'Wizard and Glass' by Stephen King (Penguin Group, New York, 1997 ISBN:0-451-19728-3) This book is the fourth part of the Dark Tower sequel. This sequel describes the search of the last Gunslinger Roland of Gilead for the Dark Tower, because his world (Mid-World) is on the edge of extinction and he hopes to find a solution in the Dark Tower. His world sometimes touches our time, in the past as well as the present. These visits resulted in him having four co-travellers : Susannah, Jake, Eddie and Oy (a billy-bumbler).
Stephen King is planning to write 7 books and it takes him a lot of time to reach this goal. Therefore, the readers of this sequel
look forward each time to the next book; as was the case with this 4th one. The end of book 3 was an open end and I really
wanted to know how it went on. This 4th book starts where the 3rd finished: Roland and his party
are on a intelligent Monorail: Blaine the Pain. In order to get off this hellish machine, they must
come up with a riddle which Blaine cannot solve. Finally they succeed and they see a Green Palace. Roland then tells a part of his life-story.
And this is exactly where the book disappoints me: it seems as though King had a already finished story, couldn't use it anywhere else and just
glued it into this story. It takes the major part of the book and nothing new is revealed: in short it is boring. |