UNspoiled! The Dark Tower

Oh boy, everyone, I'm feeling really guilty about this episode. Miles and I just kind of tear into the book in this one, and the complaints and discussion start to eat their own tails. My apologies ahead of time if you were bored out of your skull, I think that both he and I were just so disappointed that we're belaboring our complaints because we're trying to convey the depth of our frustration.

Now, the one thing in this section that didn't disappoint was getting to see inside the workplace of the Breakers. That was a fascinating section, and also was a really clever one because it made us see the "villains" as rather ordinary people (obviously I use the term "people" loosely here) and not as some drooling monsters sitting at a table getting ready to eat a human baby. I really want to know how much these dudes know about what was going on at the Dixie Pig? And who were those elder monsters in the grand scheme?

But the thing that Miles and I both have a huge problem with is how Walter isn't even given any dignity after he's dead. There's no big, dramatic, emotional reveal to Roland that his arch-nemesis has kicked the bucket. No no no, instead Roland finds a fucking card in a fucking cave and he just knows that Walter is dead. And that is it. That's literally all we get.

Disappointing isn't even the word.

Anyway, hopefully next week we will stop being so angry. Thanks for listening!

Alright folks. Here's the deal.

Stephen King done fucked up. There, I said it.

You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. Maybe someday in the not-so-distant future I will look back at this moment and this post and chide myself for not having more faith. But, children, today is not that day.

Walter, The Man In Black, Flagg, whatever you want to call him, is dead. He died in a sad, pathetic way that was not worthy of him, to a foe who was also not worthy of him, and I'm extremely bummed out to see how King neutered a man who had been so very promising by turning his victories from other books into cheap tricks. Not only that, but he was compelling. I wanted to know more about him! And instead I get to spend the rest of the book with Mordred, whom I couldn't give less of a shit about.

Meanwhile, our crew of gunslingers is taken through an interdimensional doorway that is starting to "go bad", and it takes a few minutes for them to recover from the vomiting before they realize that they've been joined by an odd crew of misfits who all seemed to be expecting them. Turns out, these dudes are all Breakers who have defected from the Crimson King's grand plan. They live in Algul Siento, which is basically a cartoonishly beautiful town that sits in the middle of a howling, blistered, scoured-bare wasteland like some kind of desert mirage. These guys have their reasons for joining up here, but mostly those reasons seem kind of lame and I'm not sold on any of this. But I guess we shall see!

Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you soon!

I'm not going to sugarcoat things: we shit on this book kind of a lot this episode.

Look, we're not saying it's a bad book. We're not even saying that we aren't enjoying it, in our way. What we're saying is that King set a certain standard a couple books ago, and we're seeing a drop in overall focus and a strange preoccupation with language/worldbuilding that feels really out of place this late in the game.

Miles and I are each able to cite more than one moment in this trio of chapters where a new word is trotted out with no explanation or setup, and treated as if it has always existed and been used by our characters, which is not only untrue but frankly baffling. That combined with his own lampshading of deus ex machina and then his casually mentioning that the Crimson King is prisoner somewhere all combine to make me feel like I'm being fucked with in some way.

And don't even get me started on Susannah not telling our people that she heard Stephen King got killed, because I am about to go off about that.

Anyway, as I say at the end of the episode, I am really curious to hear how you all felt at this point in the story. Were you frustrated? Let me know!

Artwork:https://www.deviantart.com/art/Mordred-434778455

Hey there you wonderful people! My apologies for being MIA for a few days, but my dear ole mum came to visit over Easter weekend and I just couldn't carve out the time to edit without woefully neglecting her. Please accept my deepest apologies for the delay, and accept my offering of an accidental extra chapter in this episode to make up for it.

These three chapters are very eventful, and I'm shocked that King didn't have the previous book wrap up after the birth was completed because ending your novel with a FUCKING SPIDER BABY would be PRETTY FUCKING EFFECTIVE I THINK. But hey, what cred do I have in that department, since I still haven't finished my own damn book so I'll shut up now.

