Reviews for The Dark Tower Box Set: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard and Glass

The average rating for The Dark Tower Box Set: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard and Glass based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-08 00:00:00 Miguel aNGEL Santamaria Gomez Warning: There are some mild spoilers in this review. These are the first Stephen King novels I've read. I wanted to read the first four set in this series before posting a review. Each book now has creases over their spines. I've enjoyed these novels very much. Let's start with, of course, The Gunslinger. . . The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. The story plunges us dead into the already long and gritty quest of Roland Deschain of Gilead to reach the Dark Tower. In Roland's world things are happening, both in his homeland of In-World and beyond it in Mid-World. A great shift is spreading in what is referred to by the people living here as "moved on." This last known gunslinger is on a manhunt for the man in black, aiming to gain information about how to find the tower. In the first chapter, Roland stumbles across Brown, a corn and bean farmer, who takes him and his sick mule in for the night. Brown is the first person Roland has seen since leaving Tull, a town on the edge of the desert where none have dared to cross. Tull is where Roland's hunt for the man in black is temporally delayed when he falls in with a woman named Allie, who bartends at a saloon with a piano player named Sheb. As the story progresses, we get a glimpse into Roland's childhood, when he and his best mate, Cuthbert, accidentally unmask a child killer who is then hanged at Gallows Hill, and when Roland earns his guns in a challenge he made against his teacher, Cort. It's also a time in Roland's life when he discovers a terrible secret about his mother. Slingshot back to the present, Roland continues on with his manhunt after a bloody farewell to the townspeople of Tull. A trap set for the gunslinger by the man in black. After leaving Brown's farm and his mule, that had died during the night, the wasteland once again opens itself up to the gunslinger before it nearly claims him. Dried out and delusional, Roland comes across a way station occupied by a young boy named Jake Chambers who saves his life. Jake has earned himself a pass into Mid-World through an unfortunate "accident" that changes his life in more ways than one. Once recovered, the pair sets off to the mountains and into a bizarre journey involving a horny Oracle and a cave full of mutants. In the end, the hunt concludes itself and after a VERY long night, Roland awakens in the killing ground with new knowledge about what he needs for his quest for the Dark Tower. And so, he sets off once again. I really enjoyed this story. It was well written, fast-paced and original. I like the characters, Roland and Jake. The descriptions King puts into his scenes were vivid. I even had a dream about Allie walking toward me, rubbing the scar she has slashed across her forehead. The mutants gave me the creepy crawlies, which is a testament to good storytelling. My issues, though, is how the women are portrayed, especially Allie, who, when her man, Sheb, isn't around any male can just paw at her, and she pretty much begs for sex from the gunslinger as did the Oracle. Granted, Roland is a far better prize than the weed-eating halfwit, Nort, and the weak little runt of a man, Sheb, but it's exhausting to see women constantly being used as sex objects. And yes, I'm well aware of when this book was written. There were scenes that were a tad murky for me to understand exactly what was going on, yet none of this kept me from reading the next installment. The Drawing of the Three The story starts with the gunslinger being rudely awakened by a large man-eating lobster monstrosity that takes a chomp at him while Roland is asleep on the beach. After a narrow escape, but not quite coming out of it as a whole man, the gunslinger continues on. He follows the shoreline to search for the ones the man in black told him to find. The Prisoner, The Lady of the Shadows, and the Pusher. Wounded and growing very ill from an infection, Roland walks for many wheels (miles) until reaching a door suspended in midair. Did-a-chick? An oddity, yes, but Roland knows it's what he has come to find. When he opens the door, he gets a peek into our world through the eyes of Eddie Dean, known to Roland as The Prisoner. Eddie Dean is a junkie and when we meet him, he's in the process of smuggling in cocaine while it's strapped to him as he's flying to Kennedy International. (Obviously, this is before 911) While inside Eddie's head, Roland learns plenty of things that later become useful to him, yet at the same time, he accidentally gets Eddie busted. With some quick thinking from both gunslinger and Eddie, he manages to get out of it without having any drugs found on him. After a shootout with a drug lord named Balazar, and a horrifying loss of a loved one, Eddie bids farewell to a life of smack and drug smuggling to join Roland in Mid-World. Detta Walker and Odetta Holmes. Two people sharing the same body. Dad-a-chum? Odetta is an African American activist in the Civil Rights Movement who had been deliberately pushed in front of a subway train, losing both her legs. She's