The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole

I'm mixing things up a bit. Stephen King spent more than thirty years writing the seven books that constitute his Dark Tower series, going in chronological order and wrapping things up in 2004. But then in 2012 he released this little 400-page nugget taking place between the fourth and fifth books. I guess technically that makes this the fifth book, and the old fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, the sixth book - and I guess the whole series is now eight books long - but it's so much easier and cleaner just to treat The Wind Through The Keyhole as an addendum to the series rather than a key component. Because really, that's what this is. Sure, it's 386 pages long, but only about 50 of those deal with Roland and his ka-tet between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. Another 135 dealt with Roland's past, and the final 200 or so - the majority of the novel - were spent on a Mid-World fairy tale of sorts. More on all this shortly; it's time for bullets!

• So first of all, yeah, this really wasn't a Dark Tower book. If I'm being cynical - and when it comes to Stephen King, I always am - then I'm accusing King of coming up with a so-so fantasy novella, then deciding to set it in Mid-World and frame it with Dark Tower characters in order to appeal to a wider audience. And it worked! Within weeks of the book's release, all three blog members who'd read the series had also read the book and made their posts. Quickest "Hall of Fame" entrant we've ever had.
• The structure of the book was that of a story within a story within a story. Nested stories are a fine format to use, but I've never personally been a fan, for whatever reason. A small tale or character history told amid a sprawling epic is fine, but when the bulk of the story you're telling is essentially about someone telling a story, why bother with the framing device? Wait, I'll stop and let "me back in 2010 reviewing The Turn of the Screw" take over: "...And just like that, the group of people I had come to appreciate had vanished away as nothing more than some kind of meaningless prologue. I've already said that I've already said this, and in fact I said it rather recently when reviewing another turn-of-the-century novella (Heart of Darkness), but what the fuck is up with this story-within-a-story bullshit? There are many instances in literature and storytelling where the double-layered story works well as a plot device, but you can't just bookend a story irrelevantly with a second narrator who tells the tale. That's just bad writing!" Wow! Now I've already said that I've already said that I've already said it!
• Having copied and pasted all of that, I was actually okay with the way Stephen King went about his business here. I still think a pure Roland backstory would have been more germane to The Dark Tower all in all, but the combination of this book's three nested parts did help with the world-building and characterization I've long accused the series of lacking.
• Stephen King would prefer that you call this book - brace yourselves - The Dark Tower IV.5. Just tossing decimals after Roman numerals like it's not a heinous abuse of two distinct numbering systems. Please, if we must assign a number between four and five to this, can we go with The Dark Tower IVS instead? I mean, come on, Stephen. The Romans had ways of saying "and a half." Use Google.
• Let's start in the middle and work our way outward. The Mid-World fairy tale, the "Wind Through the Keyhole" story at the center of The Wind Through the Keyhole - did I like it? Meh. It was fine, and in its brevity alone it was more tolerable than all kinds of King's work I've read. But I can't say I'll remember it for its plot, its characters, or anything else about it. At best, it serves to build Mid-World's history and lore, which is nice, but has nothing to do with our characters or their quest to reach the Dark Tower.
• The middle layer was easily my favorite. Young Roland, fresh off the dual tragedies that he endured in Wizard and Glass, is sent on a quest by his father to a town plagued by a shapeshifting murderer. It's the type of stuff King excels at - small town settings, creepy vibes, gory deaths. But most of all I loved that Roland narrated this portion in the first person. Finally, at long last, we're getting the series protagonist's thoughts straight from his own mouth. One minor grievance I had with the Wizard and Glass flashback was that Roland was ostensibly the narrator, yet the events were told in the third person and from multiple points of view. Like, how does Roland know what Rhea of the Coos was doing in her little witch hut before he even arrived in that town? Because that's where his own flashback opens up. A nitpick, sure, but my larger point is that King's doing it right this time around. Hooray!
• The outermost shell of the story just involves the ka-tet taking shelter from a vicious storm that sounds exactly like the climactic super-freeze from The Day After Tomorrow. King calls the storm a "starkblast," which is a reference to the Starks and their house words - "Winter is coming" - from A Song of Ice and Fire. Neat! As a framing device around a framing device, this story layer was somewhat barren of content, but it was still nice just to see the characters interacting and working together to save one another's bacon. I imagine that for King and his long time readers there was a nice nostalgic aspect at play here, but even without that added emotional pang, I enjoyed the whole ordeal just fine.
• Sween wondered in his post if reading the series in new chronological order - like I am - would leave readers frustrated by back-to-back flashback books, wishing the plot would churn forward toward the Dark Tower again. I can only speak for myself, but, honestly? Not at all! Roland's Dark Tower quest has always been ill-defined and non-exciting to me; it's the deeper character moments that I've enjoyed so far, and since these last two books were full of them, I'm enjoying the series now more than I was at any point during the first three books. But that's just me!
• Trev asked in his post if the Covenant Man in the fairy tale was supposed to be the same "Man in Black" from Roland's world. Sween didn't think so, but I do - mostly because he leaves a note for Young Tim signed "RF/MB," which I took to stand for "Randall Flagg/Marten Broadcloak," which are both aliases for the Man in Black, unless I've missed something. I dunno. I'm not sure what it would even entail if the Covenant Man was the Man in Black. That guy has always been an enigma to me, and I have no idea how many people he is at this point, or what extent his powers have, or what his intentions are, or whether or not he wants Roland to make it to the Dark Tower, or even whether or not he's still alive. I blame the unprecedented shittiness of The Gunslinger for all of this. Fuck that book.
• Marissa said in her post that she liked the throckens in this book. I thought those were just billy-bumblers! Are they not?
• Look at me, guys, discussing the series with you all, two and a half years after you've all finished it. Isn't the blog great?

