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I am currently reading the 7 books of Stephen King's Dark Tower series (I've reached "Wizard and Glass"). When I started it, I had the impression it was a finished series and I didn't read very much about its ending to avoid spoiling myself.

I recently found out there will another volume in the series, The wind trough the keyhole.

Can anyone explain how does that fit in the whole series? I am interested if the first 7 had a satisfying ending, and this comes as an extra, or did it have an open ending?

What exactly happens in the 8th book doesn't interest me (yet), what I want to know is how "complete" the first books are and if Stephen King is only planning to enrich the universe with this future book (or even other books in the series), or to give Dark Tower a proper ending, where all the loose ends are tied together

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From an interview:

When we were chatting about his upcoming book Under the Dome, a novel with political subtext out in November, King said he had recently had an idea for a short story. “And then I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I find three more like this and do a book that would be almost like modern fairy tales?’ Then this thing started to add on bits and pieces so I guess it will be a novel.” That idea, according to King, is for a new Dark Tower novel, a continuation of his epic seven-part fantasy/sci-fi/Western series about a lone gunslinger named Roland and his ongoing hunt for the Man in Black. “It’s not really done yet,” King admits of his magnum opus. “Those seven books are really sections of one long uber-novel.”

And from King's announcement:

It won’t tell you much that’s new about Roland and his friends, but there’s a lot none of us knew about Mid-World, both past and present. The novel is shorter than DT 2-7, but quite a bit longer than the first volume—call this one DT-4.5. It’s not going to change anybody’s life, but God, I had fun.

So, without having read it myself yet - it fills in a gap DURING the existing books (occurring between books 4 and 5) and deals with existing and new characters. So, the ending of the 7th book is, as of now, still the end of the story.

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    If you've still not read it, Wind Through the Keyhole does not properly fill in the gap between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. A portion of the story does take place during that time, but we learn little in the way of useful information regarding "present" Roland, the Ka-tet members, and the world they are traversing. We do learn a little about Rolands past immediately after the adventure in Mejis. We also hear a story (the bulk) that was popular in Gilead at the time. That said, Roland regarded such stories as windows into a people. You could get to know them by their stories.
    – CodeWarrior
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 18:06

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