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Creating "true narrative magic" (The Washington Post) at every revelatory turn, Stephen King surpasses all expectation in the stunning final volume of his seven-part epic masterwork. Entwining stories and worlds from a vast and complex canvas, here is the conclusion readers have long awaited—breathtakingly imaginative, boldly visionary, and wholly entertaining.
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own endings and beginnings...and into a maelstrom of emotion, violence, and discovery.
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ISBN-10
0743254562
ISBN-13
978-0743254564
Print length
864 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Scribner
Publication date
October 31, 2005
Dimensions
5.5 x 1.8 x 8.38 inches
Item weight
2.2 pounds
ASIN :
B000FC294I
File size :
16907 KB
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"A fitting capstone to a uniquely American epic." -- The Washington Post
Chapter One
Callahan and the Vampires
ONE
Pere Don Callahan had once been the Catholic priest of a town, 'Salem's Lot had been its name, that no longer existed on any map. He didn't much care. Concepts such as reality had ceased to matter to him.
This onetime priest now held a heathen object in his hand, a scrimshaw turtle made of ivory. There was a nick in its beak and a scratch in the shape of a question mark on its back, but otherwise it was a beautiful thing.
Beautiful and powerful. He could feel the power in his hand like volts.
"How lovely it is," he whispered to the boy who stood with him. "Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isn't it?"
The boy was Jake Chambers, and he'd come a long loop in order to return almost to his starting-place here in Manhattan. "I don't know," he said. "She calls it the skoldpadda, and it may help us, but it can't kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there." He nodded toward the Dixie Pig, wondering if he meant Susannah or Mia when he used that all-purpose feminine pronoun she. Once he would have said it didn't matter because the two women were so tightly wound together. Now, however, he thought it did matter, or would soon.
"Will you?" Jake asked the Pere, meaning Will you stand. Will you fight. Will you kill.
"Oh yes," Callahan said calmly. He put the ivory turtle with its wise eyes and scratched back into his breast pocket with the extra shells for the gun he carried, then patted the cunningly made thing once to make sure it rode safely. "I'll shoot until the bullets are gone, and if I run out of bullets before they kill me, I'll club them with the ... the gun-butt."
The pause was so slight Jake didn't even notice it. But in that pause, the White spoke to Father Callahan. It was a force he knew of old, even in boyhood, although there had been a few years of bad faith along the way, years when his understanding of that elemental force had first grown dim and then become lost completely. But those days were gone, the White was his again, and he told God thankya.
Jake was nodding, saying something Callahan barely heard. And what Jake said didn't matter. What that other voice said - the voice of something
(Gan)
perhaps too great to be called God - did.
The boy must go on, the voice told him. Whatever happens here, however it falls, the boy must go on. Your part in the story is almost done. His is not.
They walked past a sign on a chrome post (CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION), Jake's special friend Oy trotting between them, his head up and his muzzle wreathed in its usual toothy grin. At the top of the steps, Jake reached into the woven sack Susannah-Mio had brought out of Calla Bryn Sturgis and grabbed two of the plates - the'Rizas. He tapped them together, nodded at the dull ringing sound, and then said: "Let's see yours."
Callahan lifted the Ruger Jake had brought out of Calla New York, and now back into it; life is a wheel and we all say thankya. For a moment the Pere held the Ruger's barrel beside his right cheek like a duelist. Then he touched his breast pocket, bulging with shells, and with the turtle. The skoldpadda.
Jake nodded. "Once we're in, we stay together. Always together, with Oy between. On three. And once we start, we never stop."
"Never stop."
"Right. Are you ready?"
"Yes. God's love on you, boy."
"And on you, Pere. One ... two ... three." Jake opened the door and together they went into the dim light and the sweet tangy smell of roasting meat.
TWO
Jake went to what he was sure would be his death remembering two things Roland Deschain, his true father, had said. Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years. And You needn't die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from beginning to end and ka is always served.
Jake Chambers surveyed the Dixie Pig with a satisfied mind.
