![]() ![]() I confess that the first time I read Wizard and Glass and learned this was the case, I was frustrated – I wanted Roland and Susannah and Jake and Oy and Eddie to get on with their journey to In-World and get to the damn tower! Who cares about Roland and his old friends and his sad love story? At least, that’s what I thought until I begrudgingly started reading about a fourteen year-old gunslinger and his friends as they are thrown into a situation way over their heads (in terms of war, in terms of friendship, in terms of love). Wizard and Glass is a unique book in the Dark Tower series in that the majority of its hefty 600+ pages is spent not with the characters we’ve grown to know and love in the first 3 books, but rather in the past. ![]() No, this version of 1980s Kansas is a ghost town, overrun by a virus known as “Captain Trips.” 2Īs the ka-tet makes its way through this dead world, determined to find the path of the beam and resume their course inward to the Dark Tower, Roland for the first time shares the story of his past: of a seaside ranch town called Mejis in the Outer Barony, of his ka-tet of old gunslingers Cuthbert and Alain, of first love found and lost with Susan Delgado, of betrayal and a great war between the Gunslingers’ Affiliation and John Farson, of ill-magic and a piece of Maerlyn’s Rainbow. 1 Though incredibly unlikely, Roland and his friends are able to best Blaine and disembark at his final destination of Topeka, Kansas – though this is a Topeka that isn’t quite the same as Eddie, Susannah or Jake’s where or when. Thus begins Wizard and Glass, published six years (!!!) following the conclusion of book 3. If Blaine is able to answer all of their riddles, he gets to kill himself and all of his passengers in a great blaze of madness and glory. Roland’s ka-tet faces Blaine’s, with a simple showcase of wills – if Roland and his friends are able to out-riddle Blaine, they will reach the end of the line safe and hale. Thus ends The Waste Lands, book 3 in the Dark Tower cycle, with Roland of Gilead, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah of New York, and Oy of Mid-World, riding aboard a deranged, slo-trans engine monorail through the wastes of a ruined land. “CAST YOUR NETS, WANDERERS! TRY ME WITH YOUR QUESTIONS, AND LET THE CONTEST BEGIN.” Standalone or series: The Dark Tower Book 4 Here is Roland’s journey to his own past, to a time when valuable lessons awaited him, lessons of loyalty and betrayal, love and loss. But his romance with the beautiful and quixotic Susan Delgado also has its dangers, as her world is tom apart by war. And it is there that Roland tells them a story, one that details his discovery of something even more elusive than the Dark Tower: love. Wizard and Glass picks up where the last book left off, with our hero, Roland, and his unlikely band of followers escaping from one world and slipping into the next. Publication date: First published in 1997 (this edition 2003) Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Speculative Fiction The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower 2).The journey continues here, in a different version of Topeka, Kansas, on a sort of yellow brick road, and into Roland’s sad past, with Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower 4). All readers – those new to the Dark Tower, and those who have traveled the path before – are welcome to join the ka tet! Every second Wednesday of the month, the next book in the Dark Tower cycle will be reviewed and discussed here. Inspired by the results of our March Old School Wednesdays Idea Poll, starting in March of 2015, Thea is rereading one of her favorite series’ of all time: The Dark Tower by Stephen King. What better way to snap out of a reading fugue than to take a mini-vacation into the past? We came up with the idea towards the end of 2012, when both Ana and Thea were feeling exhausted from the never-ending inundation of New and Shiny (and often over-hyped) books. Old School Wednesdays is a weekly Book Smugglers feature. THIS MONTH ON THE DARK TOWER: Wizard and Glass is a departure from the other books in the series so far in that it leaves Roland’s new ka tet and revisits his youth, a doomed love affair, and a small outer rim colony called Mejis. Old School Wednesdays presents Thea’s epic reread of The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |