The story of Roland’s youth is effective, and shows his gradual transition into the man he will become. However, if you manage your expectations and treat this book as the opportunity to see another glimpse of Roland’s past, as well as a bit more of Mid-World, you will not be disappointed. They listen silently (even Eddie!) and when it is time to move on, the book ends.

That’s all well and good, but if you are hoping for more adventures with the gunslingers you know, this book is a disappointment. Two, the ways in which storytelling, frame narratives, and meta-narrative remind us of both the fictionality of what we are reading, and the way that stories and how we tell them shape our understanding of our own lives. One, the tricky, often reflexive, relationship between hero and author.

That King would choose to use Roland (one in the past, one in the “present” of the Dark Tower story) to narrate both stories is appropriate to two of the dominant themes of the second half of the Dark Tower series. Within that story, young Roland narrates a Gilead fairy-tale about a young boy on a quest. Team Roland gets stuck in a storm and pass the night with a story narrated by Roland-one that explains an adventure he had shortly after the events he’d described in WaG. Sadly, The Wind Through the Keyhole suffers from the same fault as Wizard and Glass. Roland’s past is interesting, but not (for me) as fascinating. Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy are what make the Dark Tower emotionally fulfilling. It is a fascinating book, but often clumsy: I have re-read it numerous times, and I have begun to skip Roland’s narrative in favor of those narrated by Sai King himself. Wizard and Glass was split between stories that featured the heroes of the Dark Tower series (Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy) and Roland’s storytelling of his own past and first love. The Wind Through the Keyhole fits between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. But now in 2012 he has discovered that his “old friends had a little more to say.” “It was a great gift to find them again,” he says, “years after I though their stories were told.” Us hardy Dark Tower fanatics were equally pleased to hear that we would have the chance to see our old friends-although some of us may wish they had a bit more to do and a bit less to say. Stephen King finished his magnum opus, the seven-book Dark Tower series, in 2004.

The dark tower 4.5