The Dark Tower by Stephen King

This book concludes Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'm deeply ambivalent about this series. It does get richer over time, and I generally enjoyed the rich levels of reference (from internal symbolism like the rose and the tower to external references to The Wizard of Oz and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"). I also thought the meta-fictional parts were fairly well done. Finally, I thought there was generally an appropriate level of sacrifice, and I actually didn't mind that King started Roland off on his journey again (I read the implication as being that this journey just depicted was the one that taught him what he needs to know to escape the cycle). I did think King was a bit of a jerk in his afterword when he simultaneously complains that a) critics who talk about meta-fiction are pretentious but that b) inserting himself in his own story is somehow not pretentious. I'm glad I finished the series, but it'll never replace The Lord of the Rings in my mind.