Jake and Oy are being chased here, and it's actually pretty tense because he's been caught before and I wasn't sure that he wouldn't be caught again. And of course, as you all know, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on Oy so that ads another layer of panic to everything. They manage to escape, thanks to Susannah, and I have zero idea what the hell is going to happen with them now that they're stuck on the "other side".

Meanwhile, there's a whole thing with Eddie and Roland and their special buddy who is going to take over custody of the Rose and try to block North Central Positronics and the Sombra corporation. The two of them finally cross over back into the NYC that Jake and Susannah just left, with their minds set on revenge. Dun DUN DUUUNNNNN.

Thanks for listening, and I will see you soon with Dresden Files!

I'm delighted to finally be starting the last book in the series (not counting Wind Through The Keyhole which I don't consider an official volume as much as a supplementary one at this point), and I'm really hoping that we get some things resolved soon because I'm starting to get really impatient.

I'm realizing that right now I'm having the same issue with several things I'm covering; plotlines are getting dragged out in ways that aren't interesting, and things that I'm really wanting to see more of are getting sidelined. This is true of this series, Jessica Jones, and WestWorld, and I think in this recording we can hear the moment when I realize how frustrated I am.

Because the thing is, the whole thing with a pregnant Susannah has gone on for quite long enough, and I am more than ready for it all to be over. But instead of starting this book out by wrapping up the labor, we instead get more of everyone but Susannah, and even the POVs of Jake and Callahan don't go on long enough to tell us what's happening to her. So I'm left feeling frankly bewildered that King chose to end the previous book when he did. Wouldn't it have made more sense to end it after Callahan's glorious and heroic death? There's just a lot about the choices made in the more recent books that I don't understand.

Anyway, I would definitely be interested to hear what you think, and we will see you again next week with three more chapters!

This is the final chapter in Song Of Susannah, and I'm really feeling a little let down by it. This whole book is about Susannah and her pregnancy and the buildup towards the labor, and there's no real payoff at the end. We've been anxious to see her reunited with Jake and Callahan, and they're nowhere to be seen. It just ends in the middle of this huge moment, and then we're treated to a coda of Stephen King's journal entries.

I dunno, guys. I am having a serious case of the love-hates with this series. We shall see what's in store next week!

Hey there, Patrons! I can't believe we're almost at the end of the book already, it feels like this one really flew by. I'm hoping against hope that we get a kind of happy ending and that Susannah doesn't wind up getting completely taken over by Mia somehow. Cuz I don't like that concept one bit.

This chapter we finally get to see what's been going on with Callahan and Jake. Thank goodness for The Touch, otherwise the two of them would be kinda screwed. It's really great to see them piecing everything together, and coming across the clues that Susannah left for them, but I'm not a fan of it being just Jake and Callahan, because goddamn the two of them against a whole horde of vampires and Low Men doesn't seem like great odds, now does it?

Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next week with a new episode!

I'm excited to share this one, because it's the chapter where we meet The Writer.

And yes, you probably noticed that picture I chose for this episode. Heh. I tried to find a picture of King that was supposed to have been taken around the time that this chapter takes place, and the whole vibe of this image was just too perfect to pass up. Look at his face! It's like he's saying, "Muahaha I'm in the book! Surprise! I'm comin to get ya!"

I really expected to hate this chapter, and it completely pulled me in despite myself. I couldn't help it! King paints himself as a hapless cog in the machine of Ka rather than some all-knowing omnipotent creator of worlds, and really it's just delightful. I like that the two of them see that there's a sort of shadow hanging over him, and that could mean his addiction or the "death" we heard mentioned on Susannah's end of things (it was her, right?) I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that it's Roland and Eddie who wind up stepping in and saving King from dying when he gets hit.

Anyway, I hope that you all enjoy the episode, and I will see you next week with a new episode!

In which the intro may seem inexplicable, but please bear with us because we promise...it still doesn't make sense once we explain it.

In which Calvin Tower seems like a whole lot more trouble than he's worth, and I'm about as done with him as Eddie is.