And that's a wrap. Long post! I'll be back soon enough, I'm sure, but that's enough Stephen King for me in 2014. The adventure continues a few months from now!

The Sopranos: Season Five

Five seasons in, and I'm still torn on how I feel about The Sopranos. There is a lot to praise here, especially James Gandolfini's excellent performance as mob boss Tony Soprano- maybe the greatest character in television history; there are so many layers to the guy that you keep going back and forth between loving and hating him. The supporting characters and their actors are great, the writing is really good, but I still can't help but feel a bit underwhelmed anyway due to the immense hype I know this show once generated. This was the cultural phenomenon that people went crazy for? Some shows just beg for viewing parties and week-long discussions between episodes- Lost, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad; but watching The Sopranos reminded me of how I watch Mad Men- I always enjoy it, but when an episode ends I'm rarely begging for more. I guess it's just not trying to be that type of show, and it's tough to say "that type" of show even existed before The Sopranos aside from cult hits like Twin Peaks or something. Still though we're in the home stretch- I've heard varying reports on whether the final split season was as good as the others, so we'll see in due time. Oh yeah one last thing, Steve Buscemi shows up this season as a recently-released-from-prison cousin of Tony's who had never been mentioned before, and I was surprised how easily he fit in with the rest of the cast and how well that decision worked. Much better than anything I've seen on Boardwalk Empire! Next up for me will be The Wire's final season.

Harmontown

Seeing Stan's post about Community's fifth season, I thought I should also shed some light on another Community-related topic: a documentary following the show's creator (Dan Harmon) as he goes on a nation-wide tour with his podcast, Harmontown, following him shortly after being fired from the fourth season.

First off, I'm a big podcast listener. Whether it be while riding the El, walking around the city, working, jogging, or whatever, I always enjoying tuning out while tuning in to my favorite shows. A few months ago I stumbled onto Dan Harmon's unscripted podcast where he just shoots the shit with a few of his friends on stage in front of a live audience. The majority of his shows involve him doing Q&A with fans, freestyle rapping that normally falls back on the refrain of Dan fucking people's mama, him ranting about everything he hates/loves in life, and each episode closes with a game of D&D -- great stuff! No structure or real purpose, but the show is entertaining as all hell. As I worked my way back through episodes of  the podcast (the show has only been running for a little over two years now), I stumbled up upon a series of episodes dedicated to the Harmontown tour. Basically it was the podcast tapings of what was being filmed for the documentary that was released to VOD last month. 

Without rambling any longer I'll get to the punch: Was the documentary any good? Yes, it was. Was it anything like the podcast? Nope. Not really. The podcast revolves around hearing the anecdotes of an -- often times drunk -- Hollywood creative as he mingles with fans and really just blabs about whatever is on his mind. The documentary, though, explores Dan Harmon, himself. The several rise and falls of his career. His relationships. And, a very candid look at a dude with many faults who ultimately just wants to make people laugh. 

