It wasn't the ending that let the story down and more that it just derailed from how it started so wildly and randomly.
Stephen King's The Dark Tower
- Thread starter Chukzombi
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Chukzombi
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imagine your favorite tv show coming back to tv after being off the air for 5 years, then enjoying the first episode ready for the next week, then all of a sudden it goes into a flashback, and stays in a flashback for the entire season until the last half of the season finale we finally return to where it left off in episode one. oh and you will have to wait 7 more years for the next new episode. actually you dont know how long the wait is because there is never a notice on when its getting done and the show runner was almost killed in a car wreck so there is a good chance you will never see a new episode.
oh there is nothing wrong with wolves of callah, its pretty fucking awesome. father callahan was badass.
Alexzander
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Yeah, I guess I get that. I just read the series for the first time this year. Had I been reading them as they were coming out, the cliffhanger at the end of book 3 would have made me salty as hell.
Chukzombi
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i had forgotten about the riddling and blaine. funny thing about that was people thought topeka was where the dark tower was and that roland was being taken right to it or at least near it. instead topeka was just some random ass city that ended the waste lands and was blaine's last stop. it wasnt anywhere near End-world or DT. i was mostly mad at waiting so long for these things to happen, i know king's writing style so it didnt really bother me too much. but 12 years of eating breadcrumbs before the real second half of the series started was beyond even my patience.
Drinsic
privileged excrementlord
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Because king has never written good endings, he is famous for it. Knowing that I read king books for the journey with the expectation of a weak or bad end. The rest of the series a from SOS was one shell of a journey and honestly the ending wasn't his worst ending by a long shot. Even if it did suck something fierce.
If you want an atrocious ending to an otherwise strong read then go pick up a copy of under the dome. I wanted to break my kindle with the uncanny undeveloped bullshit he pulled there.
Chukzombi
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king has tons of good endings in his earlier works. tons. you gotta realize that his stuff after he got off the sauce is not on par with his drug crazed works. he was more creative in the 70s and 80s. thats not to say that he has no good endings in the 90s and beyond, but those are few and far between.
I think it has more to do with the fact that after writing five hundred novels, he's completely out of ideas. And seriously, his writing is atrocious, and I would probably only put two or three of his novels into a good category.
Chukzombi
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bixxby
Molten Core Raider
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How do you end it then? Roland climbs to the top of the tower and shoots god in the face Preacher style? He just slumps over and dies? He goes to a new world with the rest of the crew and has hot chocolate? The cyclical ending kinda sucks but it also fits so damn well to the story as a whole.
Arden
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I agree. People wanted some type of storybook ending, but the novels were never going to end that way- you could see that from very early on. What makes King great is his affinity for the Truth and his ability to capture realities that may be inconvenient to the story but that nevertheless lend his works a sense of verisimilitude. There was only one way to "end" his magnum opus, and that was to acknowledge that real stories have no ending. That's what he did.
For the record, I wouldn't have been too upset with the hot chocolate ending either.
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Why not have a storybook ending? Why not have something big? So it was going to be a hard story to end properly. That's no reason to give the shitty, cop-out ending we got. Oh, he's in a loop. Lovely. But THIS time he's got the Horn of Eld! Hey asshole, maybe tell me that story? Maybe that's the story I wanted and thought I had signed up for before the zero hour bait and switch? Oh, I get it. The poem is the true ending of the story.
Years later that last book still angers up my blood. And then King later went back to write another book into the middle of the series. Asshole.
He gets there, he blows the horn, and he gets off the karmic wheel. The end.
Years later that last book still angers up my blood. And then King later went back to write another book into the middle of the series. Asshole.
Arden
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It was a good book, too (The Wind Through the Keyhole). I don't think The Dark Tower is over yet, so don't be so salty. King has hinted as much, anyway.
Chukzombi
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its over for me, i didnt even bother with that new book.that story could have easily ended with roland taking down the CK and the dark tower collapsing and the world without artificial bonds heals itself thus giving roland a noble death and us a satisfying if downer ending.
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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He's just not great at endings. I thought Doctor Sleep was pretty decent overall but when it came to be the final confrontation all the bad guys got jobbed out immediately and it was all around anti-climatic. I was envisioning this really massive event where Rose the Hat goes into Danny's mind and flips open all the boxes in his head that he had imprisoned the different ghosts of the Overlook and he has to confront and defeat each of them again in a massive psychic construct of the hotel itself before the dark secret is revealed that his father too had turned into a malicious poltergeist that he had to lock up in his head just like the others. His father was beyond redemption when he was six but maybe it's not too late! Maybe Abra, being younger and massively powerful, takes control of the psychic consciousness that is the Overlook and turns it against the vampire horde. Maybe she communicates with it and strikes a deal. The hotel is family business, after all. Something big, goddamn it.
His books are long enough that I have plenty of time to make guesses as to what is going to happen and unfortunately King often disappoints me when we get to the final few chapters. Not always and not even the majority but enough to be frustrating.
His books are long enough that I have plenty of time to make guesses as to what is going to happen and unfortunately King often disappoints me when we get to the final few chapters. Not always and not even the majority but enough to be frustrating.
Arden
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I suppose I can understand that. But Wind was basically done in the exact same vein as the story of Roland and Susan in Wizard and I think King is at his best when telling stories like that. It didn't disappoint, either.
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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No one else but King could get away with introducing a character like Patrick Danville at the very very end of a seven book epic through a magic door and having him immediately job out the primary antagonist of not only that series but other books. Hey, this kid who gets like two lines in a different book that the main character of this book has dubbed "thin" (and thus fictional even from the perspective of our heroes) just straight up erases the villain. Before that Randall Flag has to do the J.O.B to Mordred to give him cred (another wasted villain built up over several books) and then Mordred goes on to job to Roland almost immediately after.
The Dark Tower is like this amazing road trip of discovery that takes you all across the country that ends at a truck stop in Duluth. Was this really where we were headed the entire time?
edit - I love the ending to Salem's Lot. The few survivors there are go back to the town during high noon and burn the whole thing to the motherfucking ground.
The Dark Tower is like this amazing road trip of discovery that takes you all across the country that ends at a truck stop in Duluth. Was this really where we were headed the entire time?
edit - I love the ending to Salem's Lot. The few survivors there are go back to the town during high noon and burn the whole thing to the motherfucking ground.