Finnish Twilight 2000 sourcebook: the intro page

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by John Farson

If you've read Stephen King's Dark Tower (and the Marvel comics), you know where that comes from...

OT: I just starting reading The Gunslinger after finishing my first King novel, The Stand, which, not coincidently, I decided to read after learning that it was a post-apocalyptic story. I enjoyed it. The G.S. is pretty good so far. Definitely very different from The Stand.

How do you guys rate the last three books. A lot of reviews on Amazon were pretty harsh. People seem to really love the first 4 books but reviews are VERY mixed on the final three. Opinions?

[John Farson]

Originally Posted by Raellus

OT: I just starting reading The Gunslinger after finishing my first King novel, The Stand, which, not coincidently, I decided to read after learning that it was a post-apocalyptic story. I enjoyed it. The G.S. is pretty good so far. Definitely very different from The Stand.

How do you guys rate the last three books. A lot of reviews on Amazon were pretty harsh. People seem to really love the first 4 books but reviews are VERY mixed on the final three. Opinions?

I found the first four Dark Tower books to be very good. They caught the post-apocalyptic feel of Mid-World very well. As I was reading them I constantly had the world map music of Fallout 2 ringing in my head. The city of Lud in particular felt like out of a Fallout game.

After Wizard and Glass though, things got... weird. I wouldn't exactly say bad, because the books were still quite well written, but they just didn't seem... right, somehow. I'd say that King's near fatal car accident in 1999 played a significant part in this. As you know, up until then the DT books had appeared in long intervals, with the Gunslinger published in '82, Drawing of the Three in '87, Wasteland in '91 and Wizard and Glass in '97. This may have frustrated long-time readers, but I think ultimately it enabled King to write good, concise stories in each book. After his accident, I think King became aware of his mortality. This made him hurry up with finishing the Dark Tower, with the last three parts coming out in quick succession in 2003-2004. This may have hurt the quality of the stories, IMHO.

So for the sake of completion I'd recommend reading the last three parts too. Just remember that the last three might be a bit weird.