Girl on Book Action: Wizard and Glass: Dark Tower IV by Stephen King

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
ISBN: 0-452-27917-8

Aside:  Once more I give you the obligatory spoiler-warning.  I'm reviewing book four of seven so spoilers are possible for all four books.  If you're interested in my thoughts on The Dark Tower series, but haven't had a chance to read the novels, I suggest you skip back to my review of the first book.  For the rest of you, keep reading!

Blurb:

Roland, The Last Gunslinger, and his band of followers have narrowly escaped one world, and slipped into the next.  It is here that Roland tells them a long-ago tale of love and adventure involving a beautiful and quixotic woman named Susan Delgado.  With shocking plot twists and a driving narrative force, Wizard and Glass is the book readers have been waiting for.  And the Dark Tower is closer...

***

My Thoughts:

So, yes, indeed, I am still slogging my way through these and I really do mean slogging.  If you've been following along, you know that I was looking forward to this part because it deals with Roland's past and his adventures with his friends Cuthbert and Alain.  Well, I was pretty disappointed.  Yes, Cuthbert and Alain were there, but for the most part we didn't see the Court in Gilead, instead, we wandered around some little nothing town uncovering a conspiracy.  Alright, that doesn't sound so bad.  Unfortunately, that becomes secondary to a boring, juvenile love affair between Susan and Roland (gag me with a spoon, why don't you).  I guess I should be happy that we weren't hanging around Eddie, Susannah and Jake as much as in the previous books, but I simply can't shake my disappointment.

I wanted to see the dazzling Gunslinger Court in Gilead, watch pageants and balls and the riddling contest, instead, I got dusty plains, a town full of shady people and teenagers making doe-eyes at each other (indeed, the vehemence of my reaction to the love-story leaves me worrying that I'm beginning to turn into Wren with her noted hatred of anything remotely romantic).

The content wasn't the only thing that bothered me.  I had some stylistic issues as well.  You see, the majority of the book is Roland telling the story of his past to his new companions, but he does so in third person point of view.  So, rather than saying "I did this as a youth" he talks about himself in the third person - Roland did this, Roland did that, Roland loved Susan very much, blah blah blah.  To be perfectly honest (when am I ever less), this...conceit drove me a little bit batty.  At the end of his telling he explains how he knew all the things that happened when he wasn't present, but it just didn't fly for me.  The narrative gains nothing from the way this information is withheld until the end.  Personally, I think that perhaps the story of love and loss would have been more poignant, more powerful and more emotionally engaging if it had been told as a first person account.  The detached third person limited omniscient point of view (thank you English major) left me too far outside of the relationship to care about its tragedy.  On the whole, I was with Cuthbert in wanting to deck Roland for most of the book.

And that brings me to one of the few positives - my literary crush on Cuthbert was confirmed.  The way he's always quipping at people, the fact that he carries a bird skull around with him and talks to it, and his ability to see Roland's great folly endeared him to me more than any of the other characters we've spent any amount of time with in this series.  Why can't it be the Cuthbert tales instead? (The answer is: probably because he's dead.)  I don't quite see the resemblance between witty Cuthbert and Eddie Dean that Roland is always going on about and that is probably for the best, since I am not a fan of dear old Eddie.

At least the last couple hundred pages were interesting - the showdown with the bad guys was well-paced and engaging.  While I got the sense that the young gunslingers would win the day, the way they won was a sight to see.  Susan's death, though announced at the outset, was still a surprise as there is the hope of rescue until the moment she's dead (I somehow thought that maybe she'd get away and the real tragedy would have been that she lived and Roland never knew until it was too late).

Overall, I'm frustrated with the quest for the Dark Tower.  I'm still fascinated by some of the underlying ideas about the interaction between different planes of existence, parallel universes or what have you, "other worlds than these" as people in the book keep saying. The notion that the world has "moved on" and things are not as they used to be I think is relevant to every day life no matter what time period you're living in.  On the other hand, I don't care about the characters and even the stories I'm excited to read leave something to be desired.  I'm beginning to suspect that I'm just not the kind of person who enjoys Stephen King novels.  That said, I still intend to finish my slog through the Dark Tower series if only to allow all of you to watch me suffer.

