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Author: Stephen King
Category: Fiction – Fantasy

Time is no longer what it used to be, the beams are failing and reality is shifting. These days in Mid-World (and Out-World as the story advances) are shifting and changing. When we come into this story, it is some time later after Roland’s ka-tet left the outskirts of Topeka and enters the stranger edge of the Mid-World where it meets with Thunderclap. This story centers around a village named Calla Bryn Sturgis and the difficult story of thievery, a vicious kidnapping cycle that takes place every so many years by the Wolves.

We know they are coming, those vicious hunters in their gray horses to a land that is blessed (or cursed) with twins. The plot is one that targets the children and harms society as a whole and their hope to stand up against this cycle is little, until a helpful robot names Andy informs the townspeople that gunslingers are on their way. Splitting up into two different factions, one group wants to hire the gunslingers and fight back against the Wolves–hopefully with the help of an enigmatic cultish people named the Manni–the opposing group refuses to think this rebellion is a good idea and is willing to sacrifice half their young for the better of the rest of them.

It is in the middle of this conflict that Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy are cast and they must decide if they should make a stand here or continue on in their own quest. Here they meet a former priest named Father Callahan (drawn from Stephen King’s famed Salen’s Lot novel), who in time tells his story and eventually has the opportunity to help the gunslingers in their quest. But their troubles are many and the Wolves are merely one of them. Susannah is no longer alone and has a dark secret; Eddie is struggling to maintain order in a town whose customs he hardly understands while trying to do his best detective work; Jake is given a glimpse of the childhood he should have had, unaware that the rug is about to be swept from under him and through it all Father Callahan is trying to pull the right levers in order to help this community he now calls home.

This is a good story in all, but once again Stephen King has filled it with filler, this time much of it comes from the backstory that is Callahan’s past and which unfortunately is quite a bit less interesting than King would have us believe. While the story we wish to follow unfolds well and holds intrigue, the interrupting tale of Father Callahan becomes a burden we have to put up with and we do get the sense that it was put there strictly to make the novel longer. To that, I say, poorly played, Stephen King. However, by now we are so invested in the story, that we must plow through that in order to get to the battle against the wolves and the sequence of events that will set up the following book.

With interesting story twists and a climactic ending, this story is solid, but far longer than it should be and weaker than its predecessors.

Rating:
Comments: Do not let the fact that this is the weakest book in the series deter you. For one, you have to read it in order to get to the others and secondly…well there is a lot of awesome information and developments that do take places. Not only that, this book also serves as the set up for the finale that is the last two books and for that reason there is a lot going on here that might seem weighty now but which becomes crucial later on in other books.