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Wizard and Glass, the
fourth episode in King's white-hot Dark Tower series, is a
sci-fi/fantasy novel that contains a post-apocalyptic
Western love story twice as long. It begins with the series'
star, world-weary Roland, and his world-hopping posse (an
ex-junkie, a child, a plucky woman in a wheelchair, and a
talking dog-like pet named Oy the Bumbler) trapped aboard a
runaway train. The train is a psychotic multiple personality
that intends to commit suicide with them at 800
m.p.h.--unless Roland and pals can outwit it in a riddling
contest.
It's a great race, for the mind and pulse. Movies should be
this good. Then comes a 567-page flashback about Roland at
age 14. It's a well-marbled but meaty tale. Roland and two
teen homies must rescue his first love from the dirty old
drooling mayor of a post-apocalyptic cowboy town, thwart a
civil war by blowing up oil tanks, and seize an all-seeing
crystal ball from Rhea, a vampire witch. The love scenes are
startlingly prominent and earthier than most romance novels
(they kiss until blood trickles from her lip).
After an epic battle ending in a box canyon to end all box
canyons, we're back with grizzled, grown-up Roland and the
train-wreck survivors in a parallel world: Kansas in 1986,
after a plague. The finale is a weird fantasy takeoff on The
Wizard of Oz Some readers will feel that the latest novel in
King's most ambitious series has too many pages -- almost
800 -- but few will deny it's a page-turner. |
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Publisher's Weekly
"I have written enough novels and stories to fill a
solar system of the imagination, but Roland's story is my
Jupiter," declares the Jove of popular novelists in his
afterword to this bountiful fourth volume (of a projected
seven) in the epic tale of Roland the Gunslinger. King began
writing this alternate-world western saga in 1970, four
years before Carrie saw print, but the first volume came out
only in 1976 and subsequent volumes in 1989 and 1991. Each
appeared in a limited edition hardcover from Grant, then in
Plume trade paperbacks that sold wildly, as the Plume
edition (see below) of this novel should-for while this
isn't King at his most accomplished, it is King at his most
ebullient. He's at his best here -- as a resourceful
explorer of humanity's shadow side, as a storyteller who can
set pages on fire -- but also, at times, at his worst -- as
a purveyor of tasteless, pompous near-juvenilia. A recap of
the earlier volumes guides readers into this entry, the
longest yet, which opens with Roland and his band held
captive on an impossibly fast train run by a homicidal
computer. Once that menace is dealt with (in a way that
invites adults to snigger like adolescents), Roland regales
his fellows with the novel's core story, an acutely tragic
tale of youthful love involving a witch, a diabolical
crystal ball, a tear between worlds, betrayal, murder and
dazzling action. The narrative concludes with a visit to a
nightmarish, latter-day Oz. Mixing horror, fantasy both high
and low, western icons and pop references, the novel lacks
structural rigor and sometimes even sense, but it sweeps
readers up in such swells of passion that few may notice, or
care. Illustrated.
Library Journal
Frank Muller's reading of King's fourth book in a
projected seven-part series (e.g., The Waste Lands: The Dark
Tower, Bk. 3, Audio Reviews LJ 2/15/92) is effective in
creating a suspenseful and fearful atmosphere. We find
Roland, the knight errant/gunslinger, continuing his quest
to attain the Dark Tower, the source of destructive forces
in his Mid-World. A major portion of this work is a
recounting by Roland of his ill-fated love affair with Susan
Delgado. The writing is expectedly imaginative, the story
line engrossing, and the characters vivid. The listener is
carried along through alternating Western, urban, and
futuristic settings. The work stands on its own,
incorporating a summary of Books 1-3, but will be better
appreciated if listened to as part of the whole. Recommended
for sf/fantasy collections and Stephen King fans.
-- Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter College, New York
AudioFile - Ruth P. Ludwig
Frank Muller performs the epic of Roland of Gilead and
his friends as they continue their search for the elusive
Dark Tower. His reading marks the first in the audio series
not performed by King himself. Muller gives us all the
gritty vocalizations and subtle intonations of the author’s
reading, and more. The witch Rhea cackles and creaks with
creepy conviction. Roland goes from his forties to his teens
and back again, with total realism in the aging and pacing
of his voice. Eddie Dean of New York blurts his oily
Brooklyn street speech with shocking clarity and
consistency, and ’Detta Walker converses in the fluent
Ebonics of the ’60’s. King’s intricate plot twists take the
audience in and out of worlds and times, each of which calls
for variations of dialect and several social classes. Muller
rises to the challenge. R.P.L. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
After a five-year lapse, King's gargantuan cowboy
romance about Roland of Gilead (the Gunslinger) hits volume
four, with three more planned.
King's behemoth was begun in 1970 and published serially as
The Gunslinger (1988), followed by The Drawing of the Three
(1989) and The Waste Lands (1992). Volume one was
portentously sophomoric, volume two prime King, volume three
slack. Though this latest begins where The Waste Lands
leaves off, with Roland and his four companions, Jake,
Eddie, Susannah, and Oy, a half human/half animal with
limited speaking ability, in a verbal gunfight to the death
with Blaine, the homicidal supercomputer that lives on
riddles, the story doubles back on Roland's youth and his
grand love for Susan Delgado. The roundabout narrative leads
us to Wizard of Oz territory—more particularly to a horribly
transformed Topeka, Kansas—which the quintet must pass
through as they seek the Dark Tower, the hub of creation,
where Roland will discover some knowledge that will halt the
quickening destruction of his post- technological Mid-World.
In 1986, Topeka and the nation are huge graveyards struck by
the superflu from The Stand. Roland retells the story of his
youthful adventures in Gilead and of his teacher Cort, of
star-crossed Susan, and of his companions Alain and
Cuthbert, while reading portents in the wizard Maerlyn's
glass ball . . . . Will the Path of the Beam from the Dark
Tower be from the lighthouse in King's Castle Rock film
logo?
In Roland's quest tale, which King calls "my Jupiter" among
the solar system of his published works, the bleak cosmology
of self-assurance versus wrongness is as compelling as ever.
But seven rambling volumes of bemusedly wry storytelling?
This will be The Ring Cycle on top of The Lord of the Rings. |
