhanger.
How many pages did Dickens write a week?
Better than that, Vergil managed between one to three lines a day.
insomnia is a reall good DT related king book. I like the old-farts-as-semi-heroes thing.