Girl on Book Action: The Waste Lands by Stephen King

Aside:  An aside right at the beginning, you say.  Well, yes.  Here is your obligatory spoiler warning.  I’m reviewing part three of The Dark Tower and I don’t want you to read possible spoilers in the blurb.  If you’re interested in my thoughts on the subject and you haven’t read the first two books, I suggest you head to my review of The Gunslinger right now.

The Waste Lands: The Dark Tower III by Stephen King

ISBN: 0-452-26740-4

Blurb:

With The Waste Lands, the third masterful novel in Stephen King’s epic saga The Dark Tower, we again enter the realm of the mightiest imagination of our time.  King’s hero, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares – as he crosses a desert of damnation in a macabre world that is a twisted mirror image of our own.  With him are those he has drawn to this world, street-smart Eddie Dean and courageous wheelchair-bound Susannah.  Ahead of him are mind-rending revelations about who he is and what is driving him.  Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of fiendish foes both more and less than human.  And as the pace of action and adventure, discovery and danger pulse-poundingly quickens, the reader is inescapably drawn into a breathtaking drama that is both hauntingly dreamlike ...and eerily familiar.  The Waste Land is a triumph of storytelling sorcery – and further testament to Stephen King’s novelistic mastery.

***

My Thoughts:

A curious thing happened when I was reading this book.  I wasn’t really enjoying it – so much so that I put it down after 70ish pages and read The Stolen Throne instead.  But, I made a commitment to finishing the series, so I went back to it.  A handful of people had assured me that it gets better and that they all really enjoyed part three.  I heard a lot of “Just wait until you get to this part with so and so, it’s awesome!”  Or “Oh, when you get to Blaine, he is super-scary.”  Each time I reached one of these supposed milestones of awesome, I was underwhelmed.  The only upside is that there weren’t all that many updates as to the status of Roland’s balls.

I think my problem really comes from not liking the characters.  My feelings on Roland are neutral, I still prefer my protagonists / heroes to be quick-witted, but at least Roland is consistent and reliable (so long as you don’t stand in the way of him getting to the Tower).  I don’t care for Susannah at all, which, considering my feminist leanings irks me to no end.  I feel as though I should like her, but I just don’t.  She doesn’t interest me at all.  Eddie grew on me in this book, but not much.  He does some awesome things and he injects a touch of sarcastic humour I appreciate.  Also, Roland keeps comparing him to Cuthbert and without knowing a whole lot about the guy I’ve decided I like Cuthbert (does that mean I actually like Eddie?).   Jake...well...Jake is a kid and I have a strange prejudice against child-protagonists.  I guess I like Oy best – which, considering he’s some sort of raccoon-y animal says a lot about my feelings about the other characters.

Why do I keep reading then (aside from the fact that I said I’d read them all)?  The world keeps me coming back – Roland’s world.  I seriously loved being in Lud.  The decay and the madness of its inhabitants as the world winds down around them left me feeling haunted.  I was enthralled.  Blaine didn’t scare me, but these people did with the way they were clinging to any bit of flotsam in the ocean of debris - to the point where they think that a loop of music is a message from the machine-ghost gods to sacrifice one of their own once a day.  And they were fighting battles against each other without even remembering the reason they are on opposite sides.  The absolute lack of meaning in everything they do, the soul-crushing knowledge that the world is dying and there is nothing left aside from mad despair...that’s sweet honey to draw me back again and again.  Please, sir, can I have some more?

Related to my interest in this dying realm are some of the underlying themes and ideas – the interconnectedness of the world, the beam, the Dark Tower at the center of everything.  I like the overlap between Roland’s world and “our” world, I like that the Ageless Stranger and Roland’s nemesis, Marten might or might not have been Merlin (though he says he wasn’t).  The fact that events in one world become the basis of fiction in the other and that dreams seem to move between the two fascinates me.  The Gunslingers themselves, at least as they were in the past, also interest me.  I want to learn more about them and how they served as knights-errant and diplomats and basically beacons of hope in their world.  We get some glimpses of this past sprinkled throughout The Waste Lands and I want more of that too.  So, basically, I want to watch the world crumble and descend into madness and I want to see what it was before the decay set in.  I don’t care about what Susannah, Eddie and Jake do.

