Before reading: I am so ready to get back into a Dark Tower book! Reading King books in order is difficult when you have a series spread throughout, but I will say I have enjoyed reading other books that are related to The Tower in between. Let's just get right into it.
After reading: I'm not even sure what I want to say. I do this thing where, oftentimes, right after I finish reading a book I think I just read a masterpiece. It's possible that my thoughts are clouded by the fact that I literally just finished this book five minutes ago. Regardless, I am now in a very sad and depressive after-reading slump. I'm so sad it's over. It was so good. I've looked around on the internet and have read other people's rankings of the Dark Tower series and Wizard and Glass seems to always either be people's number one, or at the bottom. Honestly, I can see why some people might not enjoy this book. However, almost immediately I knew this would be my favorite in the series. I think this one will be very hard to beat. I've said this before in some past blogs, but when I really love and enjoy a book I tend not to take many notes. I just became so immersed in this story that I just read and read. So, all in all, I really don't have too much to say.
I think the reason this book might be polarizing is that it is actually two stories. It is a story within a story, and both stories are action-packed and very in-depth. I, for one, am a big fan. Funny enough, I recently reread my blog for Misery and in that post I said, and I quote: I am a sucker for a story within a story. This book just had it all. It started right from where we left off in The Waste Lands. We got a continuation of that story plus the addition of another. There are so many well-developed and rich characters that we get to spend a lot of time with (good and bad). At the core... this is a romance novel and it is done so well (even if King thinks he is bad at writing romance). This book had me blushing. It is also a story about friendship and camaraderie that feels real and wholesome. This is a fantasy novel that had all the bells and whistles of that genre but it was also full of action, terror, drama, humor, and heart. It was so freakin' good.
For those of you who don't know me personally, you might not know that I am a big Harry Potter fan. Controversially, the fourth HP book is also my favorite. Perhaps that is just ka. Many readers tend not to like Goblet of Fire but what I love most about it is the world-building. I think that is very similar to what we have going on in Wizard and Glass. We get to travel to more of Mid-World and get a bigger picture. We meet characters from the past and get glimpses of some that we will meet later on. This series has such a huge world to it and I felt like this book really continued to open that up and build upon what we already had. As a reader, I am appreciative of that.
I did not make many notes but I did make a few. First and foremost, and I say this with every DT book, thank you Stephen King for the recap at the beginning. King essentially puts a "previously on" section at the beginning of these books, and as a forgetful girlie-- I very much appreciate that. We get some fun crossovers in this one that is really making reading these books in publication order worth it. The biggest one being The Stand and then we also got a little bit of Insomnia. The afterword even included some teasers of more crossovers to come. All of SK's work and specifically the DT series is basically the Marvel Universe, so it is a lot more fun when you get all of the references. Really my only other note is about how well developed and well written Randall Flagg is as a character. He was vaguely introduced in this story and I knew right away who it was. Very impressive if I do say so myself. Additionally, we got some fun Flagg revelations in this book. That was essentially all I had written down for notes. Other than those, all I really need to make sure I touch on is the last part of this book...so much fun. If you know, you know. I did feel a little stupid for not putting two and two together for what was coming, but hey, I was too engrossed in the book to have time to think.
All of that to say...this was a really really good book. If you aren't reading the DT series, I don't know what you're doing. Get on it. This one was definitely my favorite so far and the next ones are going to have to be something special to be able to usurp it in rank. