Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)

Rating:
Summary: Wizard & Glass Audiobook a Failure????
Review: I cannot tell everyone how much I anticipated and had sleeples nights prior to it's release. I am a big audiobook fan, and I have all the other audiobooks from the Gunslinger series. The thing that dissapointed me about Wizard & Glass is that Frank Muller is now reading the Gunslinger story. Now don't get me wrong I love Frank Muller reading Stephen King works, but not the Gunslinger series. Stephen King has been reading the Gunslinger series from the beginning and now in the middle of the series Frank Muller reading Roland?? What is that?? As far as I am concerned the familiar voices and quirks that Stephen King put into his characters, are now dead!! The Gunslinger and his band of Gunslingers live no more in Wizard & Glass! I am dissapointed and dismayed by this audiobook in theis series. I plead to Stephen King to go back and record a second version with his own voice to bring back Oi, Detta Walker, Jake, Blaine the Mono and most of all Roland. Please feel free to email me with your comments of this review.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a believable fairy tale.
Review: I admit it, I am a Stephen King junkie. Everything he writes, I read. That's not to say that everything that he writes I enjoy. But, I enjoy the Gunslinger series, but the only reason that I cannot give King the 10 he so richly deserves is that he frustrates all of us fans with both his imagination (intertwining Mid-World of Roland with the Midwest of "The Stand" [apocalyptic scenes, people; Abigail, the Dark Man, Randall Flagg...'my life for you'...what more proof do you need?] and the final vision of "Insomnia", drawn-out story-lines that may at times be overwritten, and his incomprehensible knack of making me want to drop-kick his books along the floor, simply because I want to know what happened), and his vulnerability. At this rate, King may very well die before he can write the next two or three books which we all will be waiting for. I will read them, and all those in between, and I can only hope they are as good as King promises.

Rating:
Summary: King Could Have Done Better
Review: It was good to finally read another chapter in the adventures of Roland and company but this book was definitely not worth the wait of so many years. I must say that all the readers who claim this book to be 500 pages of "filler" are out of their minds though. What if King had told this part of the story in Volume I instead? It's part of Roland's story so it needed telling. And it was definitely not a boring tale. The gunslinger apprentices vs. the Big Coffin Hunters was a great tale and very captivating. I thought the Blain situation was resolved too quickly and neatly however-all those years of waiting to see how the cliffhanger would resolve itself and King wraps it up in a few pages! What a letdown! I thought the Oz thing was really hokey. I mean Puhleeze! Susannah bearing similarity to Dorothy, Oy to Toto, and Roland, Eddie, and Jake to the tinman, lion, and scarecrow was just not what I would have expected from a writer who gave us the greatest parts 1,2, and 3 of a series of novels, possibly ever. And Randall Flagg being involved is a little to my distaste. I realize he is King's ubiquitous villain, showing up in different forms in The Stand, Eyes of the Dragon, etc. but it's just an idea thats been recycled too many times. In the forthcoming volumes I expect more info on Cuthbert and Alain because there's no way I can trust the witch saying that they were killed by Roland. I'd also like to know more about Roland's gunslinger training with Cort, his childhood, and his trip out of Gilead to where Part I began, so we can catch up on ALL that has happened this far. I'd also like to hear the whole story of the 12 guardians of the portals and where each portal is supposed to take someone, even if only just speculation. King says there are about 3 parts left in the series, one about the rose in the parking lot-I hope he can find more to write about than just the rose and all that it stands for. Stephen King, please don't let us down with part V.

Rating:
Summary: The Dark Tower's power is as stong as ever.
Review: Many King fans and many more diehard Dark Tower fans have been waiting for this book a long, long time... And Stephen king has made good on this fourth chapter of his greatest work ever. Avid readers of King will find haunting allusions to almost every other major work he has written in this book, prompting discussion and prediction among friends about what the next book might possibly hold in store. Wizard and Glass also manages to tie up many loose ends that were left (seemingly purposefully) dangling at the end of Dark Tower III. This book is everything it promised to be and more.

Rating:
Summary: Who needs the Dark Tower most, King or Roland?
Review: The Dark Tower seris is clearly deeply linked to Stephen King's own inner demons, the Dark Tower in a sense is the exploration of his own mind, and the search for the tower appears to be a reaching for some end world, perhaps not just of Roland's quest but ultimately of King's too. The story of Susan and Roland took a while to drag me in, I had a constant nagging feeling that this was not why I was here. I was wrong I was hear to see and understand and appreciate the whyness of Roland and his quest. Did I care at the end when she died? Yes I did and this surprised me, in a sense we all knew disaster was going to befall her, but I hoped she would be locked away in some other world which Roland might revisit in some future novel. It was important in another way too; King is exploring this story as are we, Roland's mystic quest is paralleled by King's quest to seek out the meaning and whyness of this story for himself. Why is he writing this book, why has this story captured him so. King is not only exploring Roland's world he is trying to understand himself. As such we get a fascinating glimpse, opaque though it may be of why King thinks like he does, what drives him to spend hours cramped over a computer pouring out words. Roland's answer and King's answer are the same thing, the Dark Tower, we know little because King knows little when we know so will he, this is why all his worlds are combining here King and all his baggage are also sloughing towards Bethlehem waiting to be born. So are we all. Excellent work.

Rating:
Summary: Bulky, overweight, but still a lot of fun.
Review: Stephen King over writes. His works are bulky, overweight. But everyone knows that. The stories aren't slow, they're just fat. This story, like others, is probably more than some would prefer, but why read the Dark Tower series just of a short story fix? This book isn't a Burger King quick meal, but it's a long wonderful feast for those who know Roland.

Rating:
Summary: The Genius of his Genre Returns
Review: Steven King just keeps getting better and better. His more recent novels, including INSOMNIA, DESPERATION, and, finally, the long-awaited DARK TOWER IV, WIZARD AND GLASS, show that age and experience are sitting well with the world's best-selling novelist. Unlike the other Dark Tower books, this one gives a hint of Roland's inner self, and a startling link between the ka-tet of the past and that of the present. Possibly the best King yet.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the series (in my oppinion)
Review: VERY good book, I'd recommend it even if you haven't read the other three in the series! And reading the note from the author (afterword), it looks like there's to be a few more in the Darktower series! I can only hope..

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT!
Review: Once Again, the master of fiction has proven himself worthy of the title. I love the Gunslinger series and was ecstatic when I saw that the fourth book had finally been published. If you like this series you have to get this book.

Rating:
Summary: King lights out, flashes back, and fleshes out
Review: In Wizard and Glass, Stephen King turns around and spends the bulk of his volume answering the questions he has raised in the three previous volumes of the Dark Tower series. We meet the mysterious and lost Susan who haunts the memory of Roland of Gilead, and learn why she rides with him as surely as do his three living companions. King takes his time with this flashback, and dives deeply into the lives of the teenaged Roland and his friends Cuthbert and Alain. More than the other three volumes, W&G looks inward to address Roland's motives, his history, and even his rigidly controlled emotions. W&G makes a fine center volume to the series, explaining some issues introduced earlier, while opening the door a crack to many more mysteries still to come. I particularly enjoyed the parallels I found to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, with its Dark Tower at the end of the road, its seeing stone, and the almost irresistible danger of being sucked into its evil madness.