Marvel either needed to get more brutal, or less.   (And to be honest, given the rest of this series?   More brutal would have been the most appropriate!)   That being said, this felt... off.   The mixture of brutal and hopeful at the ending was gut wrenching - but didn't seem to fit the premise of this series, nor the promise held in the title.   I know I like a good brutal story about characters I love, although I'm not sure why, so I felt a little let down - and relieved at the same time.   

So I'm not sure: I just wanted a little more oomph from this ending.   It feels like the mini-series wasn't sure where to go while doing something in particular - allowing certain characters to make it if you want to get particular - and then this.  I know comics are more well planned out.   Marvel cancelled Chelsea Cain's Vision series because it conflicted with plans for Viv in the Champions.   That is: Marvel wouldn't let Donny Coates do whatever he wanted.  I'm not sure if his vision for this conflicted with what Marvel wanted, or if this was a carefully crafted ending that just didn't work for me, but it didn't.   Overall, though, it's a five star series: even with the choppy ending, there was enough here for me to highly suggest this, from the lovely art to the plot twists that won't stop, plus the philosophical thoughts that were dropped in here.   (Yeah, it wants you to think about mortality and what you'd do in the most extreme situations.)   And the ending wasn't a complete mood killer, or even bad: I was just expecting more given the pace. 

And I think that might be what be wrong.   This barrels along at high speed - and the stop is sudden and disorienting and that's making me cranky-pants and nitpick about the ending.  

I think I'll be more okay with it when I reread this - and this is good enough to reread. 

And they do here.   I've been wondering when they're going to kill people off with something called "Death of the Inhumans."  I mean, there was the huge death count in one, but very few of the royal family?  Esepcaily with them on all the covers.

Arguably the royals are the Inhumans franchise as they've always been central to that.   Is Marvel killing of other Inhumans?   The franchise?   Both?

And then they managed to bring some of the royals back.   So what's going on?    But I'm starting to think this might be more of a spiritual death: their hope is being killed off, and that's far, far more brutal than merely killing off the royals.   Just look at what they've done to Black Bolt for an example of something far more brutal than killing him off.   I'm still hoping for hurt/comfort there, but I think it's going to be hurt and then more hurt, and then me curled up into a ball at the end of issue five, the final issue in this mini-series. 

But until I get there?   I'm loving this!

I'm really unsure how this trilogy ended up on the SF/F list that I'm reading.  One the best?  Really?

While reading it, I am never immersed, I'm always conscious that I'm reading.

I didn't mean to, but someone was talking about it on Twitter.   Oops.   Regardless, it took my breath away, because it's huge, and it makes sense to me on multiple levels, none of which I can talk about without spoiling a couple people I got started on this - and that I'm still hoping will finish this. 

  I laughed so hard a couple times during a break in my class.  Everyone ignored me because I was hoping up a Transformers comic, but they don't know what they're missing out on here!

Love, love, love this so damn much.  I can't believe I only have three more issues and then no more James Roberts writing Transformers!   It just can't be true, and it is at the same time.

Roland, The Last Gunslinger, moves ever closer to The Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares—as he crosses a desert of damnation in a macabre world that is a twisted image of our own. With him are those he has drawn to this world: street-smart Eddie Dean and courageous wheelchair-bound Susannah.

Ahead of him are mind-rending revelations about who and what is driving him. Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of foes—both more and less than human....

The best book in this series so far for me.

I couldn’t help but notice, as I read this book, just how well-read Stephen King is. It would be tedious to list all the literary allusions (plus all the mentions of his own works) because there are just so many of them. But of course, you can’t miss one of the biggest references in the title—T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, not to mention Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. I also couldn’t help but notice all of the LOTR similarities—as King wrote in his introduction, Tolkien’s work looms large in the imagination of all of those of us who read fantasy. And Jake, being run by Gasher through the ruined city of River Crossing, made me think of Merry & Pippin being driven by orcs.

Jake’s entry into the Gunslinger’s world, through The Mansion in New York, reminded me strongly of King’s The Shining, namely the pursuit of Danny Torrence on the grounds of the Overlook Hotel by the hedge animals. The malevolent Mansion and the haunted hotel were both very effective—King writes that kind of scenario really well.

Three books in, I’m finally feeling like the story is beginning to interest me. Hopefully the remaining books in the series won’t be quite such a tough row to hoe.

Book number 297 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.