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Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)

Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)

List Price: $59.95
Your Price: $40.77
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Slow starting but worth it
Review: I enjoyed this book but not as much as the first three. I like the flashback to when Roland was 14 and out on his own with Cuthbert and Al but there is not really that much action. It took me a lot longer to read this one since it did not grab me like the first three. So far I think The Wastelands was the best and I am looking forward to the next in the series. One thing for sure is that the entire series will go down in history as a classic.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: enjoyed this volume
Review: All I seem to read and hear from everyone is how they disliked the major portion of the book which goes back to Rolands past.
I personally enjoyed this part of the book and the love story.
King is a great writer but once in a while small parts of his writing semm to make me think he is a little twisted in the mind, but very intelligent. I enjoyed this book as much as the others in the series and look forward to the next but hated to see his love get burned alive.
I suggest readers go to his web site and read his interview with amazon.com - he tells of a few other books to read that have characters that will be in the final 3 books. They include "eyes of the dragon" and "hearts in atlantis". His web site is www.stephenking.com

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: First two were amazing
Review: The Gunslinger and the drawing of the three are amazing. But 3 and 4 are lacking. Wizard and Glass rambles as if nothing was edited out. It loses focus and King just stops. I'm looking forward to the next one, but if its as much of a dog as this one was - I'm driving to the lot in NY and pulling the rose myself.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: We're back sliding
Review: This book slows the pace down a lot. King's 4th Dark Tower volume "Wizards and Glass" has Roland telling the story of when he and his former partners went to a town to investigate corruption and rebellion in Roland's father's kingdom. There he falls in love with a youg woman, and then, finaly toward the middle, things begin spirling out of control. The novel takes it cue from the movie "Shane", Shakspearian tragadies (like "Hamlet"), and more specificly "The Wizard of Oz", which gets very wierd. The romance was more of a distraction, and it was a big part of the novel. The link to "The Stand" becomes more solid in this one. This volume is good, but mostly only as a bridge to the next book.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Disappointing Continuation
Review: Although Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series is by far the most gripping and suspenseful set of books I have ever had the joy of reading, Wizard and Glass was, in my opinion, a poor addition to the series. Not only is King's grasp of human emotion desperately melodramatic, but the ungodly amount of cliche was practically unbearable.

I struggled to finish the story only for the small fraction of pages that dealt with the storyline of our small band of heroes. That was as excellent as the previous books. The flashback to Roland's past, however, was horrible, and I hated every word of it.

I would still recommend the series to anyone who loves any genre, even those who do not like King's work, as they are, as I aforementioned, outstanding. This book, however, is not up to par with the rest of them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Amazing
Review: First I am reviewing the paperback novel, but let me begin.
Wizard and Glass at first I thought was boring, but after getting through the first 300 pages, then things started to pick up. Wizard and Glass starts off where we left off in Roland's world with his ka-tet on the suidice train named Blaine.
But to stop the train from crashing at the end of the line at 800 miles an hour, Blaine loves riddles. So Roland and his ka-tet, they then devise a treaty of sort with Blaine: if Blaine cannot solve Roland's and his ka-tet's riddles, Blaine will not kill them, if they lose, then they die with Blaine.
So they go for it, but he has cracked every riddle Roland, Jake, and Susannah can come up with, but Eddie is quiet. Eddie is not quiet at all, he is always the big talker in the ka-tet.
So just when you think that they are going to die, Eddie then comes to the plate with his riddle he learned from his brother in 1978 or 79 I cant remember, and he saves their lives.
So blaine stops, and they get off the train. Now once they are off, they find themselves in Kansas, and they are close to the end world, and closer to the Tower.
The thing is, Jake finds a newspaper dating back to the 1978 novel 'The Stand' about how Kansas has been struck by a super flu called 'Captain Trips'.
Roland and his ka-tet find skeletons in cars that are jammed on the urnpike, just like when Larry Underwood had to go through when he went into the Lincoln tunnel in 'The Stand'.
Roland then decides it is time to tell his ka-tet a early tale of love and adventure, and they knew that it was going to be long, but it is something Roland has been facing for a long time.
Roland then tells the tale of his love Susan, and the story of his fellow gunslingers. Now they find out that this man named Jonas (It's Randall Flagg.) knows what to do with the Citgo oil fields and plans to take over the world, but Roland and his Ka-Tet get set up for a murder they didnt commit. The murder of the Mayor, which is supposed to be Susan's husbands, but she is only there to just bear his child.
Eventually Roland and Susan fall in love, and so we continue.
Now with the oil fields, they put a firecracker in one of the anicent pipes and BOOM! the whole field blows like a HUGE bonfire.
Now comes to the race to fight Jonas and Eldred with the Wizard's Window, which can see just about anything that it wants to, but the ball wants to work when it wants to.
I am going to stop because the ending is amazing, so if you want to see what happens, then read the novel.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Exceptional Series
Review: This series is the greatest. A definite must read. If you have not read this series, you are definitely missing out.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Romance in the middle of a horror novel?????
Review: I really enjoyed the first three Dark Tower books, so I figured I would read this one. After the first few pages, Stephen KIng goes back into Rolands past to write about Rolands first love. Gag me. It would have been ok if she was a tough female and had some substance, but she didn't! And why do we want to read a love story in the middle of a horror novel? I wanted to skip past that part, but somehow I finally got through it all and the only reason I did was because I thought that maybe it would get better. I guess it did, because she died so now we don't have to hear about her much more. However, the first three books in the series are quite good (I especially liked number 2) so do read those, and just skim this one. Hopefully book 5 will be better.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Written by the Pound Harlequin Romance
Review: I would give the first three Dark Tower books four stars. This one is offensively bad and to make matters worse, you're forced to read it all to keep up with the tales of the gunslinger. Right in the middle of this novel King makes you muddle through a 236 page Harlequin romance of the chaste Susan Delgado who must sell her virtue to the town mayor at the behest of her evil aunt. Give me a break and get me out of this screed! Just another 120 pages to go...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Ka, like a wind."
Review: As "Wizard and Glass" begins, Roland and his companions are hurtling over the wastelands, imprisoned by the mad computer Blaine the Mono, who means to destroy itself at the end of its run, taking Roland, Eddie, Jake, Susannah, and Oy with it. The only thing that can stop it is a riddle... a riddle Blaine cannot solve.

