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Summary: Love all these books
Review: I love this series, and I wish he'd write more. This is 2nd one in the series and it makes you wish for more. Memorable.
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Summary: More Dark Tower brilliance!
Review: Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth...Another installment in this captivating and addictive series.
This book has more of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, more suspense, more gorgeously mystical storyline...and the coolest, deadliest intelligent mass transit in all the worlds! These books are King's giant epic, his life's great opus, and they're so darn good I keep reading them over and over while waiting for the next one! Go get this book!
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Summary: Strange and Wondrous Realms
Review: Book III of the Dark Tower series continues the quest defined in the first book (The Gunslinger) with the traveling companions introduced in the second book (The Drawing of the Three). This book is basically a group of adventure episodes: an encounter with a 70 foot high bio-mechanical bear (Shardik), relic of a past age, a strange fight with a demon, a visit to a dying suburban village, an abduction and running battle in a ghost town city, and finally a fantastic trip on a suicidal mono-rail train. Each episode provides a little more insight into Roland's fantastical world, both past and present. By the end of this book, a fairly coherent picture of this world emerges, from its obvious high technology past, to its current sadly deteriorated state, to some of the rationale behind why certain things work the way they do in this world. The book is very action oriented; there is very little reflection on grander philosophical themes here, and continuing character development of the main characters is fairly minimal. There is a nice variant on the old time-travel paradox. In The Gunslinger, the boy Jake is sacrificed to Roland's determination to catch the 'man in black'. In this story, we find Jake alive and well and still living in (our) New York, due to an action by Roland in The Drawing of the Three that caused the previous history to never occur. But both Roland and Jake have memories of the 'other' past, and this duality is slowly driving both to the edge of insanity. The resolution of this problem requires that Jake be brought back to Roland's world, and how this is accomplished forms the major portion of one of the 'episodes'. At various points throughout this book, King makes allusions to other famous science-fiction and fantasy authors and their creations (and some of his own), from Richard Adams (Shardik and Watership Down) to Isaac Asimov's 'positronic' brains of his robot stories, to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit with its riddling games. For those who have read these works, these allusions provide an enhanced view of this world and how it works, but I am not sure how well some of this plays with readers who haven't read these other works. Overall, this book is a page-turner, and does a good job of holding the reader's interest in the fate of the major characters and the overall resolution of the quest. The ending of this book is a cliff-hanger, like the movie serials of old, and for this reason I don't recommend you start this book unless you have a copy of book IV, Wizard & Glass, handy, as you will definitely want to immediately find out the resolution to the end situation here.
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Summary: A seminal book in the series
Review: This one is long and a bit drawn out. But it's good overall. The wayfarers make it out of the beach and into the forest where they confront a huge bear that is the guardian of the beam, which is one of several paths to the dark tower. They go through adventure after adventure and end up on an insane train named Blaine who engages them in a riddling game to save their lives. This story ends with a huge cliffhanger that if I had read this novel when it was printed, would really have angered me. But thankfully, I had a copy of DT 4 to come right afterwards. This one isn't a must read, but it's a should read.
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Summary: The series builds steam
Review: Of the four current books in the series, this is my personal favorite. All the books in the series are five star books, and it's difficult to compare them to each other, but allow me to try. "The Gunslinger" introduces the world and the hero, Roland, who brings new meaning to the word "badass". It's a fantastic book, one I've read many times, and it was written long before King became the literary superpower he is now. It sets the tone, theme and conflict of the series. "The Drawing of the Three" introduces Roland's motley crew and estblihes King's own private multiverse. It was written after King had established himself with a great body of work to borrow from. "Wizard and Glass, the newest installment, explores Roland's past, and is mainly a love story. Although the book is an entertaining and powerful read, it puts the current story on hold to make room for a major flashback that is the bulk of the book. The pace is much slower compared to "The Waste Lands" Which brings me to "The Waste Lands", the third installment of the series. While all the books have a literary depth that eludes all modern fantasy, this book is definitely the most exciting. Being as the series takes place in King's invented continuity, it allows his imagination to run wild, creating a world where giant, cyborg bears with radar dishes on their heads wreak havok on unsuspecting campers. Finally, with this third book, the reader really begins to explore the bizarre depths of this world. Since the foreplay has already been rendered, for the most part, with the first two books, we get right to the good stuff. There is one major detour back to the "real" world, but it's done in a very different vain than the ones in the "Drawing of the Three" and adds a sense of immediacy that King is so good at. King is fond of what I like to think of as the "degenerating man" devise, and he uses it well in this book. When I say degenerating man, think "Thinner" or "The Shining". Something is wrong, and as the story progresses it gets worse and worse and worse. Death by inches. I don't want to spoil to much plot for those who haven't read it. The rest of the book is a tour through King's little playground of nastiness. From insane mass-transit systems to diseased, pirate-talking bandits, this book contains some of the most colorful characters of all Kings books. The Hardback and oversized TPB included some excellent illustrations along the way, but they aren't necessary. I think this is the body of work that King will be most remembered for in the future. It has a weight and size that envelpoes all of his other work and is his most ambitous project to date. Roland's spirituality of "Ka", an almagamation of Christianity, Zen and more mystical religions, is as believebale and as fascinating as Lucas's pre-Episode 1 "force". Also similar to Star Wars, but to a greater degree, King has made his own mythology complete with undying archetypes and the perpetual, if a bit tragic, hero. King's world blends Tolkien, Lovecraft, Milton, Chaucer, Stevenson, Spagetti Westerns, The Wizard of Oz and his own work into a world where anything is possible and everything is dangerous. My review may seem to describe a work of fantasy, but make no mistake, this is much more. I've recommended this series to people who aren't fans of King or fans of fantasy, and I've never heard anyone complain. Some King fans have a hard time getting through "The Gunslinger" because it's so unlike his other work. So, even if you've never read fantasy or a Stephen King book, please give this series a try. If you started to read Gunslinger and couldn't get into it for the above reason, I encourage you to try again. If you've managed to get through the slower parts of some of King's longer books, you should have no problem working your way through the series. Believe me, it only gets better as it goes.
