Category: Book review

First I’m gonna say sorry this review as well as the final two installments of the Dark Tower saga are coming out later than the first four but so did the books too. Afraid he may never finish his magnum opus after being hit by by a car years before, Stephen King released 5, 6, and 7 back to back.

We pick up with the Ka-tet right after they left Topeka and weathered the starkblast (the event of Wind through the keyhole). Eddie has an eerily vivid dream about his New York; Susannah has dreams of a dark castle and strange appetites. She is pregnant but not by her husband Eddie, but by the demon that raped her when they drew Jake over. While her friends sleep she crawls off and while imagining a exquisite banquet in actuality she’s eating small animals. Roland has caught her strange new ritual. Meanwhile, they are being followed by people of a town bordering Thunderclap, called Calla Bryn Sturgess with a desperate need of there help. The Calla is ripe with twins, but every one of the pair becomes Roont by the Wolves that descend from Thunderclap once every twenty some years or so. The Wolves take a twin, and only a twin, and take them to the dark land and months later the child returns slow and malformed, forced to live out the rest of its days drooling in agony. Finally the Calla has had enough and yearns to fight back. Roland accepts the request because something tells him there’s more to there journey in the Calla. He quickly discovers the Calla’s priest Father Callahan has much in common with his own traveling companions, and he has the darkest piece of the Wizard’s Rainbow in his possession. He hears Callahan’s tale of the horrors that befell Salem’s Lot and the strange events that brought him to the Calla. But that is not all, there is a final door that no one can open. And so the countdown begins as mysteries of the Calla unfold and the Wolves descend upon them.

Such a strange book but damn if it ain’t cool in it’s weird ass way like the rest of the series. Our main characters are once again amazingly well done and honestly they keep you driven through the series. Andy the robot is a creepy secret villain, like finding out Alpha 5 from Power Rangers was secretly hoping the rangers would bite the big one so he could harvest there organs for money, like that kind of robot badguy. Callahan was a cool addition and I enjoyed his story of all the crazy shit that went on after Salem’s Lot. The story at times is a little hard to follow if you paying attention to the minute details, which I can’t stress that enough. Also I found the final battle a little anticlimactic but it definitely ain’t a twilight finale. Overall pick it up if you read the other four, like old school westerns, or a fan of Stephen King. May the Gaming Gods be with you all. You guys rock.

 

When reading the series on your own if you choose to, keep three and four close by because they are literally one huge story, Wizard and Glass picks up where the Wastelands cliffhanger ended. Also keep in mind, this is two stories in one, a continuation of our story forward and a another tragic piece in Roland’s enigmatic and tragic history.  Let’s dive into the halfway mark of this epic:

The riddle contest kicks off between our Ka-Tet and Blaine the Mono as he takes them to Topeka. They all take turns trying to stump Blaine but nothing phases him, but he makes a mistake in a comment which gives them all hope he isn’t all knowing. Eddie,having a breakthrough, rationalizes that jokes are a form of riddle in there own right and that’s Blaine’s weakness. They defeat Blaine and land in Topeka…after Captain Trips has hit. They find it a wasteland of wilted corpses and graffiti reading “Beware the Walkin Dude” and “All hail the Crimson King!”. Taveling down the turnpike they come across a huge emerald tower beckoning out to them with a pink light emulating from it. Everyone but Roland finds it’s beautiful, thinking of the Emerald City from Wizard of Oz; Roland tells them the story of the Wizard’s Rainbow and his first mission as aa young Gunslinger and the pain in his heart of Susan Delgado…Roland was sent to the small barony of Mejis with two of his closest friends, Cuthbert and Alian after earning his guns on assignment to make sure the devious Good Man hadn’t taken refuge there (The Good Man would eventually cause the destruction of Roland’s home and many others). On a lonely night he meets a beautiful young maiden named Susan Delgado. Both kids have a secret. Roland and his friends have kept there identities secret; Susan is being given off to the mayor of Mejis as his arranged gilly (pretty much arranged wife/ sex slave) by her bitch of an aunt. The mayor unknowingly hired a group of disgraced Gunslingers called the Big Coffin Hunters to act as his security. Roland’s group and the Hunters come into conflict with them as a plot unravels to bring chaos to the barony. Susan and Roland fall deeply in love, only to end in utter tragedy as she is burned alive while Roland is powerless to watch in the pink ball of the Wizard’s Rainbow, instruments of great magic and great evil. ..Roland and his friends follow the light to find the true Ageless Stranger- Walter in essence. We discover his other names he has used, Randall Flagg, Richard Fannin, Richard Frye, Maerlyn, and Marten Broadcloak to the Gunslinger. They try to shoot him but all of there guns magically jam at the same time. He leaves them with the resurrected Tick Tock Man and a warning to turn around and abandon there pursuit of the Dark Tower. They vote no and keep moving on…

So out of the series this may be my least favorite for one particular reason. The pacing feels off to me. The present parts feel quick as the rest of the general narrative but The past parts are slower, full of plotting and meticulous detail. As a love story it is solid but the tragedy is this book’s winning point. It’s a tragic story on more than one base as we get to see a Roland that wasn’t so worn and besides the death of his love, we see the death of his innocence as well the means to an end for his home and his family. Definitely check this book out but don’t go into it expecting as a quick read like the first three books. May the gaming gods bring you glory and come reap.

 Ok friends, full disclosure if you have read my other reviews and have previously read the Dark Tower books, I’m giving only general synopsis’s of each book. Every book gets more and more immaculately detailed as they go on; I can’t deliver justice to them the way reading and enjoying them yourself can.  That being said, let us continue the odyssey of Roland and his Ka-tet (group brought together by fate for a purpose) on there way to the Dark Tower.

