[Chrischa]

I thought the main difference this time around is not that he has the horn, but that he remembers Cuthbert better because of it, and remembers him kindly instead of with pain. I think this will allow him to love his ka-tet straight away when he meets them and he won't be the cold emotionless man he was in the previous "wheels". Didn't the man in black tell him something like this at the end of book one? That he cannot conquer the Tower an empty man or he'd become a monster himself? I believe this time around he'll do it, not because he can blow this horn but because he can love.

That being said, I do agree with other things said here, that King didn't know how to finish. All the almighty problems he'd set himself in the earlier books, "talking about the Beast is talking about the destruction of your own soul." - where is this Beast? There are so many loose threads that never get solved. All these problems seem to end in easy solutions, as if he didn't know how to solve them, and this started way back in book 4. Flagg takes the Tick-Tock man along, which I though was a brilliant scene, but in book 4 he plays some ridiculous machine and then gets killed by one bullet after two seconds. Everything after book 3 just doesn't live up to the built-up before. Almost nothing of the conversation the gunslinger has with Marten at the end of book one can be found back later.