THREE
Also with crystal clarity. His senses were so heightened that he could smell not just roasting flesh but the rosemary with which it had been rubbed; could hear not only the calm rhythm of his breath but the tidal murmur of his blood climbing brainward on one side of his neck and descending heartward on the other.
He also remembered Roland's saying that even the shortest battle, from first shot to final falling body, seemed long to those taking part. Time grew elastic; stretched to the point of vanishment. Jake had nodded as if he understood, although he hadn't.
Now he did.
His first thought was that there were too many of them - far, far too many. He put their number at close to a hundred, the majority certainly of the sort Pere Callahan had referred to as "low men." (Some were low women, but Jake had no doubt the principle was the same.) Scattered among them, all less fleshy than the low folken and some as slender as fencing weapons, their complexions ashy and their bodies surrounded in dim blue auras, were what had to be vampires.
Oy stood at Jake's heel, his small, foxy face stern, whining low in his throat.
That smell of cooking meat wafting through the air was not pork.
FOUR
Ten feet between us any time we have ten feet to give, Pere - so Jake had said out on the sidewalk, and even as they approached the maitre d's platform, Callahan was drifting to Jake's right, putting the required distance between them.
Jake had also told him to scream as loud as he could for as long as he could, and Callahan was opening his mouth to begin doing just that when the voice of the White spoke up inside again. Only one word, but it was enough.
Skoldpadda, it said.
Callahan was still holding the Ruger up by his right cheek. Now he dipped into his breast pocket with his left hand. His awareness of the scene before him wasn't as hyper-alert as his young companion's, but he saw a great deal: the orangey-crimson electric flambeaux on the walls, the candles on each table immured in glass containers of a brighter, Halloweenish orange, the gleaming napkins. To the left of the dining room was a tapestry showing knights and their ladies sitting at a long banquet table. There was a sense in here - Callahan wasn't sure exactly what provoked it, the various tells and stimuli were too subtle - of people just resettling themselves after some bit of excitement: a small kitchen fire, say, or an automobile accident on the street.
Or a lady having a baby, Callahan thought as he closed his hand on the Turtle. That's always good for a little pause between the appetizer and the entree.
"Now come Gilead's ka-mais!" shouted an excited, nervous voice. Not a human one, of that Callahan was almost positive. It was too buzzy to be human. Callahan saw what appeared to be some sort of monstrous bird-human hybrid standing at the far end of the room. It wore straight-leg jeans and a plain white shirt, but the head rising from that shirt was painted with sleek feathers of dark yellow. Its eyes looked like drops of liquid tar.
"Get them!" this horridly ridiculous thing shouted, and brushed aside a napkin. Beneath it was some sort of weapon. Callahan supposed it was a gun, but it looked like the sort you saw on Star Trek. What did they call them? Phasers? Stunners?
It didn't matter. Callahan had a far better weapon, and wanted to make sure they all saw it. He swept the place-settings and the glass container with the candle in it from the nearest table, then snatched away the tablecloth like a magician doing a trick. The last thing he wanted to do was to trip over a swatch of linen at the crucial moment. Then, with a nimbleness he wouldn't have believed even a week ago, he stepped onto one of the chairs and from the chair to the table-top. Once on the table, he lifted the skoldpadda with his fingers supporting the turtle's flat undershell, giving them all a good look at it.
I could croon something, he thought. Maybe "Moonlight Becomes You" or "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
At that point they had been inside the Dixie Pig for exactly thirty-four seconds.
