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ggcd1981's review
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I’ve been reading The Dark Tower and I have been enjoying my time with it…that is, until Wizard and Glass. I’ll cut to the chase, Wizard and Glass was pure dogshit. This fourth installment of The Dark Tower was painful to read. The worst book I’ve read in years. The misogyny, sexism and Objectification of Female Character was unbearable and I read The Dresden Files. The book started fairly good with Roland and his companions winning against Blaine The mono in a potentially fatal riddle contest thanks to Eddie’s out of the box thinking by using his “bad jokes” to stump Blaine. After that the Ka-tet gets to a version of the city of Topeka, Kansas, where everyone died of the superflu or "Captain Trips" (a reference to The Stand). They travel along the road where they see and hear a thinny, a silver-green cloud of fog. A thinny is a place where reality has been eroded away. The sound that a thinny produces is extremely unpleasant and yet will lure nearby people in. Thinnies have become more common since the "world has moved on."
Roland then decides is time to tell his friends of his past and what he considers his mistakes. Sitting around a camp fire he tells his tale to Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy and that boring to death tale is over 90% of the book. Roland tells as his old friends Cuthbert and Alain together with himself were send from Gilead with false names and false backstory to the distant town of Hambry, in the Barony of Mejis, back in their teenage years. They were send there by their fathers to get them away from the war with John Farson’s men but the three boys end up stumbling upon a plan from some of Hambry’s men to help the same Farson against the Affiliation for money. The plan is to provide John Farson’s army with horses, with oil to fuel his war machines from before the world had “moved on”, and most importantly protecting and returning Farson’s wizard glass. Executing this plan were the three mercenaries known as the Big Coffin Hunters, Eldred Jonas, a failed gunslinger, being their leader.
This plot was already only mildly interesting, however the main focus of the tale was not this plan it was actually the romance between Roland and Susan Delgado, the teen girl who is promised to become the mistress to the town’s old, married Mayor Thorin, and bear him a child. Whoever told Stephen King that he could write Romance lied to his face. Roland and Susan’s Romance is the most boring and unbearable romance I have ever seen in book or movie. They had no chemistry, Roland loves her because she is pretty and Susan loves him because he is the first boy to make her horny. The book is ridiculously long and yet Stephen King failed to build any real, solid reason for Roland and Susan to love each other, other than she is pretty….have I mention she is pretty? because Stephen King sure did, in almost every scene Susan took part in. Including making Cuthbert, Roland’s best friend back then, feel jealous, envious and hostile towards his “best” friend because she was apparently unresisteble ….and making me disgusted by this being an issue in a real friendship as we are supposed to believe they had. Other thing King seemed to want to mention every chance he had was Susan’s virginity. In the pen of Mr. King Susan’s virginity was a character in itself. Every chance he got he found new ways of mention it to the point that for most of the book her virginity seemed the most important thing about Miss Delgado’s plot. I read a review that said that Susan Delgado’s virginity didn’t need a book written about it. I agree whole heartily. Stephen King didn’t. This brings me to another point that made me hate the story: the treatment of female characters. The objectification is ridiculously bad. Susan seemed only to be able to say goodbye to Roland by leading him to squeeze her boob. Silly me, how can I call myself a woman when I never knew that the way for a woman to express love and sorrow for parting with the man she loves is by making him squeeze her boobs. NO, King just no. This may sound romantic to your creepy old man brain but boob squeezing is not a woman’s choice idea for showing her deepest, strongest feelings when parting with the “supposedly” love of her life. It makes as much sense for a woman to do that as to a man to say goodbye to the love of his life, a woman he doesn’t know he will be able to keep seeing or will lose her definitely, by putting her hand on his balls and making her squeeze them. If “goodbye balls squeeze” doesn’t sound romantic, deep and meaningful to a man a “goodbye boob squeeze” is not romantic, deep or meaningful to a woman either. This is something only a male author would write. This is only the most laughably bad example of objectification, but it is constant, almost every female character has their breast or hips mentioned at one point or another. The author constantly writes that this series’ world “has moved on” but it did not move on, it “moved back”. If it had moved on it would be a world where women would be as ruthless as men, if not more, in their attempt at surviving a world with crumbling institutions. But what Roland’s world, a place that clearly at some point had known progress, shows is a “moving back” in time to when women were subjected to men’s mercy and this, to me, is bullshit. If at some point this world had known progress, technology and modern thinking, there is no way you will convince me women as people will collectively just shut up and go back quietly to subject themselves to be nothing more than wives, mothers, daughters or prostitutes again. It is very short sighted for King to think that. To me a world that “moved on” would look a lot different than the one described by the author, with women, who had already known the taste of freedom, becoming even more ruthless than men to be able to survive it without lowering their heads ever again. In my opinion is highly unlikely that a formerly enslaved and oppressed people which now has known freedom will collectively lower their heads and go back to be enslaved and oppressed just like they were before only because modern institutions crumbled. So excuse me if I don’t buy that in a world that has truly “moved on” women would just go “well, I cannot sue this creepy man for sexual assault because there are no laws against that anymore, so I better shut up, become his mistress and bear him a child” instead of putting a bullet or knife through him and any other men that would try that.