So again this picks up almost immediately after where the previous installment left off, a few weeks later if I’m not mistaken. Roland has recovered and is training Eddie and Susannah how to be Gunslingers; both are promising. They’ve formed a bond together; Eddie and Susannah are husband and wife; Eddie is clean of heroin and has rediscovered his passion of whittling. While training with Susannah in the woods, Roland hears a noise. Miles away an angry guardian of the Beam awakens, a seventy foot cyborg bear named Mir driven mad by time and maggots eating away at it’s brain. It tears through the forest, knocking trees down like bowling pins, barreling down towards Eddie. Roland and Susannah rush to the rescue. Eddie starts hauling ass up the tallest tree he can find, scared for his life. Roland puts Susannah on his shoulders and tells her its up to her to kill it, to blast it in the tiny radar dish between its ears. She manages it and Mir dies. Roland inspects the beast, revealing a label reading SHARDIK of the LAMERK CORPORATION. Roland explain the tower some more and reveals a secret to his friends; his mind is dividing after the paradox he created by saving Jake from ever dying in the previous installment. Meanwhile, in Jake’s New York, he is suffering from the same fate as Roland. He knows everything that happened in the first book but he knows it didn’t happen but should have. Ka pulls him foreward, bringing him to a book store owned by a man named Tower where he finds a certain two books that will help save his life later and a rose that means everything in a vacant lot. On the Ka-Tet’s side, Eddie is whittling a shape that is meant to be the key to Jake’s door. Jake is led to an old haunted house by a younger version of Eddie; the house transforms into a horrible demon intent on murdering Jake. On the other side they struggle to draw a door in the dirt, fighting a coming rain storm while Detta comes forth to fuck another demon that’s haunting the area. Jake is brought to there side and him and Roland have a touching reunion. Further ahead they come across a billy bumbler (a creature between a roccon and a small dog that can make human like words) that takes a liking to Jake they name Oy. they come to a small seemingly abandoned town across the river from the shell of a once great city called Lud. The town is inhabited by decrepit old people that treat Roland and his friends as honored guests once they see he is the last Gunslinger. The people tell them of the horrors of Lud, the horrible music and the war that broke out between two factions: the Grays and the Pubes. Crossing what’s left of the bridge, Jake gets kidnapped by a diseased freak named Gasher who threatens to blow them all up with a grenade. They have no choice but to let him go. The group splits: Roland and Oy goes after Gasher and Jake, while Eddie and Susannah heads towards the monorail train. Jake is taken through a dark underground maze under the city where the Tick-Tock Man resides with his thugs. Eddie and Susannah have to solve a mathematical puzzle to access the train called Blaine.  Jake, Oy, and Roland wipe out the Tick-Tock Man’s gang and haul ass to the others; The Ageless Stranger of Walter’s prophecy revives the Tick-Tock Man for his service in exchange for safety which won’t be possible in Lud much longer after, while pulling away from the station, Blaine unleashes a massive storage of nerve gas on the city and massacres it’s denizens out of boredom. Blaine is really a network of highly intelligent supercomputers under the city that connect to the Dark Tower and with the decay of the beams holding it up, Blaine began to malfunction and go mad. He ultimately decides to kill himself with our heroes on board, wheras they make a deal for there lives via riddle contest, and book three ends…

I adore the hell out of this particular installment. Great character development and a dark theme of madness spiced throughout. Also I have to say Blaine is my favorite villain in all of Literature so far, he’s insane, sarcastic, creepy, and just plain evil as hell. Definitely tune in next time to see what’s next….and hell yeah read this book.

Book two of seven (I don’t count Wind through the Keyhole amongst the original series) of Stephen King’s western fantasy epic picks up right up where the first book left off. Roland is left aged on the beach after his haunting talk with Walter, disoriented in the midst of a night tide. From the tide something comes forth Roland first believes is a rock, but moves closer, revealing a body crustacean like. The Lobstrousity is fast and deadly taking a few of Roland’s toes and two of the fingers off of his best hand. Fighting the tide he tries to blast the creature but his shells are getting wet so the first few shots are duds until he blows it’s ass away, left with nothing but a crap-load of useless bullets and blood poisoning from the creature. He crawls forward dying until he catches sight of a mystery wooden door on the beach. Written on it is the word Prisoner, for which he’d been told about by Walter and the demon that tried to rape Jake. This door leads him into the mind of the first he would have to draw forth in his quest for the Dark Tower: Eddie Dean, a heroin addict from New York City in 1987. Roland is able to help Eddie take down drug lord Enrico Balazarr and bring him into his world after getting some medicine to hold off the poison a bit. Eddie is forced to detox with Roland on there way to the second door, there relationship rocky at best. The second door belongs to The Lady of Shadows, young, educated, legless cival rights activist Odetta Holmes of New York 1964. They quickly understand the danger Odetta brings in the form of her second, violent, savage personality Detta Walker. Eddie begins to have feelings for Odetta and she for him. After a small resurgence in his health, Roland begins to decline again. His last hope lies behind the third door, The Pusher, Jack Mort. Mort is a sick bastard who’s dark deeds have affected the Roland’s group through the years. Mort hit Odetta in the head with a brick when she was a little girl, causing her initial split personality; he pushed Jake in front of the car that originally killed him to bring him to Roland’s world in the first place; he finally pushed Odetta in front of the subway train that severed her legs. Roland uses Mort’s body to steal ammo and medicine, before throwing him in front of the same train that took Odetta’s legs at the same time Detta sees this through the open door. Both of her selves forge into a perfect third, Susannah and the three were drawn and Roland lives.

It’s one of my favorite books and a great sequel. The new characters are truly developed and feel very much like real people. It’s well paced and very trippy. Definitely worth a read and will leave you hungry for the next book.