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Wizard & Glass: Part Four of the Dark
Tower Series. After defeating Blaine, Roland and his party arrive in
Kansas where they meet with Mother Abagail.
Commentary
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. -- Kirkus Reviews
Quotes from the Book
"The beauty of religious mania is that it
has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as
the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing
is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
"Those in the grip of a strong
drug---heroin, devil grass, true love---often find themselves trying to
maintain a precarious balance between secrecy and ecstasy as they walk the
tightrope of their lives." |
