The ending in the tower was disappointing. After building it up for so long, it was almost as if he decided, “That van almost killed me. Screw this: I’ll wrapt it in a neat little package and call it good.”
My daughter asked me why Frodo and Sam didn’t just hitch a ride on an eagle, drop the ring in the crack of doom and they’re home for supper.
I suppose for the same reason King’s characters rarely ride in vehicles, e.g. if they just went through a door and there’s the Tower, kill the Crimson King, shows’s over.
hey, you could do that in the first chapter of the Gungslinger.
And that reminds me: his understanding of fireams is pathetic. And so forth and so on.
TV. Opie will screw this pooch.
Agreed. It seemed like King was in a hurry to get it over with. There was such a long gap between books 3 & 4 and another between 4 & 5. I don't think he ever wanted to finish the series, but felt he was obligated to do so.
I am not sure how they will handle book four, Wizard & Glass, since it predates the others. But on that book alone, King could have written a sequel. There is so much information that is missing between Roland's youth and his quest.
Oh, I disagree - I think the ending was perfectly appropriate. As the last Gunslinger in a dying world, Roland is destined to relive his past over and over and over, never finding what he seeks. All things follow the Beam, and Roland having to follow the Man in Black across the desert again is a dark, dark version of “Groundhog Day”. Someday, maybe, Roland will get it right. Until then, he’s still following the Beam in some parallel universe right now.