FIVE
High school teachers faced with a large group of students in study hall or a school assembly will tell you that teenagers, even when freshly showered and groomed, reek of the hormones which their bodies are so busy manufacturing. Any group of people under stress emits a similar stink, and Jake, with his senses tuned to the most exquisite pitch, smelled it here. When they passed the maitre d's stand (Blackmail Central, his Dad liked to call such stations), the smell of the Dixie Pig's diners had been faint, the smell of people coming back to normal after some sort of dust-up. But when the bird-creature in the far corner shouted, Jake had smelled the patrons more strongly. It was a metallic aroma, enough like blood to incite his temper and his emotions. Yes, he saw Tweety Bird knock aside the napkin on his table; yes, he saw the weapon beneath; yes, he understood that Callahan, standing on the table, was an easy shot. That was of far less concern to Jake than the mobilizing weapon that was Tweety Bird's mouth. Jake was drawing back his right arm, meaning to fling the first of his nineteen plates and amputate the head in which that mouth resided, when Callahan raised the turtle.
It won't work, not in here, Jake thought, but even before the idea had been completely articulated in his mind, he understood it was working. He knew by the smell of them. The aggressiveness went out of it. And the few who had begun to rise from their tables - the red holes in the foreheads of the low people gaping, the blue auras of the vampires seeming to pull in and intensify - sat back down again, and hard, as if they had suddenly lost command of their muscles.
"Get them, those are the ones Sayre ..." Then Tweety stopped talking. His left hand - if you could call such an ugly talon a hand - touched the butt of his high-tech gun and then fell away. The brilliance seemed to leave his eyes. "They're the ones Sayre ... S-S-Sayre ..." Another pause. Then the bird-thing said, "Oh sai, what is the lovely thing that you hold?"
"You know what it is," Callahan said. Jake was moving and Callahan, mindful of what the boy gunslinger had told him outside - Make sure that every time I look on my right, I see your face - stepped back down from the table to move with him, still holding the turtle high. He could almost taste the room's silence, but -
But there was another room. Rough laughter and hoarse, carousing yells - a party from the sound of it, and close by. On the left. From behind the tapestry showing the knights and their ladies at dinner. Something going on back there, Callahan thought, and probably not Elks'Poker Night.
He heard Oy breathing fast and low through his perpetual grin, a perfect little engine. And something else. A harsh rattling sound with a low and rapid clicking beneath. The combination set Callahan's teeth on edge and made his skin feel cold. Something was hiding under the tables.
Oy saw the advancing insects first and froze like a dog on point, one paw raised and his snout thrust forward. For a moment the only part of him to move was the dark and velvety skin of his muzzle, first twitching back to reveal the clenched needles of his teeth, then relaxing to hide them, then twitching back again.
The bugs came on. Whatever they were, the Turtle Maturin upraised in the Pere's hand meant nothing to them. A fat guy wearing a tuxedo with plaid lapels spoke weakly, almost questioningly, to the bird-thing: "They weren't to come any further than here, Meiman, nor to leave. We were told ..."
Oy lunged forward, a growl coming through his clamped teeth. It was a decidedly un-Oylike sound, reminding Callahan of a comic-strip balloon: Arrrrrr!
"No!" Jake shouted, alarmed. "No, Oy!"
At the sound of the boy's shout, the yells and laughter from behind the tapestry abruptly ceased, as if the folken back there had suddenly become aware that something had changed in the front room.
Oy took no notice of Jake's cry. He crunched three of the bugs in rapid succession, the crackle of their breaking carapaces gruesomely clear in the new stillness. He made no attempt to eat them but simply tossed the corpses, each the size of a mouse, into the air with a snap of the neck and a grinning release of the jaws.
And the others retreated back under the tables.
He was made for this, Callahan thought. Perhaps once in the long-ago all bumblers were. Made for it the way some breeds of terrier are made to -
A hoarse shout from behind the tapestry interrupted these thoughts: "Humes!" one voice cried, and then a second: "Ka-humes!"
Callahan had an absurd impulse to yell Gesundheit!
Before he could yell that or anything else, Roland's voice suddenly filled his head.
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Stephen King
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.
King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King's books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald's Game and It.
King was the recipient of America's prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.
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Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5
12,576 global ratings
Solipso
5
Epic fantasy, blending horror, the supernatural, and adventure.
