(Warning: Inevitable spoilers)

To ease the preliminary writing of this post, I'll be restating the prompt and analyzing how the following answer does or does not meet the qualifications posed in said prompt; this act alone should show how entirely modern and self-aware my writing is. The prompt referenced a book with excellent story-telling read sometime in the last three to six months, as well as a thought-out response and explanation as to why the particular book was chosen. Even in this first part, I'm waxing rebellious. The book I have chosen to discuss does not display excellent story-telling in full. When examined at any distance other than close, it displays, at best, engaging and entertaining tale-weaving (ooh, look at me, I'm getting so artsy here.) By no means the best book I have read in the last six months, 'The Dark Tower,' seventh and final in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, exhibits a curious mixture of chilling, slightly-corny, and terribly addictive story-telling, which, in my scorecard, is far more interesting to write about than a traditionally 'great' novel. Without getting too in-depth into my qualifications of a 'great' book, my standards for decent to good stories are generally set to the following: (1) the presence of personality and development in characters, (2) a plot that develops with the characters while still not relying purely on dense purposely-complicated twists and concepts, and (3) decent writing. The beginnings of the Dark Tower series, 'The Gunslinger' and 'The Drawing of the Three,' contain excellent story-telling to my lax standards. However, the second half of the series, picked up nearly two decades later by King, is pockmarked by unnecessary references and tie-ins in an attempt to form the series into a crescendo of all of King's literature, related or not. 'The Ultimate Purpose! The Supreme Meaning! The Final Quest And The Extreme Theme All Culminate In This Ending That I (seemingly on a whim began to follow) Have Always Planned For!" desperately hint the corrupting references to blissfully unrelated works, such as 'The Stand,' 'It,' and 'The Talisman.' Getting to the point, however, the story of the Dark Tower is a true quest; the characters are real and their personalities set in semi-malleable metals are in compromising and thrilling situations. King manages without fail to prevent the reader from ever truly knowing the characters. Nothing is out of question, no matter how unlikely the action. Iron wills fall to death, trauma, and suggestion, while foolishness and illogic are never far at hand. The plot is an epic in the most basic feeling. The journey is hard, the way is long, hope is lost and found in waves, and the exhaustion shows in the characters just as much as in the reader. And, as any Dark Tower fan will acknowledge, the ending (both of them) are scathingly fitting. For me, an important and meaningful individual in the literary world, 'The Dark Tower' has enough plot and raw story-telling power to make up for King's lapses into 'bigger picture' mode. There was a satisfaction at the end of this series that I have never before encountered, despite having to loath the characters just as much as I took to them. Probably meaningless to the casual reader, one of the final paragraphs of the official book is so satisfying as to be excellent.

"'I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me.' After that came the sound of a horn. It simultaneously chilled Patrick's blood and exalted him. The echoes faded into silence. Then, perhaps a minute later, came a great, echoing boom: the sound of a door swinging shut forever. And after that came silence."

As much as I would like to say that was the final ending of the saga, any Dark Tower fan will agree that the Coda, the real ending, is what makes this excellent story-telling. Ask Devra, ask anyone; the true ending is in the Coda, and the Coda is what makes it wonderfully terrible. In this case, there is nothing in the story-telling that prepares you for the real ending, even if you knew the entire time it was coming.