At the end of the day, or should we say book, what it comes down to is this: I said I would read the whole series and I will do just that.  Hopefully, you’re all enjoying following me along on this journey, whether you’ve read the books and like to watch me suffer, or you’re reading them because I’ve started to do so (I actually doubt anyone is doing this, but stranger things have happened).  So, I’ll leave you with this thought: I had better get to see a bunch of Cuthbert soon so I can either confirm or deny my possible new literary crush.

Girl on Book Action: The Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower II by Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower II by Stephen King

ISBN: 0-452-26214-3

Blurb:

The Drawing of the Three continues the epic saga of The Dark Tower, hurling The Gunslinger into the twentieth century.

Once again Stephen King masterfully interweaves dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism, as his hero, Roland, The Last Gunslinger, pursues his quest for The Dark Tower.  Roaming another world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, he is drawn through a mysterious door that brings him into 1980’s America.  Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and with beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherwordly enemies.  With a storytelling skill that is sheer magic, and with breathtaking boldness of imagination, Stephen King has risen to the peak of his power to create a compelling epic that is at once enigmatic and familiar...and always compulsively readable.

***

Aside:  Here’s your obligatory there will be spoilers for part one and quite possibly for part two of The Dark Tower series warning, but since I'm the only one who hasn't read these books, you're probably safe.  Oh, and if you want to start at the beginning of my journey here is a link to my thoughts on The Gunslinger.

My Thoughts:

You know, after reading the first one of these, I was really excited to keep reading and jumped straight into this one.  And damnit, I was disappointed.  We spend barely any time in Roland’s world, we don’t learn anything new about his history, instead, the majority of the book takes place in the real world. Ugh.  If it wasn’t for the fact that Wren assures me this book is an exception and the rest are much better, I would probably give up right now and not bother with the remaining five volumes.

I just...didn’t like this book.  Most of that had to do with the fact that Eddie Dean and the whole subplot of drug-smuggling bored me.  But, ultimately what  I didn’t like, is pretty well everything that happens.  I didn’t like that the book started with The Gunslinger getting mauled by “lobstrosities” and spending the majority of story injured and sick, half-dead pretty well.  While Roland isn’t the most interesting protagonist in the world due to his personality and lack of wit, he was still interesting enough when he was shooting people and sleeping with girls and all that.  Now, he’s maimed and half-useless, wandering around sick and weak.  I guess I should look on the bright side – since he was hurt and suffering from a pretty bad infection there were fewer discussions about the status of his balls.

Okay, let me go back to Eddie Dean, Odetta Holmes and the rest of the characters that boringly dominate this book.  The worst of these three episodes was definitely the one with Eddie, because it resulted in the most time spent in the “real” world.  I really didn’t care about him smuggling drugs, or his junkie brother, or anything about him really.  It’s hard to enjoy a book when you can’t even find a character you’re remotely interested in.  And because once wasn’t enough we had to go back for Odetta – at least she was sort of intriguing.  The whole dual-personality thing is a little over-done these days, but it’s a step up from a junkie.  I did get tired of Detta in next to no time.  In the “real” world she made sense, but in The Gunslinger’s world she was just annoying – I guess she was supposed to be, but damnit, I was bored and annoyed at this point.  By the time we get to the last door and into our world again, I was frustrated.  When the point of that venture becomes clear (I won't get into details) I was simply angry at having had to endure more time in this other world.  What intrigued me in the first book was the fantasy world of The Gunslinger, so spending all this time elsewhere didn't sit well with me.  Oh, and don’t get me started on Eddie falling in love with Odetta – I’m all for romance, but not immediate romance.  Love at first sight is a myth and here it felt forced - romance for the sake of romance, not for the purpose of plot or character development.

Ugh, okay.  Here’s a positive: while I didn’t really have an overwhelming urge to pick it back up and keep reading (aside from wanting to finish it so I could read something else) whenever I was reading it, I was absorbed despite my frustrations and disinterest.  Which is a bit of a paradox or something, but I never promised you that my mind makes sense.