One of the best parts of the documentary was how naked it made Harmon look. The film was directed by Neil Berkeley -- neither a friend or foe of the subject material -- was a able to give a completely fresh and unbiased look at the Hollywood writer. Something that Harmon would praise in his podcast often saying, "This is my podcast, but it's your movie." Giving Berkeley final cut and ultimate say in what goes in the movie, which definitely shows. All this means is that film is not quite so flattering to Harmon. (Then again, neither is the podcast.) It shows him drinking (a lot), slacking off on writing scripts that are long, long overdue with various studios, and just cursing up a storm while flailing around on stage in front of a audience with no real material prepared. 

At it's heart, you realize it's just a guy, no matter how difficult he is to work with or how brash he can sound at times, who just wants to make people smile and laugh with his work. For anyone who's a fan of Community, I would give the podcast a listen. And if the podcast seems to float your boat... give this documentary and watch and see what it is to be a "Harmon-ite". 

Community: Season 5

The history of Community is just unbelievable at this point. Consider that at this point it has lost three of its seven lead actors, fired its own creator, put forth an entire fourth season that had its own cult turning on the show, brought back the very same creator that had just been fired a year ago, been canceled, and been brought back from cancelation by a search engine. And we're only five seasons in!

Season 5 marked the return of Dan Harmon and the departure of both Chevy Chase and Donald Glover. In just thirteen episodes, the crew needed to address both departures, "reboot" the series to an extent - or at least bring back all the characters who ostensibly graduated back at the end of Season 4. Considering both the task at hand and the difficult state in which the show and characters had been left, this was an impressive run to say the least! Not "Season 2" good, but then, how many great comedies are still "Season 2" good by Season 5? Not many, that's how many, and even fewer that have gone through all the shit Community has.

Look, against all odds, this thing is coming back in a few months for a sixth season. On Yahoo! Ratings-wise, it shouldn't have lasted more than two. The hashtag "six seasons and a movie" became a wishful rallying cry when Season 3 looked to be the end of the road. And now we're only a movie away from making that dream a reality. Wow! Who'd'a thunk it?

For real though, I don't even need a movie. I'm just glad that Community didn't end after four seasons, and, in particular, didn't end after that fourth season.

South Park: Season 17

Another up and down season of South Park, this one with more misses than hits. But rather than spend a few paragraphs talking about the episodes that worked here and the ones that didn't, I want to focus on a big change in the way this season was produced.

In the very early days of South Park, episodes took a long time to create. This is because they were made with computer software from the late 1990s. The first season led off with six straight weekly episodes, then slowed to a pace of one new episode a month for a little while before taking a two-month break and returning with the final four episodes in four weeks. The second season saw more of the same herky-jerky release schedule, with one uninterrupted run of six episodes amid a year of sporadic airings. Only by the fourth season were all of the episodes grouped into lengthy and consistent runs. Sometimes there were three a year and sometimes only two. By Season 8, the show's schedule finally fell into a consistent pattern it would hold for close to a decade: seven consecutive episodes in the spring and then seven more in the fall.

In recent years when the show seemed to struggle, I often blamed its production schedule. The crew works close to twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week during runs, and it's well known that most episodes are conceptualized on Thursday and then created from scratch in just six days. It's no wonder they've run dry on creative juices sometimes. My recommendation into the empty void of the Internet was that South Park should go back to three-part seasons, with month-long runs of four or five episodes at most. They've done this in the past, after all. Instead, starting here with Season 17, South Park has shifted in the other direction, to one extended run of ten episodes, once a year, in the fall. I'm not sure how I feel about this. In addition to cutting seasons by four episodes, the decision now only extends the runs by three weeks, increasing all that burn out potential. The crew also gets two weeks off during the ten-episode run, making the entire season a twelve-week affair, so maybe that's a better situation for them than seven consecutive weeks was. I don't know.

All that was pretty boring, I'm sure, but it beats reading me rant about the lacking quality in episodes about emo kids and Yo Gabba Gabba!, right?