Roland then decides is time to tell his friends of his past and what he considers his mistakes. Sitting around a camp fire he tells his tale to Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy and that boring to death tale is over 90% of the book. Roland tells as his old friends Cuthbert and Alain together with himself were send from Gilead with false names and false backstory to the distant town of Hambry, in the Barony of Mejis, back in their teenage years. They were send there by their fathers to get them away from the war with John Farson’s men but the three boys end up stumbling upon a plan from some of Hambry’s men to help the same Farson against the Affiliation for money. The plan is to provide John Farson’s army with horses, with oil to fuel his war machines from before the world had “moved on”, and most importantly protecting and returning Farson’s wizard glass. Executing this plan were the three mercenaries known as the Big Coffin Hunters, Eldred Jonas, a failed gunslinger, being their leader.
This plot was already only mildly interesting, however the main focus of the tale was not this plan it was actually the romance between Roland and Susan Delgado, the teen girl who is promised to become the mistress to the town’s old, married Mayor Thorin, and bear him a child. Whoever told Stephen King that he could write Romance lied to his face. Roland and Susan’s Romance is the most boring and unbearable romance I have ever seen in book or movie. They had no chemistry, Roland loves her because she is pretty and Susan loves him because he is the first boy to make her horny. The book is ridiculously long and yet Stephen King failed to build any real, solid reason for Roland and Susan to love each other, other than she is pretty….have I mention she is pretty? because Stephen King sure did, in almost every scene Susan took part in. Including making Cuthbert, Roland’s best friend back then, feel jealous, envious and hostile towards his “best” friend because she was apparently unresisteble ….and making me disgusted by this being an issue in a real friendship as we are supposed to believe they had. Other thing King seemed to want to mention every chance he had was Susan’s virginity. In the pen of Mr. King Susan’s virginity was a character in itself. Every chance he got he found new ways of mention it to the point that for most of the book her virginity seemed the most important thing about Miss Delgado’s plot. I read a review that said that Susan Delgado’s virginity didn’t need a book written about it. I agree whole heartily. Stephen King didn’t. This brings me to another point that made me hate the story: the treatment of female characters. The objectification is ridiculously bad. Susan seemed only to be able to say goodbye to Roland by leading him to squeeze her boob. Silly me, how can I call myself a woman when I never knew that the way for a woman to express love and sorrow for parting with the man she loves is by making him squeeze her boobs. NO, King just no. This may sound romantic to your creepy old man brain but boob squeezing is not a woman’s choice idea for showing her deepest, strongest feelings when parting with the “supposedly” love of her life. It makes as much sense for a woman to do that as to a man to say goodbye to the love of his life, a woman he doesn’t know he will be able to keep seeing or will lose her definitely, by putting her hand on his balls and making her squeeze them. If “goodbye balls squeeze” doesn’t sound romantic, deep and meaningful to a man a “goodbye boob squeeze” is not romantic, deep or meaningful to a woman either. This is something only a male author would write. This is only the most laughably bad example of objectification, but it is constant, almost every female character has their breast or hips mentioned at one point or another. The author constantly writes that this series’ world “has moved on” but it did not move on, it “moved back”. If it had moved on it would be a world where women would be as ruthless as men, if not more, in their attempt at surviving a world with crumbling institutions. But what Roland’s world, a place that clearly at some point had known progress, shows is a “moving back” in time to when women were subjected to men’s mercy and this, to me, is bullshit. If at some point this world had known progress, technology and modern thinking, there is no way you will convince me women as people will collectively just shut up and go back quietly to subject themselves to be nothing more than wives, mothers, daughters or prostitutes again. It is very short sighted for King to think that. To me a world that “moved on” would look a lot different than the one described by the author, with women, who had already known the taste of freedom, becoming even more ruthless than men to be able to survive it without lowering their heads ever again. In my opinion is highly unlikely that a formerly enslaved and oppressed people which now has known freedom will collectively lower their heads and go back to be enslaved and oppressed just like they were before only because modern institutions crumbled. So excuse me if I don’t buy that in a world that has truly “moved on” women would just go “well, I cannot sue this creepy man for sexual assault because there are no laws against that anymore, so I better shut up, become his mistress and bear him a child” instead of putting a bullet or knife through him and any other men that would try that.
I liked Cuthbert, Alain and Sheemie, a neurodivergent character, who after being saved by Cuthbert from being killed became a loyal friend to him, Roland, Alain and Susan. Nonetheless Roland’s long tale overall was absolutely awfully boring and irritating to read. My enjoyment of this book was almost zero. I only enjoyed the parts that involved Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy, but those were too little in face of my suffering during the tedious parts. This book was an over 27 hours audiobook that bored me and pissed me off so I cannot give it more than 1 star. Still, I will continue the series because I trust now we will get back to the characters I care about and to the main plot, the dark tower.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Blood, Body shaming, Death of parent, Gun violence, Death, Misogyny, Murder, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Sexism, Body horror, Ableism, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Grief, Infidelity, Kidnapping, and Mental illness
Moderate: Alcohol, Infertility, Rape, Cursing, Fatphobia, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse
Minor: War
luciawolfie's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I really enjoyed this one, but my biggest issue is why is the age of the main characters. When you are talking about "young men" I am thinking 18-25 yo, not tweens. I always aged them up in my head, because from the age given in the story they wouldn't even have gone through puberty yet.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Grief, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Torture, War, Animal cruelty, Classism, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, and Child death
Moderate: Infidelity and Infertility
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