Quote:
Originally posted by warrrreagl
The Crimson King appears in full regalia in "Insomnia" and I think the answer to your first question is "Yes."
I'm not specifically looking for spoilers, but does 22-year old Patrick Danville appear in SOS to save Roland and Eddie's lives? If not, then that must happen in the final book. I am simultaneously reading SOS and Insomina right now, and Insomnia has MAJOR ties to the Dark Tower.
To briefly recap, the hero in Insomnia has been contacted by those who follow the Purpose (the Green Man) to thwart those who follow the Random (the Crimson King). The Crimson King wants to prematurely kill a 4-year old boy named Patrick Danville who is actually destined to die at age 22 while saving the lives of a gunslinger named Roland and his friend.
The hero in Insomnia actually meets face to face with the Crimson King and momentarily outwits him, winning a brief but critical battle.
|
It's a good question. Insomnia was written in 1994, so who knows if King is going to feel obliged to follow what he wrote there. He probably will though, as it seems that most of his work in the past 10 years is somehow linked to the Tower.
I love that King has basically created his own myth about what drives good and evil and has now applied it directly to his new work, as well as tying it into his older works. It's as though he didn't realize the common thread in his own work until late in his career.
Ultimately, The Crimson King isn't the highest form of evil (at least that's the way Insomnia makes it seem). He (It) is representative of the Tower's evil side, however, and King intimates now that he has taken the forms of Walter (Dark Tower), Pennywise (It), Flagg (Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand), and many others. Not every book fits neatly into this mythology (The Shining, for example), but all the books in Maine seem to fit in somehow. Originally, you had a strong connection between the Castle Rock books and the Derry books, but now those are being tied into the Tower as well.
Insomnia is a must read for anyone reading the Tower books, as it has all sorts of new ideas about what the Tower is and how it works. It's more of a metaphor of the levels of existence than a physical place.