Parks and Recreation: Season 6

Parks and Recreation is a great show, and it's long been a personal favorite of mine. With those disclaimers out of the way, I've got to say, this really felt like the season where it fell into the trappings of diminishing returns. So many character arcs now feel complete. Ann and Chris are gone. April and Andy remain married and childless. Jerry came back from retirement and turned into Larry. Tom's finally a successful business "mogul" of sorts. And the legend of Ron Swanson can't grow any larger without feeling like self-parody. And Ben and Leslie are still perfectly happily married and by the season's end they've got themselves some triplets. Actually, the season's biggest weakness may have been Leslie herself, who too often took the role of the antagonist in whatever weekly low-stakes conflict the writers had cooked up.

Even before this season wrapped up, it was known that the next one would be Parks and Recreation's last. I approve of this decision, as I'm always more interested in seeing a TV series go out on top - or at least its own terms - than to fade into irrelevance or obscurity. Parks and Recreation has already made an interesting decision with regard to its endgame, jumping forward three years to 2017 in the Season 6 finale. I'm excited but nervous about this. On one hand, as I mentioned above, this season felt like it had hit diminishing returns and so many characters seemed to have no more growing to do, so maybe by jumping forward three years we'll have a slew of interesting final season story possibilities that we just weren't going to have otherwise. On the other, a season full of bad "short term future" jokes about iPhone 7s and PlayStation 5s could really hamper this show's legacy. It's pretty easy to be very wrong on plenty of predictions, especially if they're mostly made jokingly. I'd like to be able to rewatch this whole thing in five years, for instance, and not be shaking my head in 2019 at woefully off-base jokes made about 2017 in 2014. Does that make sense? Anyway, I trust everyone responsible for making Parks and Recreation to pull this off just fine, but still, I'll feel better once I see it.

Silent Hill: Revelation

Good god what a piece of crap.

This is the second movie in the Silent Hill film franchise... and I'm going to do my best to make what little sense I can from it. 

First off, anyone play the games? I only played the second one. From what I could make of the plot, some dude arrives to the town of Silent Hill (a fictional place in the northeast of America) based on a letter he received from his dead wife. As you progress through the game, you basically just see this town fade in-and-out of a "hell mode" where monsters come out to kill you. Why is the town like this? Honestly, I cannot recall. I just assumed this place was hell or something. There were various endings to try and explain things -- one even showing a dog behind a set of computers running the show -- but I don't think an honest ending really mattered in the game. It was enough to just explore creepy, desolate streets layered in fog and mystery. I mean, did there have to be any more than that? Apparently there did.

Later I saw the first movie -- still confusing as fuck -- but provides some context to the story that was actually established in the first game. Here's the low-down, which is kind of necessary to understand before I even begin to unpack the second film (SPOILERS): So there's this small, ultra-religious town where a young girl, who's bullied in school and has no friends, is raped by the school's janitor leading to her becoming pregnant. The town turns on the girl, citing it's evil to have a child out of wedlock, and attempts to burn her at the stake. Things go wrong and the girl falls free of the fire before she could die (just before) and a few non-crazy people smuggle her away to safety. With burns all over her body, the girl goes into this pain-fueled rage that causes her soul to split into two parts: one good and one evil. Both parts of the soul taking on the manifestation of a little girl; the good girl is taken away from Silent Hill to an orphanage (later to be adopted by Sean Bean) while the evil one chills in town conjuring demons from Hell to torment any passersby. 

That's the backstory on Silent Hill -- again, from what I could loosely grasp at.

Here we come to this film -- the sequel to a film we never really needed to being with. Remember that good little girl that was adopted by Sean Bean? We follow the events of the first film (where she's a little girl and her mom takes her into Silent Hill only to recuse her from it), she's now a teenager and on the road with dear old dad apparently evading cult members from Silent Hill (mind you... not the demons, but the super religious townsfolk that have somehow survive the horrors their town). Upon entering a new city and a new school, the girl makes friends with Kit Harington (yeah... there are two GoT stars in this film!) who she's forced to flee the school with once she learns that the cult has caught her father. Learning that her father has been dragged back to Silent Hill, she faces her fears and returns to the place with her evil other half still lives. (And her mother... but we conveniently forget that.) 

Now, I think the title refers to the fact that our main character (which I haven't referred to her by name yet because she uses several fake names -- used while on the run with pa -- and I could never keep it straight what her actual name is... so I call her girl!) who has to re-learn the horrible truth of Silent Hill (the same shit her mother discovers in the first film when she's just a kid) then has the revelation that the evil is her other half. 

By the way, this is her evil other half. The source of insurmountable hatred and destruction looks like Snoopy. 

Casting aside that the scary evil source of Silent Hill looks like a kid in a trick-or-treat costume, the whole second film is essentially just a repeat of information found in the first movie only our main character is just a few years older and is able to take on this shit herself. Still... Meh...

We also have other more common problems outside just a redundant and unnecessarily complicated story. There's shitty acting, shitty dialogue, and relatively non-scary, non-sensical monsters.

A spider, mannequin monster... This was a thing.

All-in-all, the film is boring. And, although stupid, just not stupid enough for me really find enjoyment in it. Much like the eerie fog covering the town of Silent Hill, the movie exists in this grey banality where I found myself just not giving a shit about what happened to the characters.

What does happen to them?

Well the girl and John Snow rescue Sean Bean after the girl discovers she can control aspects of the Silent Hill evil. Protected by Pyramid Head (perhaps the only cool thing left in the film) who battles the head of the cult, Carrie-Anne Moss, and defeats her. As the group of survivors go to leave the town, Sean Bean stops, remembers his wife is technically still trapped somewhere in the town from events in the first film all those years ago. So he ditches his daughter (???) and heads back into the fog unarmed and injured leaving the two kids to drive off out of sight. Yup... That all totally makes sense. Surprisingly, this is probably one of the very few roles Sean Bean has played where he's yet to die. Perhaps that will happen in a potential sequel. 

You see... the film ends with a prison bus and two police cruisers driving into the fog of Silent Hill and our heroes leave for safety. Another sequel? God, I hope not. 

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

A couple years back, I saw Oldboy, a South Korean film from 2003. It ended up being the best movie I saw in 2012. I later learned that its director, Park Chan-wook, made two other movies in the early 2000s and that together the three are known as the The Vengeance Trilogy. Though they share no common characters or events, all three films share the same thematic focus of, well, revenge. Here's the first film in the "trilogy." Brace yourselves, because it's downright harrowing.

A deaf and mute man - Ryu - learns that his sister needs a kidney transplant. He isn't a match to donate, and once he gets laid off from his shitty factory job, he can no longer afford to bump her up the transport recipient list. Instead Ryu explores the black market, where he cuts a deal; he'll donate his own kidney, along with his bulk savings of ten million won (about $928 in 2014 according to Google) in exchange for a matching kidney for his sister. Lo and behold, he's double-crossed, and he wakes up from his surgery with no kidney and no money. Ironically enough, a donor for his sister has now been found; but Ryu's got no money to pay for the surgery. So he and his girlfriend concoct a scheme to kidnap his former employer's daughter and hold her ransom for the money. It appears to work! But once Ryu's sister catches wind of this, she kills herself so as not to be a burden. South Korea! So Ryu heads back to this riverbed they used to play in as kids, to bury his sister, with his ex-boss's kidnapped daughter in tow. She falls into the river, screaming for him, but deaf old Ryu can't hear her and she drowns.

That's about the halfway point. Pretty shitty so far, huh? So now Ryu takes it upon himself to go take out the organ dealers who fucked him over in the first place. Meanwhile the dead girl's father takes it upon himself to find out who kidnapped his daughter and exact his own revenge. What follows is an intense, gory, violent hour of two men on motivated rampages. I absolutely loved it.

Oldboy was a better movie, but Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was more visually effective with its punches, opting for tightly focused and deliberately-paced justice killings where Oldboy had a much more action-movie-choreographed pattern of violence. And by the way, please excuse the silly title; the original Korean title translates to something like "Vengeance is Mine," which although generic is far more adequate; after all, which of our two angry vengeance killers is the titular "Mr. Vengeance?"

I know foreign films aren't for everyone, but honestly, there's so little dialogue in this one that it's great even if you're turned off by subtitles or voiceover dubs. Check this out. Or, give Oldboy a try. Soon enough I'll get to the third movie in the trilogy, Lady Vengeance. That one's original title translates to "Kind-hearted Gemun-ja," so your guess is as good as mine for now.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

About a week or two ago, the blog's resident good deals watchdog gave me the heads up that this game was down to twenty bucks on Amazon. (Thanks, Keith!) It's a game I've been interested in a long time now; I'm a big South Park fan and I really like turn-based RPGs. And lo and behold, I loved this game!

