—Donald Newlove
WHEN KINGS MET AT THE DARK TOWER
Will the long-awaited completion of Stephen King’s lifework, the seven-volume adventure/action/horror fantasy The Dark Tower, stir fans to love or sadness? The next-to-last volume, The Song of Susannah (2004), was less than exciting, and the final installment kicks off from the cliffhanger where Susannah ended, with the ka-tet split up into different towns and eras and the tripartite Susannah/Mia/Odetta in 1999 giving birth to Mordred and about to be drained and baked and eaten by dancing vampires in the Dixie Pig in New York. Just like a Saturday serial, Father Callahan, the billy-bumbler Oy, and Jake show up outta nowhere and blast vampires, monsters, and ratheads to bits, but not before these grotesques pile fatally onto Callahan despite his glowing crucifix held high. But now we must not be spoilers who give away plot points fans won’t want to know. Even so, we can’t not tell you about Mordred, who we know already from Song of Susannah is supposedly slated to kill Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger headed for the Dark Tower of the Crimson King, axis of time, space, and all universes. His monstrous growth being one of King’s greatest inventions, Mordred is born with a full set of teeth in his lower jaw, an erection as big as Susannah’s little finger, a red birthmark on his heel, and Roland’s electric-blue eyes. He at once tears off his mother’s breast, eats it, drains her blood (Mia’s, not Susannah’s), and turns into a fat eight-legged spider with baby Roland’s face and eyes on his back. This kid could eat a horse—and does. Mordred’s two fathers are Roland and the were-spider Crimson King, a paternity that feeds his physical supergrowth and vastly expanding and capable mind. That should suggest something about this whizbang bloodfest. Amusing turns feature Nigel, a comic Jeevesian butler-robot, knocked off from Asimov and Star Wars’s C-3PO, and the happy reappearance of all these characters’ creator, a sighing Stephen King, killed by a Dodge minivan herein but still around to tell the story. Many bizarre doorways to Mid-World and End-World and a short deck of new characters and extra-series characters such as Ted Brannigan from Hearts in Atlantis show up and integrate this series with several King books outside the Dark Tower series, so that King fashions for himself something of an all-inclusive lifework. As foretold, there’s bad news for nearly all the ka-tet. And for some fans there’ll be bad news when Kings meet at the Dark Tower and the horrormeister shunts aside the world-bursting galactic climax expected for a more formulaic end. Even King himself apologizes for falling short. Multidimensional fantasy-leaps and grisly horror balance long ho-hum stretches that calm the waters between the tsunamis. Big literary laurels or hack masterpiece? Oil paintings (not seen here) and page drawings by the great SF illustrator Michael Whalen help. But what can you say when your lead character is less expressive than Audie Murphy (not Clint Eastwood, as King hints)—and far less compelling than Frodo or Harry Potter?
—Donald NewlovePub Date: Sept. 21, 2004
ISBN: 1-880418-62-2
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Donald M. Grant/Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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