polite, caring, and all in all, a good-natured woman. Detta, on the other hand, is a vile mouth, shoplifting chick, who enjoys teasing men for fun. She's very smart, obnoxious, and her hatred is a strong and dangerous force. Detta/Odetta, is The Lady of the Shadows and is next on the gunslinger's list. On the same beach, another floating door appears. Behind Door No. Two is New York City in 1964, seen through The Lady's eyes. Using what he's learned when inside Eddie, Roland pulls her into his world. By now Roland is extremely ill with a favor. Yet, he has one last person to meet, one major wrong to put to right before his newly formed ka-tet can be stable and whole. I loved this book. My favorite so far. The plot differs from the first, which are both good by the way. I just enjoy different storylines in any series. The Drawing of the Three properly introduces us to these new major characters that become Roland's ka-tet and joins him on his quest for the Dark Tower. The book was written using a creative way with words and had a great deal of dark humor, which I'm a fan of. Tee-hee. Roland's perspective on our world was priceless. He finds it odd that most people don't carry weapons, and he refers to the police as slow gunslingers. He gets excited when he sees how much ammo he can get at a gun store, and'compared to his own guns'ours are like toys to him. The fact his can literally blow people's heads off, I can see why. I thought it was clever and more authentic for the story to add that he can't read most of our writings because the letters in his alphabet are different and therefore can't pronounce words like aspirin, calling is astin instead. Eddie had me in stitches laughing with his smart ass mouth and taking on Balazar completely naked. As King put it, like some kid in a disco contest, so jived-up he didn't realize he'd left his entire John Travolta outfit, underwear included, behind. The personal struggle between Odetta and Detta was a hard read, but it was supposed to be. She had come with a lot of hurt and injustice strapped to her, and in the end, she emerges as a stronger character. One thing I could have done without was the unnecessary back story of characters that play minor roles. Having to read about flight attendant, Jane Dorning's time in training on how to spot trouble on a plane, pulled the reins on the flow of the story. I'd say, though, that The Drawing of the Three was a fitting continuation of the Dark Tower series. The Waste Lands Ooh, things are getting really good now! In this next book, there are loads of goodies waiting. There's a bit of steampunk tossed into this novel. Eddie nearly gets eaten by an incredibly large mechanical bear named, Mir, there's a dead and twisted city, and we get our very own steam locomotive with a fetish for riddles. Roland has his ka-tet, Eddie, and the now Susannah Dean. After fighting her demons, Susannah has merged Odetta and Detta into one and therefore has become a whole person once again. She's also Eddie's wife. Roland is still recovering from his illness and believes he's going insane. Yet his small troupe pushes on, following the path of the beam that supposedly leads to the Dark Tower. Back in our world, young Jake Chambers struggles to find an existence he knows he was part of before. After his sudden departure from Mid-World, Jake returns to his own, carrying with him a strong imprint that his old life isn't where he belongs anymore. He goes on a journey through the streets of New York to try to find this other place, even hoping it'll be there behind every closed door he opens. But getting back isn't that easy. Thanks to Eddie revisiting an old childhood hobby, they managed to pull the boy back into Mid-World. (I don't wanna give away too much, but I'll say it's a very dramatic scene). Now the ka-tet trio is a foursome and after a brief stop at a peaceful little town, they make their way to the not so peaceful city of Lud. Oh, and along the way, Jake makes friends with an animal that's part raccoon and part badger with the personality of a loyal dog, called a billy-bumbler. Jake names him Oy. It isn't long after the group reaches the gutted and rusted city that they run into trouble. Jake is kidnapped and taken to the Tick-Tock Man, a violent psychopath who rules an underground gang of thugs. While Roland and Oy track Jake down, Eddie and Susannah go off to find the only thing in which can carry them closer to the Dark Tower; a train that has gone insane after a system degradation called Blaine the Mono. The Waste Lands is a highly entertaining novel with loads of action, suspense and more of King's clever writing. When not reading it, I was always wondering what was about happen, especially in the city of Lud. It was interesting finding out how the books Jake had brought over from his world tied in with their quest. I was not disappointed in this third installment, yet, there were things about it that made me frown. For instance, the scene where they're bringing Jake over into Mid-World. While Eddie works to open the portal inside a circle outlined in bones, Roland and Susannah have to keep a sex hungry demon off of him. Depending on if the demon is male or female would determine which one of the three it would go after. When reading this, I was like, "Gee, I wonder who is about to get buggered." Of course, it was Susannah (the woman), duh! This goes back to my earlier complaint. I also felt there was a tad too much explaining that bogged the story down at times throughout, but all-in-all, this was a damn good book! And finally, Wizard and Glass. Roland, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah are trapped on Blain the Mono, who is surging them at incredible speed towards certain death. With a stroke of luck and thinking outside the box, one of them, (I won't say who) saves the day. They reach their stop: Topeka, Kansas, or Kansas Turnpike. They leave Blaine where he rests because as King put it, it was just another artifact of a world that has moved on. They continue following the path of the beam on 1-70 when a building in the far distance is seen standing in their way. The ka-tet makes camp and Roland opens up about his younger days as a newly born gunslinger. He and his original ka-tet, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns, both fourteen the same as Roland in this, are sent on an "errand" by their fathers, to a town called Hambry in the Barony of Mejis territory. Shortly after arriving, Roland meets a beautiful young woman, Susan Delgado. She'd lost her father and now lives with her aunt, Cordelia. Roland and Susan are instantly attracted to each other. Falling in love is easy, however, being together isn't. Before Roland and his kat-tet show up at Hambry, Susan had already promised herself to a much older man, Hart Thorin, to be his gilly. (Again, it boils down to sex for the woman. And I'm not just pointing it out in the Dark Tower series, mind you. Just sayin' it'd be nice to read about more female characters who haven't been sexually abused or who aren't whores or use sex to get what they want, or who are teases. And if they're virgins, having their virginity being offered up as some sick prize, to which, of course, the girl always has to go through some humiliating process to prove her purity. It's a pattern that, personally, I'd like to see broken, especially in fiction.) Anyway, back to the story. In Hambry, Roland's ka-tet gets into a spot of trouble with the Big Coffin Hunters when Cuthbert saves Sheemie Ruiz, a simpleton with a big heart, from licking the boots of Elder Jonas before the man murders him. There are other problems for the boys as well when they uncover something very dangerous the Big Coffin Hunters are planning, using machines. To stop them, the boys devise a plan with Susan's help. In the midst of all of this, Roland and Susan develop a forbidden love affair that drives a rift between him and Cuthbert when Cuthbert senses Roland losing his focus on their mission. Also, ol' Aunt Cordelia, who stands to profit from the arrangement made between them and Hart Thorin, is growing suspicious about Susan and Roland. It takes a mental and sometimes physical toll on both aunt and niece. If Susan doesn't give herself to Thorin come Reaping (the town's version of a fall celebration) as a virgin, (naturally) than all her aunt's dreams of becoming wealthy are gone in a puff of smoke. Then there's the dirty and vile witch, Rhea of the Cöos, who sticks a poisonous throne in everyone's side. She has in her temporally possession a glass ball, called Marilyn's Grapefruit, which allows her to see into people's lives and even the future, which Roland finds out later on. It takes hold of her in a very bad way, making Rhea an addict for its power. Roland has the misfortune of looking into the glass ball himself, only to see the hard road he must take, and to do so, he must leave everything behind, even Susan. The story of young Roland and Susan takes up most of this book, which, as a filler, it's really good. We're learning more about our main protagonist and the genesis behind the quest for the Dark Tower. It opens up to other areas that I'm curious on how it'll feature in the books to come. I truly enjoyed this novel and the others in the Dark Tower saga. Wizard and Glass has all the elements that I liked in the previous in books. As a storyteller myself, King as unknowingly helped me evolve in my own writing as some other authors whose works I've read have done. My issues? Other than the constant link between women and sex that always irks me, Wizards and Glass, I feel has too many characters to keep track off, and again there's too much over explaining. If you put the book down for a while and then pick it back up again, you run the risk of forgetting allllllllll the details given, which may or may not matter. I also thought the whole Wizard of Oz bit in the end was played out too much. Partially that's due to the fact I've seen so many Wizard of Oz references and adaptations over the years, which came well after this book was written. I did find Roland's confusion when listening to his ka-tet talk about it, funny. The story kept my interest, through and through. I've already ordered Wolves of the Calla, hoping to read the next four books before the movie and TV show adaptation comes out 'cause I'm not watching them until I do. So to Mr. Stephen King, as I tap my breastbone three times with my left hand, I say, thankee-sai for writing these tales.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-13 00:00:00 Bradley Culpepper Book 1: The Gunslinger (★★★★☆) Book 2: The Drawing of the Three (★★★★☆) Book 3: The Waste Lands (★★★★☆) Book 4: Wizard and Glass (★★★☆☆)