Trev and Keith have already hit on most of what you need to know here; the game is a bit glitchy and very easy, but it's hilarious and a ton of fun. It's too bad that, as Keith said, you're limited to using just one supporting party member at a time. Still, because the game is so easy and so much fun to play, it's absolutely worth it to do every side quest and really shoot for 100% completion. I didn't quite get there - at some point, collecting every piece of equipment in the game just turns into a nearly endless fetch quest - but this was a game that deserved to have all its corners explored and enjoyed.

Those corners included not just the town of South Park, but also alien spaceships, sewers, and "the Kingdom of the North" - Canada, rendered in 8-bit, where the background music is a chiptune rendition of "O Canada" played on a loop. And in addition to aliens and sewer rats and Canadians, you fight the likes of Al Gore, ManBearPig, Underpants Gnomes, "Mongorians," gingers, Nazi zombies, aborted fetuses, sixth graders, and the myriad of creatures in Mr. Slave's ass. Typical South Park, through and through.

All in all, this was a great game. It wasn't the most technically impressive RPG I've seen in a while, but it was a blast to play. Even the fetch quests were a treat. Any fan of the show with an Xbox 360 or PS3 would do well to give this one a shot.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

And with that, I'm halfway through the Dark Tower series. This is the twenty-first blog post on the franchise if I've counted correctly, easily outnumbering any other series to date. But this is just the second post on Wizard and Glass, a pivotal center-point for the story of Roland and his ka-tet and their quest to reach the Dark Tower. It is a book in which, paradoxically, almost nothing happens to Roland and his ka-tet with regard to their quest for the Dark Tower. And not due to brevity - this is the longest Dark Tower book yet, clocking in with a word count of 264,000. In the rest of the series, only the final installment is longer.

I'll stop being coy; the reason this book matters even without advancing the plot at hand very much is that it is almost entirely a flashback. The ka-tet resolves the cliffhanger from The Waste Lands - where a demonic train is hellbent on killing them all unless they can satisfy it with good riddles - before stumbling out into what appears to be Stephen King's version of Kansas from The Stand. They set out and follow I-70... eastward? Westward? It doesn't matter; more on this later. Regardless, they eventually come across something called a thinny, and that prompts the usually tight-lipped and guarded Roland to share a great big long story from his past. That flashback takes up the vast majority of the book. It's an odd choice by King, and a daring one, but one I'm glad he made. I've complained throughout this series that I just can't get all that invested in the vague goals of an obscure protagonist in an unfamiliar world. So this right here, a several-hundred-page helping of pure  Roland background story, was Stephen King's chance to rope me all the way in for the back nine.

Before I go any further, though, it's time for a collaborative exercise between bloggers. Sween told me about a week ago, when I was halfway through this book, that the flashback had these three purposes:

1. To flesh out Roland's character
2. To explain the thinny
3. To teach the ka-tet a lesson

If this is the case - and granted, these are Sween's words, and not a statement of intent made directly by King himself - then perhaps I can best gauge the extent to which the book succeeds by visiting each of these in order. Here we go.

1. Flesh out Roland's character: Check.

Over 500 of these 700 pages are spent on Roland's past, detailing his relationships with his original ka-tet and also with his first (and perhaps only?) love, Susan. Here at last was all that character definition I've been waiting for. I've still got plenty of questions about Roland and his quest, but I've finally bought into the protagonist of the series. This is no small feat, as I was openly question why I should be rooting for him after reading the first book, in which Roland murders an entire town's population and leaves a little boy to die so that he can continue obsessively stalking someone. Yeah, Roland, it turns out, is pretty quiet and serious because he's been through a great deal of shit. He loved, and he lost. And he blames himself for it. And then he accidentally kills his mom. None of this is shocking or anything, but it's nice to have this, going forward. I would have liked to find out what became of his original ka-tet, but perhaps that's a story for another book in the series.

