This is part three of my read-through of 'The Dark Tower'.
Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here, Part 7 is here and Part 8 is here. . Once again, here be spoilers.
For some reason I didn't write this post when I finished The Waste Lands. I'm now getting to the end of Wizard and Glass, and my memories of book 3 are unfortunately already mixed up with the early half of this fourth book. As a result this post will be a little shorter than the others. That said, some impressions:
I remembered Blaine the Pain. What I didn't remember was that the actual confrontation with him - the riddling, the mad dash along his track towards Topeka at faster than the speed of sound, Eddie saving the day with dead baby jokes - comes at the beginning of Wizard and Glass and not at the end of The Waste Lands.
A similar thing happened with Lud as happened with the big set pieces in the earlier books. My memory of it was of a long, arduous battle through the streets, when really it's all over quite quickly in relation to the rest of the book.
I'm starting to realise that King sets things up - like the book of riddles, and Charlie The Choo-Choo - in one book so that he can use them in the next one. I'll keep an eye out in Wizard and Glass for anything that gets added to the group, because I'm sure it will be used in Wolves Of The Calla. I'm wondering if he will have carried anything over into Wind Through The Keyhole - I'm interested to see how it slots in to the series.
When I finished The Waste Lands I realised that I had very little memory of what was going to come next. I knew the confrontation with Blaine was coming, and Wolves Of The Calla has always been my favourite of the books so I think my memory of that book is quite good, but as for the content of Wizard And Glass? I had no idea - and, now that I'm most of the way through it, I realise that I'd forgotten most of it.
Another interesting thing - although we're getting more hints about why the Dark Tower is so important, we still don't really know why Roland and his ka-tet are going there. Not knowing why characters are doing things usually bothers me, but in this case I'm enjoying the ride and I trust King to reveal everything at some point.
Onwards, then. The Dark Tower awaits.
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Saturday, 14 April 2012
The Drawing Of The Three
This is part two of my read-through of 'The Dark Tower'.
Part 1 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here, Part 7 is here and Part 8 is here. Once again, here be spoilers.
Last time I said that, if memory served, The Drawing Of The Three was the book where the story really starts moving and gathers some purpose, and I wasn't wrong. Where The Gunslinger felt fragmented and vague, the second book feels much more like a Stephen King book; Roland is a much more fully realised character, and there's a real sense that things are happening and are going to happen. That may be because there was 5 years between the writing of these two books - a period of time in which King published It, Pet Sematary, The Talisman and Eyes Of The Dragon (my favourite King book, incidentally), to name a few. I don't think it's a stretch to say that he visibly improved as a writer in that period of time - it's certainly obvious in the difference between The Gunslinger and The Drawing Of The Three.
As with the last book, my memory of this one was patchy. Going in to it, the only thing I could remember was the doors on the beach. I had definitely forgotten that Roland loses his fingers in the first few pages - and once that happened, I was sure that it was in this book that he starts relearning how to use his right hand. I was wrong about that.
I was fairly certain that by the end of the book the ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah and Jake would be united. In my memory of the series, I had forgotten that Jake re-enters the books later, and that the third person in the Three that are drawn is Susannah - the conjunction of Detta/Odetta's two personalities. Once Roland went through the third door I was sure that he was going to pull Jake back to the beach somehow. I was wrong about that, too.
I found myself enjoying this second book much more than I enjoyed The Gunslinger. It doesn't answer any questions, really - we still don't know why Roland is questing for the tower, or when he made that decision, and we don't really know anything about the world he is in. If memory serves, that all comes in Wizard and Glass. Unlike in The Gunslinger, where I found myself frustrated by how little information I had to work with, that wasn't sure an issue here. The stakes are high - King excels at putting characters into situations that are seemingly impossible to survive, and particularly during the section where Eddie is tied up on the beach waiting for the lobstrosities to come out of the sea and take him I found myself frantically turning the pages, needing to know what happened next even though I knew that he survived.
In a nutshell, this is just a better book than the first volume. It feels more like the King that I love, and I cared about the characters much moreso than I did in The Gunslinger. Bring on The Waste Lands.
Last time I said that, if memory served, The Drawing Of The Three was the book where the story really starts moving and gathers some purpose, and I wasn't wrong. Where The Gunslinger felt fragmented and vague, the second book feels much more like a Stephen King book; Roland is a much more fully realised character, and there's a real sense that things are happening and are going to happen. That may be because there was 5 years between the writing of these two books - a period of time in which King published It, Pet Sematary, The Talisman and Eyes Of The Dragon (my favourite King book, incidentally), to name a few. I don't think it's a stretch to say that he visibly improved as a writer in that period of time - it's certainly obvious in the difference between The Gunslinger and The Drawing Of The Three.
As with the last book, my memory of this one was patchy. Going in to it, the only thing I could remember was the doors on the beach. I had definitely forgotten that Roland loses his fingers in the first few pages - and once that happened, I was sure that it was in this book that he starts relearning how to use his right hand. I was wrong about that.
I was fairly certain that by the end of the book the ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah and Jake would be united. In my memory of the series, I had forgotten that Jake re-enters the books later, and that the third person in the Three that are drawn is Susannah - the conjunction of Detta/Odetta's two personalities. Once Roland went through the third door I was sure that he was going to pull Jake back to the beach somehow. I was wrong about that, too.
