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Attention: contains spoilers if you haven't read
The Gunslinger,
The Drawing of the Three
and The Waste Lands.
In The Waste Lands, Roland's ka-tet is
finally completed. Eddie was drawn from our world in the eighties, Odetta/Detta
who became Susannah was drawn from the sixties, and Jake, who
finally happens to be the third to be drawn, escaped the
madness created by two sets of contradicting memories, when joining
Roland's world by a door located in a haunted
mansion in the Bronx. Their fellowship is joined by a billy-bumbler,
Oy, an intelligent animal that becomes Jake's friend. Together, they
walk to the town of Lud, where a very bad train, Blaine the Mono,
should take them through the desolate waste lands. After escaping
the many dangers of Lud, the ka-tet is on Blaine, who plans to
commit suicide with everyone on board. Roland manages to make a deal
with Blaine, who has one passion: riddles. Roland and his friends
will riddle Blaine all the way to Topeka (Blaine's terminus), and if
they succeed to stump him, they'll live. Otherwise, Blaine will
crash with all his passengers. The Waste
Lands ends on this
suspenseful note...
Of course the question is not whether
Roland and his friends will stump Blaine with a riddle, but rather,
which riddle will achieve this and who will think to ask it... After
the Blaine episode, the ka-tet, who has lost the path of the beam,
finds itself in a strange place, that will not be unknown to King's
fans. But of course, the main topic of Wizard and Glass is
Roland's past. Roland, who has finally made up his mind to share his
history with his friends, evokes the painful story of his first
love. Fleeing Gilead after having defied the wizard Marten, his
mother's lover, Roland is sent in hiding in the barony of Mejis, a
safe place, compared to the rest of the land where the war rages.
Roland, along with Cuthbert and Alain, is supposed to be
a misbehaving young man (Roland is only 14) sent on a punishment: he
must make a count of different items belonging to the Barony of Mejis for the Affiliation, a group of people defending the country
against John Farson, the man who brought war and death on Mid-World.
Soon, Roland meets his first love, sixteen-year-old Susan Delgado,
who has just made a promise requiring that she remains a virgin for
Hart Thorin, the mayor. While experiencing the first signs of
passionate love, Roland realizes that something is very wrong in Mejis, and that the suspiciously nice town's people have something
to hide...
While I was afraid to be unable to concentrate
on a story that would bring me far away from the tower, both in time
and space (after all, we all read the Dark Tower because we
want to get to the Dark Tower, along with Roland and his ka-tet), I appreciated to be able to know more about the mysterious Roland,
and this particular episode of his youth of course explains a lot
about who Roland became in later years. Also, it was nice to learn
more about Alain and
Cuthbert, who were often mentioned before but remained
distant. Finally, King introduces Rhea of the Cöos, mayhap one of
his most hateful characters...
Part fairy-tale (or rather witch-tale), part
western, Wizard and Glass is a coming-of-age novel. For Roland,
although already a gunslinger since he beat his teacher Cort, this
episode marks the true passage from childhood to adulthood, the loss of
innocence and the birth of the man with a quest that we know. The
many literary inspirations of the Dark Tower are even more obvious in Wizard and
Glass, and the parallel between the wizard's glass and the
Tolkien's ring was a nice touch. I am looking forward now to
catching up with everybody else, that is to say to read
Wolves of
the Calla. I used to consider The Stand as the best
Stephen King's book, but I think I have changed my mind, and I
understand why King gets frustrated when people who read him haven't
gotten around to reading the Dark Tower books. Do yourself a
favor, if you're a King's fan and if you haven't read the Dark
Tower books yet, do so now!
Rating: 
© Discussing Books, 12/18/2003
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