2. Explain the thinny: Check.

Granted, this was explained in a matter of pages. We didn't need a great big flashback to learn that thinnies are places where "reality is eroding away." They'll lure you in despite giving off terrible high-pitched whining noises. Don't go near them. Maybe force your enemies to do so instead. Also there are a lot more thinnies in the present day because the Dark Tower is failing to hold all the different worlds at bay from each other and realities are beginning to collapse or meld into each other, I think.

3. Teach the ka-tet a lesson: Unknown.

This one's a puzzler for me. It could just be that I'm leaning too literally on Sweeney's casual G-chat line, but I think I'm missing something. (Some spoilers follow, for anyone who cares.) Is it that the ka-tet learns what Roland has sacrificed and will sacrifice in order to reach the Dark Tower? That seems to fall more under fleshing out the guy's character. The group definitely finds themselves completely united and bonded on a deeper level as the book ends, but beyond understanding Roland's particular circumstances a bit, I can't put a finger on what, specifically, they learned. Sweeney, care to help me out here?

Lastly, it's become a tradition for me to talk about these books in stray thought bullet form. The gist of my experience is contained above, but who am I to break with tradition? Onward!

• "Eastward? Westward? It doesn't matter," I said above, and that's because it's just plain impossible to put Stephen King's Mid-World on a map. Here's the consensus attempt to do so, as seen on the Internet. This image completely contradicts everything that was hammered home in the first book (where Gilead-to-Tull-to-the-Way-Station is "west") and also requires a ridiculous suspension of disbelief for the crew to end the second book just north of "The Doors" and start the third one near "Shardik's Lair." At least everything from that point forward seems to consist of a direct beeline for the Dark Tower; no map is needed from here on out to understand the geography of Roland's quest. (And honestly, none was needed once the third book began. I'm a bit late, but, good riddance!)
• In the book's afterword, Stephen King points out that twenty-six years had now elapsed since he'd begun writing The Dark Tower. It shows! I just re-read my post on The Gunslinger, and man, was I brutal in that one, just ripping on King's over-reliance on mystique and "telling, not showing." I still don't love King as a writer, but he's clearly learned a lot about how to tell a story and build a character in those twenty-six years. Good for him.
• In the same afterword: "I knew that Wizard and Glass meant doubling back to Roland's young days, and to his first love affair, and I was scared to death of that story. Suspense is relatively easy, at least for me; love is hard." Props to King - he described himself here perfectly. I know I've railed on his shortcomings a lot on this blog, but I'm not saying anything about the guy he wouldn't freely admit about himself, it seems. It's also interesting to me that he "knew" the fourth book needed to tell Roland's backstory.
• Let's zoom out for a moment and consider the picture at large. Through four books, I'm 625,000 words into The Dark Tower overall. The series in total is 1,300,000 words long. (This excludes The Wind Through the Keyhole.) So despite having four books down and three to go, it appears I'm actually less than halfway through King's saga. That's only enhanced by 500 pages of this fourth book being flashback-based. Although I've read plenty about the ka-tet, even more is still in store, apparently. Nice. I look forward to it, even though I've had my issues with this first half and most people suggest that the back half isn't even as good.
• Alright, this one has nothing to do with The Dark Tower but I went down a rabbit hole and here are some interesting comparisons. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is 473,000 words long, and that jumps to 565,000 when you include The Hobbit. Some of the longest well-known single novels out there, like Atlas Shrugged, Infinite Jest, and War and Peace, are around 575,000. Sources differ, but most peg the Bible - both testaments - at around 775,000 words. Harry Potter just cracks a million at 1,080,000, but you could cut either of the first two books entirely and still clear a million. A Song of Ice and Fire is already sitting at 1,770,000 words, and that's through just five books; if rumors that there could be eight books are to be believed, that thing could easily clear three million when all is said and done. You know, if all is ever said and done. And no one's done the hard counting, but estimates for Goosebumps and Animorphs, respectively, are 982,000 and 1,417,000. Imagine that! K.A. Applegate, putting more pen to paper for her magnum opus than Stephen King for his. So what if half that shit was ghostwritten? Also for whatever it's worth (nothing?) if you include all 42 Give Yourself Goosebumps books and six short story collections in addition to the 62 in the main series you get to 1,742,000. There's no way in hell I read all of those as a kid, but, guys, consider - R.L. Stine just may be among my top ten most-read authors. Wow!

That last one really got away from me. My apologies. Good night!