A review by zgonzale
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

4.0

Ok, I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this book. On one hand, I very much enjoyed finally getting the full background story of Roland's first mission as a Gunslinger (as well as that of his first great love). I also loved how the ripples from Roland's story connect back through the rest of the series and some of Stephen King's other work (Sheb the tavern pianist, Marten is Merlin is Randall Flagg, Topeka of The Stand, etc.) To me, these connections enrich the mythology of not only The Dark Tower series, but also the collective universe shared by all of Stephen King's work. One the other hand, this book was tre-MEN-dously long. While one of Stephen King's greatest strengths is fleshing out a full-bodied story: creating a fantastically detailed landscape; populating it with interesting characters; and stringing it all together into an engaging plot, it is also one of his greatest weaknesses, because in doing so, he tends to run rampant towards absolutely BEHEMOTH novels. There were several points in this book where I finished a chapter and just thought "God damn it, I want to get back to Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake! I want to get back to the quest for The Tower!" Additionally, despite the length, there were still a small handful of unresolved threads left hanging, which I hope find a conclusion somewhere in the final four volumes of The Dark Tower series.

TLDR: I enjoyed getting a back story on Roland, but I felt it was just too long. Wizard and Glass is not my favorite book of The Dark Tower series (The Waste Lands holds that honor so far), but I still felt it held an important part of the story, and I look forward to moving on to the installment often described as "Book 4.5," or a separate installment that falls neatly between Wizard and Glass & Wolves of the Calla: The Wind Through the Keyhole!