There are many suspenseful and exciting moments in the fourth book of King's Dark Tower series, and the beginning is certainly one of them. However, the story we know of Roland so far really began somewhere in the middle. Much of the story in "Wizard and Glass" is actually a story within a story, as Roland tells his companions the story of what happened to him in Mejis, one of the Outer Baronies of Mid-World, when he was fourteen. In this story we meet Cuthbert and Alain, two of Roland's dearest friends, and Susan, who he meets in Mejis and who will become the love of his life. We also hear a bit more about the rebel John Farson, and some of the events leading up to the downfall of Gilead and all Roland once held dear. At least two elements of the story presented before, in the first three volumes of the story, are resolved in this one, but new questions are raised, many strands remain, and many things remain to be resolved.

The main theme of this fourth book is the concept of fate, or destiny, or "ka," as it is called in Roland's world. Through this story, we begin to see how Roland's ka intertwines with that of everyone around him, and how it has pushed him steadily and inexorably towards the Dark Tower, whether he likes it or not. Accepting his fate is a part of Roland's nature by now, but what we see in this story is that the choice has never really been his. Whatever his fate will be, he has little choice in the matter. Whether he chooses to accept it or not, his fate is what it is. Ka sweeps all before it, like a hurricane wind blowing through the lives of all. The role of ka in the lives of all of these people becomes more clear in "Wizard and Glass," not as a vague concept but as a hard reality.

Something else that comes into play in "Wizard and Glass" is something that King has observed himself: the world he has created for the Gunslinger really encompasses all the worlds he has created before. In this story, and in the Dark Tower stories to come, we can see obvious elements from a great deal of King's other work, such as "The Stand," "Eyes of the Dragon," "The Talisman," and others. Even some of the fantasy worlds created by others are here, overlapping Roland's world. The hints we have received so far are intriguing clues to what is to come, and will likely send many readers (like me) back to other King books get more of the story.

This fourth volume of the Dark Tower is not my favorite part of the story (that would have to be the second part, "Drawing of the Three"), but it is a powerful continuation of the story so far, adding important elements and further filling out the characters. This series in general is some of the best writing King's ever done, and this book is consistently good.

A final note in particular about the illustrations... the illustrations for the Dark Tower series have been generally excellent, but Dave McKean's work for "Wizard and Glass" seems particularly well-suited to the subject matter. Combining surreal elements with a unique style of presentation, McKean captures much of the depth and darkness of the story. In the pictures that accompany this part of the story, the reader can find the hard edges and strangeness that is needed to express Roland's world, but was missing from some of the previous books' illustrations. McKean's work here is illustrative in more than one sense of the word.

One thing is clear by the end of "Wizard and Glass": whatever Roland's fate -- his ka -- is to be, he and his companions will meet it standing up. We don't know what that fate is going to be, but whatever it is they will stand, and they will be true.


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