The Dark Tower

books are important. a dying art. please, please, let me know that there are still people out there that read more than just magazines.

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autochthonous
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by autochthonous »

Am I retarded? I know that there was some inconsistencies in the 7th book, but I don't recall it being as bad as you're describing it. Maybe it's because I read them all back to back, but I don't remember it not promising things. And to be honest, I don't even remember his vision of the billybumbler in the tree.

Maybe PM me with some of the inconsistencies?

I really liked the ending. The ending, ending. Not the pre-ending ending.

Although, yes, King inserting himself in was a bit of a egotistical mumbo-jumbo.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

I'm still plugging along. They just finished with the raid of Algul Siento. Someone got shot in the head. That's where I'm at.


The events leading to the shooting in the head are anti-climactic. "Oh hey. The guy I just killed by shooting him in the head. he isn't really dead, even though I SHOT HIM IN THE HEAD. He's still capable of motor control and visual acuity enough to pick up a gun, aim it and shoot someone else in the head..."

I call bullshit.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

Get ready.

You're going to be calling bullshit (or stupid shit) on every page from that point. That's pretty much where it goes to hell.

Remember all those lines about "Later, when they were all at the Tower, they would look back at this moment..." in the previous books? Yeah, King's a fucking liar and a hack.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

I finished! I actually finished about a month ago. While I don't think I was as disappointed as you seem to be, I was letdown by the dues ex machina of having the mute crayon drawer who is introduced a hundred pages from the end of the book be the way to destroy the main baddie. And sitting here right now, I cannot remember how the spider-kid thing was dispatched. Which means it wasn't very memorable.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

I was really fucking pissed that Randall Flagg was killed by the fucking spider. Motherfuck. THE big villain of practically every single goddamned Stephen King book, and he's killed by some dipshit new character.

The spider, by the way, died of diarrhea. No lie.

I was also quite pissed that several things that King had more or less promised would be explained (the battles, what the nature of the portals was, etc) weren't. And that the whole thing went to being a shitty metaphor for the creative process in the end.

I wanted to kick his balls for making himself the focal point of the book.

Oh, and I really, really, really got pissed because every single "later, when they were all at the Tower, they often would reminisce about this moment" bits were totally invalidated because he had to kill off everyone first! And Susannah became the biggest fucking out-of-character pussy in the end. She would not be happy with an alternate version of Eddie. Period. End of discussion.

BTW, I had assumed that the vision of Oy speared on a tree during Wizards and Glass was actually a vision of Oy BEFORE he met up with the Ka-Tet; he was badly injured when they first met him.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Diabolical »

I haven't read any of this thread, so you kids may know this or have already mentioned it, but I'm in the middle of reading King's short story "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and in the intro King says that it's related to the Dark Tower books. Apparently it has something to do with one of the main characters, Ted Brautigan.

Just throwing it out there.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

Yeah, though it turns out that he just gets mentioned in passing in Book VII.

I'm going to guess, though, that the character was named in homage of the great (and, unfortunately, rather obscure) writer, Richard Brautigan.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Diabolical »

Is The Gunslinger Reborn comic one that can be read with no previous Dark Tower knowledge?
My Barnes & Noble has a bunch of copies of the hardcover trade for $6.99 and I considered grabbing it but thought I should ask you peeps first.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Diabolical wrote:Is The Gunslinger Reborn comic one that can be read with no previous Dark Tower knowledge?
My Barnes & Noble has a bunch of copies of the hardcover trade for $6.99 and I considered grabbing it but thought I should ask you peeps first.

Yes. The Gunslinger Born TPB is an adaptation and expansion of a story in the 4th Dark Tower book 'Wizard and Glass' with some elements of backstory from the first novel thrown in, but it can be enjoyed without any foreknowledge of the novels. The rest of the TPBs so far are even more removed from the novels. Many of them are loosely based on maybe a sentence or paragraph from the novels and expanded on greatly by Robin Furth and Peter David.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Diabolical »

Yeah, I bought it back then.
I've yet to finish it.
So damn boring.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

Have no idea if it's true or not, but Newsarama mentioned in an article about a film adaptation that an eighth book is in the works.

On the one hand, I'd like to see if King can fix this.

On the other, though, why give that bastard more money so he can fuck things up worse?
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Diabolical »

A film trilogy and 2 seasons of a tv show between films 1 & 2 and 2 & 3.
Ron Howard is directing film 1 and season 1.

There's a story on slashfilm.com, which I'll post later (if nobody does first).
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

Oh, Ron Howard, and Peter David before you: why must you waste your talents on a story that must end so shittily?

I was referring more to the comment about an eighth book, which I've not seen echoed in any other stories on the subject.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Akiva Goldsman attached to anything is not a good sign. He wrote Batman&Robin.

Ron Howard wants to direct the ENTIRE first season? That's not possible. I worked in television, guys. Having one guy direct every episode would both suffer the quality of everything and probably kill the guy. Imagine if someone made you stay awake for 20 days and then told you to sit down and write a novel without food or pee breaks. I guarantee whatever came off your keyboard would be absolute gibberish.

The breakdown is curious as well. The first film is the Gunslinger of course. But then what? Drawing of Three and Wastelands as season 1? The city of Lud and the showdown with Blaine as the second film? The backstory of Mejis and Susan as season2. And then what, cram Wolves of Calla, Susannah's Song, and the last book into one film? That's just stupid.
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Re: The Dark Tower

Post by anarky »

Read confirmation of the eighth book, which is set between 4 and 5. King said there were stories that needed to be told about the ka-tet before they arrived at the Calla. I'm not sure why. If such stories were so important, why didn't he put them in 5, and put part of 5 into 6 so it wasn't only thirty pages long?

I have to wonder about the popularity of the comics and hype about the movie/TV show. Are they just counting on no one knowing how this spectacular mess ends? Seriously. It's like George Lucas appearing in ROTS (as himself, not a background alien) and taking over the action, and suddenly the Kurosawa nods become blatant (like they fight a Sith Lord named Mifune Yojimbo, who has a spaceship called the Samurai VII), and then we find out Anakin never became Vader but Obi-Wan died, and we're too busy mumbling "B-b-but that makes no sense!" to notice when Palpatine is killed by a guy with a typewriter who writes him out of existence.
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