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Summary: Ever Nearer They Draw
Review: Not Since Tolken's Lord of the Rings Trilogy have I been so intent on reading every one of the books. King does a wonderful job with this installment. As we travel with Roland, Jake, Eddie and Susanna toward the Dark Tower we begin to learn more about Roland and his world. Roland begins to train Eddie and Susanna knowing the importance that they are to play in the ultimate climax when they finally arrive at their destination. This installment of the Dark Tower series was wonderful. It was well worth the wait. If you like King or if you like fantasy, READ this series. King is no J. R. R. Tolken, but this is a fantasy series that you won't want to miss.
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Summary: definetly one of King's best...
Review: King's talent at writing horror is equal to his talent for writing fantasy. this book is a really good read, and it is definetly not a waste of your time. there is really only one major problem: once you start his dark tower series, you can't stop.
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Summary: ... GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Best book in the series, ... this book was good. Anyways I'll spare you the story, you can get the jist below (or maybe pick the ... thing up and give it a try!!!!)--but all the best action in the series happens here, I mean come on. I'm a love of realist post-apocalyptic tales and in this book you have a 70 foot robotic bear that is insane, you have a dead city, mutants, and a psychotic train, what more could you want -- so trust me, give it a try, Please, we need people reading better books out there and this is one of them -- give King a chance, sure he's already got a ...load of money, but he's worth it everytime.
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Summary: First half - 3 stars; second half - 5 stars!
Review: Yes, Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series is worth continuing, although The Wasteland isn't without shortcomings! King gives us a distinctly different style with each book, and has succeeded thusfar with the exception of the first half of this book. After the cryptic and mysterious Gunslinger and the rip-roaring Drawing of the Three, King hits a little bit of a rut trying to reintroduce Jake, the boy you should recognize from The Gunslinger. The first half is a bit of a drag, plodding through a lot of half-baked, formulaic filler before returning to the real meat of the story - Roland's quest. Fortunately, King makes up for it with a memorable and exciting second half, wherein the weary travelers brave a Mad-Max like post-apocolyptic city with some VERY unfriendly inhabitants. A worthy, if flawed read.
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Summary: Fear In A Handful of Dust
Review: The Waste Lands is a significant improvement on the somewhat-disappointing The Drawing of the Three. Freed at last from the need to provide backstory on the new characters, seemingly less intent on trying to impress the reader with his dexterity, King has settled down and made this book much more what it should be: A raucous ripsnorting fantasy adventure, full of action, excellent characters, portents, omens, and the like. This is a story populated by demons and ghosts from a past world that has indeed moved on. Jake Chambers in New York and Roland in Mid-World are troubled by ghosts in particular, as they are slowly driven mad by twin sets of memories, one in which Jake dies at the hands of Jack Mort, meets Roland in the desert, then dies again under the mountain ("Go, then. There are other worlds than these.") -- and one in which they never meet. Neither is able to reconcile these conflicting memories, though each searches for a way. The resolution comes at a stone circle, in battle with a pair of demons, in one of the tensest scenes King has ever written. Other ghosts occupy this landscape as well; Shardik, the giant Guardian bear, a leftover of the Great Old Ones who ruled Mid-World before the Cataclysm, menaces our heroes early on. David Quick, the Robin-Hood-like, legendary ruler of Lud, haunts the latter half of the story to some degree. Lud itself is a ghost, the cracked and shattered specter of a majestic city which has regressed to almost complete savagery. (Of course, no good Western should be without a ghost town; here King gives us an entire ghost city!)The residents of River Crossing, a sleepy, dying village where the travelers and their newly-adopted mascot, a "billy-bumbler" named Oy, take respite before their horrifying journey into the dead city of Lud, are ghosts as well -- ghosts of the Gunslinger's former life, when he and his kind were not only respected but revered as great heroes. Eddie Dean is haunted by the teasing revenant of his brother, Henry; his wife Susannah, by her own personal demon Detta Walker, and by her newly-discovered pregnancy with Eddie, of which she is most frightened, especially after her battle with the incubus-demon at the stone circle, moreso as their journey takes her through the mutant-infested, radiation diseased Waste Lands -- what kind of birth, she nervously (and rightfully) thinks, will result from all her horrifying experiences? The implications of this are horrifying indeed to contemplate -- but even more horrifying is the revelation that comes towards the story's climax, as Lud is tearing itself apart and Blaine is killing its inhabitants. I won't tell you what it is, but if you're a loyal King reader, the sheer adrenaline rush of "Oh, no! Not HIM!" that you will experience makes all that came before mere prologue. You realize, with a sinking feeling, that the stakes have just been raised immmeasurably, and that not only are Roland and his compatriots in grave danger, the road they're on has just gotten that much harder. Simply put (and that's a first for me), The Waste Lands is the second-best book in this great series, just behind Wizard and Glass. You can just feel King gearing up for something big here, and I for one can't wait.
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