I enjoyed The Wind Through the Keyhole. It's a story (the titular tale) within a story (a tale of Roland's younger days, post-Mejis) within another story (the main tale of the ka-tet's journey). It'll all make sense when you read it. :)
As for the last three DT books, I'm probably in the minority here, but I liked all of them, especially when I considered the story as a whole. Even the more meta parts where King appears made sense (to me, at least) because of the surreal quality of the story. There were only a couple of parts that were a bit of a letdown, which seems to be the case for most people: the demise of Walter and the Crimson King's defeat (more so the latter; although Walter's demise was sort of lackluster, it was still oddly appropriate to me). Both were pretty anticlimactic, especially with everything that came before. And the ending definitely threw me for a loop my first time through - so much so, I had to read that part one or two more times lol. The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I felt the end was fitting for the overall story. After a while, I thought, Of course. That's really the only way it could've ended. King told us over and over again "Ka is a wheel." It was bittersweet to me. I really felt for Roland and all he'd been through (and all he'd have to go through again), but was hopeful that maybe next time he'd get it right.
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Tothedeath
9 years ago
When I was near the end of book 7 I started having this really strong desire to start reading the first book once again immediately after finishing the last one. The closer I got to the end, the more I thought about the beginning of the series, so when I finally read the last pages everything felt so surreal. I couldn't believe it. I instantly forgave Stephen King for every aspect of the last two books that I didn't like. I will never forget that feeling.
Maybe I can even understand the bad parts of the story as another meta-element. Just as Roland has the horn in the next cycle and hopefully succeeds in his mission, maybe Stephen King would write the perfect last three books
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sugrnspyce4
9 years ago
Ha - that's definitely possible. I felt the exact same way. That's probably why I end up reading the entire series once a year. Even after several journeys to the Tower, I'm still finding interesting little details I missed before. So many clues and so much foreshadowing. I don't think anybody could discover it all in one reading.
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