Read: The Dark Tower–“On Turtleback Lane”; “Reunion”; “The Devar-Tete”; “The Watcher”

As he nears the finish line King’s begun to directly address the reader more frequently. It reminds me of how at a certain point in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien started throwing in the occasional “and lo!” or “and behold!”, as though he himself was getting super-excited about what was going down and wanted to share that with us.

This reader is still surprised by how much crazy sci-fi/fantasy/horror stuff King’s firing at us all of a sudden. I should point out that all of it’s written in the usual King style and as such doesn’t constitute a return to the lean-and-mean style of the original Gunslinger, as I sort of wish it would. I just can’t help but feel there was another, much better Dark Tower series in some other world that kept playing in that prose playground. This, on the other hand, just feels like “Stephen King does Star Wars,” which is fun but not so different than what you’d expect from him. I think part of the reason I keep pulling for more shoot-outs and bloodshed like Roland and Eddie’s massacre of Jake’s pursuers is that they momentarily restore that no-nonsense feel to the story.

Two quick points:

1) What happened to LaMerk Industries? Looks like they’ve been dropped from the North Central Positronics/Sombra Corporation evil-conglomerate roster.

2) King’s mentioned the notion of evil being “outside” in several of his books, and now we learn what he means by that as Mordred contemplates Roland and his gang as they gather in a circle. It basically means that evil feels no connection with anyone else, and wants to destroy those connections because it resents that.

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