I found myself enjoying this second book much more than I enjoyed The Gunslinger. It doesn't answer any questions, really - we still don't know why Roland is questing for the tower, or when he made that decision, and we don't really know anything about the world he is in. If memory serves, that all comes in Wizard and Glass. Unlike in The Gunslinger, where I found myself frustrated by how little information I had to work with, that wasn't sure an issue here. The stakes are high - King excels at putting characters into situations that are seemingly impossible to survive, and particularly during the section where Eddie is tied up on the beach waiting for the lobstrosities to come out of the sea and take him I found myself frantically turning the pages, needing to know what happened next even though I knew that he survived.
In a nutshell, this is just a better book than the first volume. It feels more like the King that I love, and I cared about the characters much moreso than I did in The Gunslinger. Bring on The Waste Lands.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
The Gunslinger
In preparation for the release of The Wind Through The Keyhole later this month I've decided to re-read Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and I thought it might be fun to blog about each of the books as I finish them. I'd guess that this isn't of interest to many people; that's fine by me. If you are interested, read on, but be warned: there will be spoilers galore - in fact, this will probably only make any sense at all if you're familiar with the book.
I'm amazed on reading this book again exactly how little of it I remember - I've only read it once, about 10 years ago when I first started the series, but I thought I had quite a good grasp on what happens in it. I didn't. The whole journey through the mountains, and the Slow Mutant attack? Forgotten. The hut in the desert, and the raven? Forgotten. I'd even forgotten how Jake died.
A couple of things did stick with me, though. There was Roland's fight with Cort, though that only came back to me when I hit that part of the book and though "oh yeah...". I remembered the Waystation, though I think I had it slightly confused with one of the places in Wolves Of The Calla - I certainly didn't remember the jawbone, or the demon in the wall.
The main part that I remember was Tull, and the massacre there. The details were foggy, but I remembered being engrossed in pages and pages of battle as Roland destroyed everybody in the town, like Clint Eastwood in...well, any film where he plays The Man With No Name. This is the first time - indeed, the only time in this book - that we see Roland's almost-magic reloading trick, and that's definitely something that has stuck with me.
It turns out, though, that the battle only takes up a few pages. I have this with my favourite book, too. In To Kill A Mockingbird, the whole story really hinges around Tom Robinson's trial. Every time I read it I look forward to that part of the book, to reading pages and pages of courtroom drama and high tension and Atticus' inspiring speech at the end; then I get to it, and I remember that it's over in about 3 pages.
As for the rest of the book? It's short, but there's a lot in it - yet as a stand-alone novel I don't think it would work at all. The ending feels like a cheat, because we find that the Man In Black is some kind of all-powerful demigod that Roland has no chance of defeating, and Roland ends the book without any real hope of catching him again. We get some hints at the significance of the Dark Tower, but it's only in the final act of the book that we're told that Roland is questing for it at all - and we aren't told why.
If memory serves, it's really in The Drawing Of The Three that the story really starts to get moving and Roland comes in to his own as a character. We'll see - that's up next.
Edit 21/05/2012: My read-through is done. Here are links to the rest of the books - Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here, Part 7 is here and Part 8 is here.
I'm amazed on reading this book again exactly how little of it I remember - I've only read it once, about 10 years ago when I first started the series, but I thought I had quite a good grasp on what happens in it. I didn't. The whole journey through the mountains, and the Slow Mutant attack? Forgotten. The hut in the desert, and the raven? Forgotten. I'd even forgotten how Jake died.
A couple of things did stick with me, though. There was Roland's fight with Cort, though that only came back to me when I hit that part of the book and though "oh yeah...". I remembered the Waystation, though I think I had it slightly confused with one of the places in Wolves Of The Calla - I certainly didn't remember the jawbone, or the demon in the wall.
The main part that I remember was Tull, and the massacre there. The details were foggy, but I remembered being engrossed in pages and pages of battle as Roland destroyed everybody in the town, like Clint Eastwood in...well, any film where he plays The Man With No Name. This is the first time - indeed, the only time in this book - that we see Roland's almost-magic reloading trick, and that's definitely something that has stuck with me.
It turns out, though, that the battle only takes up a few pages. I have this with my favourite book, too. In To Kill A Mockingbird, the whole story really hinges around Tom Robinson's trial. Every time I read it I look forward to that part of the book, to reading pages and pages of courtroom drama and high tension and Atticus' inspiring speech at the end; then I get to it, and I remember that it's over in about 3 pages.
As for the rest of the book? It's short, but there's a lot in it - yet as a stand-alone novel I don't think it would work at all. The ending feels like a cheat, because we find that the Man In Black is some kind of all-powerful demigod that Roland has no chance of defeating, and Roland ends the book without any real hope of catching him again. We get some hints at the significance of the Dark Tower, but it's only in the final act of the book that we're told that Roland is questing for it at all - and we aren't told why.
If memory serves, it's really in The Drawing Of The Three that the story really starts to get moving and Roland comes in to his own as a character. We'll see - that's up next.
Edit 21/05/2012: My read-through is done. Here are links to the rest of the books - Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here, Part 7 is here and Part 8 is here.
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