Over a two month time span I've read the four works plus one short story work of Stephan King's Dark Tower saga. This book compares more to the original "Gunslinger", but dealing more so in the protagonists past than any of the previous books.

Upon opening the book and diving into reading, you are brought back to exactly where you last left the New Gunslingers on there quest for the Dark Tower -- Roland, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers and the billy-bumbler Oy; being hurled onboard a faster-than-the-speed-of-sound, artificially intelligent monorail nicknamed Blaine.

With the events that took place within that first section of the book, I was deeply captivated and drawn in to the book as I had been with "The Wastelands" and "The Drawing of the Three". However, Stephan King took a gamble by deciding to devote the majority of the book -- some 400+ pages of a 660+ page novel -- to further inform the reader about Roland of Gilead's past.

In a literary sense, the Dark Tower gives everything that any novel should contribute: A great narrative, suspense, action and entertaining the reader. However, the transition between a "Here and Now" (in "Topeka, Kansas" -- seemingly "Topeka, Kansas" of a dimension in which King's novel "The Stand" takes place) into Roland's past really reeked havoc on my desire to read the story. In fact, I believe that the first section of the book would have been better for "The Wastelands" than for "Wizard and Glass". From the chapter entitled "Susan" onward, I believe this should have been "Wizard and Glass" -- with as short an introduction of why Roland is telling about his past as possible.

At any rate, once I was able to overcome the (what I found as) poor transition between the current and the flash back, I ended up drawn into the story of the treason in Hambry, the romance of Roland and Susan, and the overall development of why Roland is the way he is -- why The Dark Tower is his quest, and why the reader has been introduced to the tragedy of his past over the course of the previous 3 novels.

In closing, I am a fond fan of this Saga and I am looking forward to King's next writing that is devoted to the story (BTW people: if you aren't aware, there is a short story called "The Little Sisters of Eluria" that is another adventure of Roland). I'm entranced by the main protagonists, and I am looking forward to the confrontations between the antagonists (Randall Flagg, and of course the mysterious Dark Tower).

Recommended: Yes