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2011
Verified Purchase
I have just completed Stephen King's series The Dark Tower. This is not a review for volume seven, THE DARK TOWER, alone. It is for all seven volumes of The Dark Tower series, which should be read as one story.
The Dark Tower, SK's magnum opus, is based on two fictional concepts: 1) Robert Browning's long poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (provided in full in the Appendix of the seventh volume, THE DARK TOWER) and 2) Sergio Leone's series of movies starring Clint Eastwood as a gunslinging drifter.
Is The Dark Tower worth reading? If you appreciate epic fantasy, yes. If you can tolerate occasional gaffs in writing style and convention, yes. If you despise horror, the supernatural, adventure, and action, and if you think such literature must be trashy pulp, no.
THE GUNSLINGER introduces you to Browning and Leone's dual concept and to Jake. THE DRAWING OF THE THREE sets the mode: that of contemporary fantasy with portals to parallel worlds. And it introduces Roland's partners. THE WASTE LANDS is a good adventure in a parallel world. WIZARD AND GLASS for the most part digresses into Roland's past, but it is a superb story of romantic adventure. WOLVES OF CALLA stops along the way to the Dark Tower as Roland and his partners rescue villagers and display their gunslinging. SONG OF SUSANNAH is a story of unusual pregnancy, blending action and horror in a setting of modern America. THE DARK TOWER brings the long quest to a conclusion, with tragedy but also with ample good cheer. (Do read THE DARK TOWER'S Coda.)
Though SK is one of contemporary humanity's more prolific, famous, and wealthy writers, do not confuse ability to sell with ability to write. I quail from the idea of every aspiring author trying to emulate him. For example he has a certain habit with concrete imagery. Stylists encourage concrete imagery, but SK gets carried away, at times making his prose feel phony and cheap. Mostly apparent in his descriptions of sex and violence, this habit pops up in other regards, as when he describes disease and excretion. In Writing Tools, Roy Peter Clark says, "Know when to back off and when to show off." With universally familiar phenomena like sex and excretion, we do not need detailed concrete images. Those are times to back off.
Also, SK likes to show off his skill with offbeat jargon in dialog and character viewpoints. But this makes too many of his characters appear alike, and unconvincing.
And SK can be a bit verbose. Especially in the later volumes of this series, he seems to follow Strunk & White's admonition "Delete unnecessary words" less than he follows the apocrypha "The thicker the book, the more impressive it is."
Though I consider SK an occasional, worthy digression, I prefer standard prose, polished by authors (and editors) who pay close attention to Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. I award The Dark Tower five stars because I do not consider flawless prose a requirement and because The Dark Tower is a good story.
Be it ever so, and I thankya.
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Anonymous
5
One of the best books I have ever read!!!
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2013
Verified Purchase
There is so much to say and yet, I am at a loss for words. Finishing this book, this series was amazing and saddening at the same time. I would say that this epic was life changing, but that is to strong of a statement, however, any other statement would not do this series justice. I couldn't stop thinking about these books, every time I set it down in the back of my mind was the constant thought of the tower. Will Roland finally make it to his life's goal and journey to the top of the tower? Will his Ka-tet continue to support his journey or will madness over take them all? This series was by far the best epic story line I have ever read, and that is saying something. I have read epics like Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, but this in my opinion is better on so many levels.
This book is the final chapter in the Tower series and one of the best books I have ever read. It is a very close second to my all time favorite book but almost ties for the #1 spot. Now it could partially be the fact that I have read six other books just to get to this point and it is my favorite because it is the end. In truth it is due to the fact that it is the longest book I have ever read at 1050 pages, and I flew through this as if it was a short novel. When I would read I wouldn't be able to put it down unless I fell asleep from exhaustion or work required me to. It was amazingly well written and suspenseful and engaging from the very beginning. There were parts that I wished were a bit longer but when I went back and realized it took several long chapters and a large page count I realized I fell into the story and got lost in the action.