Overall, I'm disappointed with this second installment, but I'm willing to put it down to "the 2nd book phenomenom" I have discussed before.  I am going to trust Wren (I know, you may question my sanity some more here) and try book three and hope for improvement, after I cleanse my pallet with The Constant Princess (so I'm doubly listening to Wren as she reviewed it recently).  Anyway, I promised you I’d see this through to the end and I will, as long as it doesn’t get worse than The Drawing of the Three.

Girl on Book Action: The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I by Stephen King

The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I by Stephen King

ISBN: 0-451-21084-0

Blurb:

In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger.

He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

(The blurb is from Goodreads.com since my copy of the book didn’t actually have one.  I hate that by the way).

***

My Thoughts:

Ah yes, I’m severely late to this particular party, but that’s true of pretty much anything Stephen King has written.  His work just has never jumped out at me as something I want to read (or at least I don’t want to read it more than the thousands of other books out there) – and yes, I’m ready to be lynched for not being a Stephen King fan.  Wait...haven’t we gone over this before?  I think we might have, so let’s move on.

I feel as though I’ve developed a bad habit on this blog.  I read and review part one of a series and then I don’t necessarily get back to you with the subsequent parts (or maybe this feeling is just all in my head) and here I am with another.  I promise, I’ll keep reading and reviewing these even if it takes a while.

Overall, I’m still not sold on King’s writing style (you know, based on the two books of his I’ve now read), but maybe it’ll grow on me.  The thing that bothered me the most is that he ends sentences with “however,” I just...no.  I think he only did this a couple of times, but it stuck with me in an unpleasant “want to fix your sentence” way.  As far as descriptions of physical reactions to fear go, I think he’s quite the master – I’ve never really thought about how to describe that clenching feeling in your gut when you’re afraid.  Actually, I think he writes physicality really well, because he doesn’t “pretty it up.”  There is nothing remotely attractive about fear, or hate, or rage.  None of these emotions are pretty.  On the flip side of this evident skill is the fact that I don’t know that I’ll really be into reading about the status of the Gunslinger’s balls for 6 more books.  Last in the “gripes about style” section, I was a little thrown off everytime a “thee / thou” showed up in conversation.  I understand that it’s meant to denote that the characters are using the High Speech of Gilead or something to that effect, but it was jarring compared with the style of the prose and just regular conversation which was gritty and a strange blend of archaic and modern.

I was surprised at how quickly I got through this book, which is to say it kept me turning pages at a good pace and I was engaged with the story.  I wanted to know what happened next and even more so what happened before.  How did Roland end up chasing a man in black across the known world?  And, honestly, the flashback sections were more interesting to me than the plod through the desert.  I wanted to learn more about the Gilead that was and then get back to the gunslinger's quest.  It doesn't help that when it comes down to it, I don’t like Roland.  I like intelligent, witty protagonists and he is repeatedly described as tenacious and a bit slow.  I know these traits have their merits; I just prefer other characteristics in a main character.  If it wasn’t for his profession, his history and his dogged search for the mysterious Tower he’d be completely unremarkable.  I was more interested in some of the secondary characters – like Cuthbert and Cort and Roland’s parents and I hope that his past gets more fleshed out as the series progresses (please don’t tell me about it! I want to find out on my own).  

I did appreciate that Roland had to make difficult decisions in order to find the man in black, his nemesis.  And the choices he made aren't necessarily the right ones, but he felt compelled to complete his quest at all cost, even if it means tarnishing his soul.  It made me wonder what I would be willing to sacrifice in his place.  So while on the whole, Roland didn't speak to me, his determination and the moral implications of his actions did resonate.

What will bring me back to reading more of the series is the world building and the mystery of the tower.  I don’t care so much about Roland and his quest, but I care about figuring out more about Gilead, about its society and history and about the Tower.  It takes some skill to draw in a reader with the promise of a world rather than an interesting main character, so there is that to applaud. *claps*  Of course, with a new book being written in the series I wonder if I should hold off and wait, rather than rushing through to the end to see what happens.  Decisions, decisions.