In the fourth powerful novel in Stephen King's best-selling fantasy quest, the Dark Tower beckons Roland, the Last Gunslinger, and the four companions he has gathered along the road. And having narrowly escaped one world, they set out on a terrifying journey across the scarred urban wasteland to brave a new world, where hidden dangers lie at every junction: a malevolent computer-run monorail hurtling towards self-destruction, Roland's relentlessly cunning old enemy, and the temptation of the wizard's diabolical glass ball, a powerful force in Roland's first love affair.
It is a tale of long-ago love and adventure involving a beautiful and quixotic woman named Susan Delgado. And the Tower is closer.
©1997 Stephen King (P)2003 Penguin Audiobooks
"My favourite of the series!"
Loved the flash back of Roland's first love, at first I didn't want to leave the present and the main characters of the series, but then I didn't want to leave Hambry and come back. Frank Muller gets 5 stars for narration!
"Disappointing Detour"
One good thing I can say is that the cliffhanger from the previous book was resolved.
I have been enjoying this series very much and of course I wanted some information on the background. Especially the back stories that made the characters who and what they are. My disappointment arises because this book in the series has taken me away from the main story almost completely. Yes it fills in some gaps but much more than I needed. I am more interested in what is supposed to be happening now. It's like a novel inside a novel that I wasn't expecting to read and didn't really want to.
It's not a 100% bad story but compared to the excitement, suspense, character development and plot building of other books so far in the series it's fairly boring. I even felt that the characters were bored. Teenage love story ends in tragedy - well we already knew this from reading the first three books in the series so no surprises there.
Frank Muller - brilliant as usual.