Dark Tower discussion

Post your Wizard and Glass thoughts here.

This book tends to get called the worst in the series by a lot of people. What does everyone think about the flashback? Too long? Not enough action? I liked it but I thought it could have been 50-100 pages shorter. I wonder if King was tired of people asking about the next Dark Tower book but didn't know where to take the story after Wastelands and so crafted the extended flashback.

I love origin stories and this one works for me. I find a different flavor of 'Roland' - young, romantic, inexperience (ever confident), and experiencing personal tragedies that play into his stilleto-like personality and focus. I know that King plays with the minds of his readers (c.f. book 7), so, even if this was a game/joke/bone thrown my way, I accept it... as exactly what i want: more.

The more time that goes by, the less I like this one. It's definately my least favorite of the series. I really didn't need a long love story with a young Roland. We got a far superior young Roland tale in Gunslinger with his winning his guns, and if King wanted to do a flashback, I would have been far more intersted in the battle of Jericho Hill or at some other point when he and his earlier friends were in their prime rather than this.

It's the same trap that George Lucas fell into with Star Wars and Larry McMurtry with the Lonesome Dove prequels. I don't know why it's so hard for creators to understand that if you do prequels, most people want the characters in their primes or at a key event and not necessarily stories when they were kids.

Patton Oswalt has funny (but obscene) thoughts on this subject here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCjIj...

I'll forgo the accusation that your hate for this one is directly related to the Wizard of Oz part at the end. But it is!

Anyway, prequels inherently suck since you know how things are going to go down. I would have much rather read about the battle of Jericho Hill or something else featuring Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, and Jaime DeCurry gunning people down. I didn't hate the flashback but it was unnecessarily long.

On the plus side, I still love how Eddie got to be the hero and was the one who blew Blaine's mind with his joke riddles. Especially after Roland was looking down his nose at him.

Kemper wrote: "On the plus side, I still love how Eddie got to be the hero and was the one who blew Blaine's mind with his joke riddles. Especially after Roland was looking down his nose at him."

That was a good moment for Eddie, especially since he hadn't done much since the naked gunfight at Balazar's in Drawing of the Three.

The Wizard of Oz thing enrages me, but I keep that rage seperate from my general dissatisifaction that King decided to throw a tragic young love story in the middle of this. I don't think the series needed it. Or if he wanted Roland to have lost a woman, it would have been more fitting if he had left her or screwed her over somehow to keep going towards the Tower.

On another Kansas note here, I just got done rereading the part where they figure out that Topkea (which seems to be from The Stand) is a different world. They base this on a car model that Eddie and Jake didn't know and a bumper sticker for the Kansas City Monarchs baseball team instead of KC Royals.

However, the old Negro League baseball team in KC was the Monarchs, and had players like Satchel Paige. You still see a lot of Monarchs merchandise around here. (I've got a Monarchs baseball cap.) King is a huge baseball fan so I've never been sure if he was playing with our heads and hinting that Topeka may have been closer to ours than we thought, or if he didn't realize the Monarchs stuff is actually out there.

I loved this book, each time a bit more. I also really liked that it did not leave us in a cliff-hanger, but nicely tied everything up.

I felt that this book not only shows us why Roland is the way he is, but it also outlines where the story is going and why. It explains how Roland began his quest.

I agree with Dan. I loved the flashback and the love story....but was a bit to long. I think it was important to tell Susan's story because (don't laugh at me) I believe Susannah is supposed to be the reincarnation of Susan. Eddie of Cuthbert, Jake of Alan (sp?). Reincarnation has been mentioned a few times in the books.....and somehow they are in the line of the Eld. Just a thought.