There is so much I want to say about this but it will give away to much of what is in other books and I hate spoilers in reviews. All I can really do now is send out my heartfelt desire for everyone to read this whether they like it or not. It seems like it should be something everyone should read at some point in their lives much like most of the other epic stories out there. Love it or hate it, I loved it, and hope that if this review gets one more person to Journey with Roland and his Ka-tet to the Dark Tower I will have fulfilled a need to pass on the wonder of these books.
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General Zombie
5
Great ending to a fine series
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2004
Verified Purchase
Once again I seem to be in the minority, as I, as of this moment, consider The Dark Tower to be the best of the series, and probably the only one I'd give 5 stars.(all the rest would likely get 4) Hell, I tend to think the oft-maligned final three books in the series are superior to the first 4, so ya know that I'm not on the same page as most readers.(Though this is doubtless related to the fact that I first started reading this series just under 3 weeks ago rather than 20 years and haven't been forced to wait and wait) Furthermore, I even like the ending, more or less. I'm not gonna say that it's utterly satisfying, but it makes a good, if not terribly profound point. It's quite a sad ending really, but appropriate and with an obvious glimmer of hope. And, frankly, I find it hard to imagine that there could've been a completely satisfying ending, anyway. I find the people complaining about the ending amusing: most of them have obviously missed the point entirely. To suggest that the ending is 'not an ending' is ludicrous, and those who say that King's aside urging us to not to read the final few pages is him admitting that the ending is bad are, flatly, idiots.(POTENTIAL MAJOR SPOILER: I can't imagine anything someone could say that would be more of an admission that they don't get the point than that) Not that this makes much of a difference; those who hate the ending w/o understanding it would almost certainly hate it as much, if not more, if they did. Sadly, my conscience refuses to allow me to go into specifics, as it is impossible to do so w/o explicitly giving away what happens at the very end. If anyone out there really cares what I think(unlikely) or is angry or thinks I'm covering my lack of understanding by being vague(more likely) feel free to email me.
The ending aside, I just found this to be the most enjoyable novel of the series. Many people hate King's bringing himself into the series, and the referential nature of the latter novels, but I think's it's fun and, cleverly done too. It's hard for me to get too specific really, it's just fast-paced and highly readable, and the characters are as interesting and likable as ever. And though he doesn't do all that much, I find Mordred to be quite an interesting and disturbing character. (Certainly fairly pitiable as well) Many people have complained about the use seeming deus ex machina to help the ka-tet through there struggles, but I don't mind. The fact is, by this point it has been well established that ka(fate, more or less) controls the universe(s), and thus it would be almost inappropriate for fortune not to shine on them. Certainly, you are allowed not to like this notion, but it is a part of the series, so ought to expect it by now. And frankly, this just isn't as big as a part of this novel as people would have you believe. There's perhaps only one significant deus ex machina in the novel, but it's used to reinforce the theme of arts relationship to life and vice versa.( MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: Furthermore it's quite apparent that Patrick's arrival intended almost exclusively for thematic purposes: It's quite clear that the Crimson King, while powerful, is still essentially human, and King coulda just had Roland blow his head off. Of course, than people would complain that it was too easy-- ya can't please everyone. Nevertheless, this is a deus ex machine of theme, not plot) Beyond all this, I think this is the evocative and chilling of the series. I particularly like the arrival at the Crimson King's abandoned castle, Flagg/Walter's confrontation with Mordred and their nightmare flight from the enormous, tentacled and many-eyed beast. It's just a pleasure to read, as simple as that.
On a final, not very important note, the illustrations in this novel tend to be a bit of a mixed bag, as is true of the series in general. However, I think the picture of the Crimson King atop his throne of skulls is absolutely great. Even if you aren't interested in the book you should open it up and take a look at it.(it's on page 622, I believe.)
But really, reviewing this book is essentially pointless, from a practical standpoint. If you've read the first 6 you're almost certainly going to want to read this one, and if you don't you must be sufficiently disillusioned with the series that little anyway could say would change your mind. But I like it a lot.
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