The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, Book 2)

Rating:
Summary: Loosely drawn
Review: Stephen King's Dark Tower series has become a modern classic, with its gritty imagination and mix of fantasy and horror. "The Drawing of the Three" is an expansive follow-up to "The Gunslinger," but it's a bit slow and too devoted to setting up the main quest of the series.

Roland of Gilead wakes up on a beach, surrounded by carnivorous lobster creatures that manage to bite off fingers and part of his foot. Sick and possibly dying, he stumbles away and collapses. But he still has to find and "draw" two people to assist him in his quest for the Dark Tower. He finds a door that leads him into our world, and inside the head of Eddie Dean, a young junkie/drug smuggler. Eddie reluctantly allows Roland's voice to guide him, as his beloved brother is murdered and his drug deal self-destructs.

As Eddie goes cold turkey, Roland starts to pursue the second person: Odetta Holmes, a beautiful African-American civil-rights activist, who lost her legs when someone pushed her off a train platform. She is also schizophrenic -- she has a second personality, the foul-mouthed, psychotic Detta. Now Roland and Eddie are stuck with a woman who can turn into a malevolent killer at any moment. And now Roland pursues Jack Mort -- and runs into a familiar face from his past.

"The Drawing of the Three" is almost very good, but not quite. Unlike "The Gunslinger," this is pretty obviously a bridge between the first and third books, setting up the scene for the rest of the series. So it's rather awkward at times, as King tries to write a story around his formative characters. In that, he does a pretty good job.

King's writing is not technically very good, but it has an evocative slam-bang quality -- the lobstrosities, the doors, the airplane, the blistering postapocalyptic world that Roland lives in. The descriptions comes alive with vibrant intensity. But he doesn't seem to be at ease with the constant, sprawling flashbacks to Eddie and Odetta/Detta's past lives, which add a weirdly fragmented quality to the book. It's easy to lose track of the action.

Enigmatic gunslinger Roland doesn't get much fleshing out in this book -- it's all about Eddie and Odetta/Detta. King brings their struggles and feelings up in all their beauty and ugliness, showing Eddie's love for the brother who led him astray. Odetta/Detta is particularly interesting: One personality is a cultured, refined heiress, and the other is a murderous, racist psycho.

King stumbles over his fragmented narrative at times, but "Drawing of the Three" is a good follow-up to "The Gunslinger" and sets the stage for the remainder of the Dark Tower series.

Rating:
Summary: The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, and Death
Review: The Drawing of the Three is the second book in the Dark Tower saga, which is of course, the greatest series of books ever written. This volume introduces Eddie Dean, Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, and Jack Mort.
Eddie Dean is a heroin junkie from the 1980's.
Odetta Holmes is a civil rights activist from the 1960's, and Detta Walker is her dark half.
Jack Mort is a serial killer from the 1970's.
The second stanza continues the tale of Roland, the last of the Gunslingers who continues his trek towards the Dark Tower. He happens upon three doors standing freely along the beach. The doors open onto three different times in "our" world, out of which, Roland draws his three...(sort of)
The tale itself is very well written, and the dialogue is far superior to the original text from the Dark Tower I. This is where the course of Roland's story really begins to take its shape. From the first paragraph, picking up six hours after Roland's palaver with the Man in Black, the book moves forward at an almost un-relenting pace. Anyone who likes to read period, will enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Gives you the oomph to want to read the rest ...
Review: Though I liked THE GUNSLINGER plenty, I have to admit that this book is the one that really reels you into THE DARK TOWER series. It flows seemlessly from THE GUNSLINGER - in a way, THE DRAWING OF THE THREE is what you wake up to from the more dreamlike quality of THE GUNSLINGER. You will not be sorry you carried on with this series.

One of the great things about this book is that Stephen King breaks a few rules in the storyline i.e. the protagonist can't lose integral body parts early on a the series! King says screw the rules - and now that I'm almost done with THE WASTE LANDS - I think I understand a bit more why he felt it necessary to show the fallability of Roland, our tragic and mysterious and otherwise bad--- hero.

Anyhow, I won't go into anymore details of the book - I doubt I need to say much more about it as, if you're reading these reviews, you've probably already realized that it is your Ka that you read this book, and all the rest of them as well. By the way, I recommend going ahead and buying THE WASTE LANDS with this order since you'll undoubtedly fly through THE DRAWING ... Enjoy!