Product Description

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. A tale of long-ago love and adventure involving a beautiful and quixotic woman named Susan Delgado.

And the Tower is closer...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4242 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 896 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Wizard and Glass, the fourth episode in King's white-hot Dark Tower series, is a sci-fi/fantasy novel that contains a post-apocalyptic Western love story twice as long. It begins with the series' star, world-weary Roland, and his world-hopping posse (an ex-junkie, a child, a plucky woman in a wheelchair, and a talking dog-like pet named Oy the Bumbler) trapped aboard a runaway train. The train is a psychotic multiple personality that intends to commit suicide with them at 800 m.p.h.--unless Roland and pals can outwit it in a riddling contest. It's a great race, for the mind and pulse. Films should be this good. Then comes a 567- page flashback about Roland at age 14. It's a well-marbled but meaty tale. Roland and two teenage friends must rescue his first love from the dirty old drooling mayor of a post-apocalyptic cowboy town, thwart a civil war by blowing up oil tanks, and seize an all-seeing crystal ball from Rhea, a vampire witch. The love scenes are startlingly prominent and earthier than most romance novels (they kiss until blood trickles from her lip).

After an epic battle ending in a box canyon to end all box canyons, we're back with grizzled, grown-up Roland and the train-wreck survivors in a parallel world: Kansas in 1986, after a plague. The finale is a weird fantasy takeoff on The Wizard of Oz Some readers will feel that the latest novel in King's most ambitious series has too many pages--almost 800--but few will deny it's a page-turner.

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‘Grim, funny and superbly energetic, it’s King at his best’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

Review
‘King at his most ebullient. He’s at his best here – as a resourceful explorer of humanity’s shadow side, as a storyteller who can set pages on fire’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

‘King’s most personal, most engaging work’ SUNDAY EXPRESS

‘Grim, funny and superbly energetic, it’s King at his best’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

Customer Reviews

A beautiful and important glimpse into the character of Roland
Stephen King's novel "Wizard And Glass" is the forth instalment of the seven part epic "Dark Tower" series. The novel runs for a whopping 840 pages out of the series total of 3712 pages. Within the book you also have the usual introduction by Mr. King that's well worth the read, running for just six pages. There's also an Afterword at the end, giving the reader a little more insight into the writing of the book.

Anyway, by now you are already well into the epic journey of the Dark Tower series, with a good understanding of the five major characters (including Oy that is). The book begins exactly where we left off, with the massive cliffhanger at the end of "The Waste Lands". King tackles this well, bringing about a good introduction into this next book.

From here on in, we are sent back in time to when Roland was a young gunslinger, as he tells the story of his past and how he got to where he is now. This is basically the whole novel, which is nicely book-ended on either side.

Roland's tale brings out a whole new and complicated side to the character that we have been getting to know over that last three novels. The story shows further the honour of being a gunslinger, as well as how they are perceived. Cuthbert and Alain play large roles within the story, as does Roland's first love. His entire background and upbringing shows how this previously secretive character has grown into the man he is now.

At this stage through the series, I would say that this novel delivers by far the most insight into the characters enriching the series immensely. It is certainly not the fastest of paces, but is an enjoyable read that is difficult to put down.

Personally, I found the ending to the novel a little rushed, and dare I say forced? I know what you're thinking...840 pages and I think it's rushed! I won't spoil it for you, but the way the novel is constructed, left King with a quick fire ending that didn't really reflect the importance and build-up to the situation. Well, that's what I think anyway!

The next instalment in the series is entitled "Wolves Of The Calla".

A brilliant, fascinating and soul touching culmination
King's foray into magic culminates for now in unrefined, unadulterated beauty. Further along their way to Dark Tower, Roland and his companions encounter their hardest trials and tests so far. King gives us some history here and shows how their all destinies were inexorably linked and rushing towards this time. In a book that far surpasses five stars or anything I can say, King writes with pathos, sorrow, unparalleled style and a palpable love of the characters he has created. You can feel it, because you love them too. Wizard and Glass is the most magical story so far in the story and also the last for now. But its not an end - its only the very beginning. You will not be able to stand the fact that there is as yet no sequel to this, and that there might never be. One thing is for sure though: Roland, Eddie and Suzanne will always be in your memory and your mind just waiting to finish, with their creator, their story. Marvellous.

Coffe, Tea, or Both?
This book finally fulfills the implicit promise in the title of the first book of this set, The Gunslinger, that this story would be a marriage of the fantasy and Western genres. The first 100 pages of this are really the conclusion to book III, The Waste Lands, as Roland and company spar with Blaine via riddles both complex and simple, with an ending very reminiscent of a certain Star Trek episode. But the real meat of this book is in the remainder, some 570 pages that detail Roland’s first experience as a graduate gunslinger (at the age of 14). Roland and his friends Cuthbert and Alaine are sent by their fathers to a remote village, mainly as a method to keep them safely away from the war with the Good Man Farson. But once in the village, the boys discover evidence of a scheme to provide Farson with oil so that Farson can power some of the old military weapons of days gone by and to which the current civilization would have no defense. Roland, in the midst of this, falls head over heels in love with a local girl, Susan, who is unfortunately already promised to become the 'gilly' (concubine) of the town’s mayor.

Along the way to the resolution of this situation, King manages to throw in just about every Old West cliche, from the clueless mayor surrounded by crafty evil villains to the barroom contretemps complete with a four-way stand-off to virtuous girl trapped in durance vile to a final guns-blazing battle between our hopelessly outnumbered heroes and the gang. About the only one he left out was the traditional showdown at high noon. Although King is obviously providing a near-parody of these cliches, they come off as very logical, eminently readable elements to a larger story. And the larger story mixes these Old West elements with those of the fairy tale, from the wicked witch (references to both Oz and The Lord of the Rings), to the gallant knights of old (of Arthurian fame), to a truly horrifying Halloween bonfire. And just for good measure, King throws in complete situations from his own works, most notably the Stand, and a new, updated version of the Emerald City of Oz.

By detailing Roland's early experiences in this manner, we end this book with a much deeper appreciation of Roland the man, no longer just an embodiment of an obsessive drive to reach the mysterious Dark Tower, but a person who has (had) normal human emotions and conflicts. We also learn a good bit about Roland's world and some of its relationship to our own, things that were crying out for some explanation from the previous three books.

The book is an impressive mixture of the common elements of multiple literary genres, skillfully handled to provide an invigorating sense of newness to some very trite story elements. It is not a deep book in terms of theme or philosophical insights, but reads quickly, with lots of action and some very recognizable characters. Still, we must now wait (how long?) for King to finish this very long Dark Tower quest.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)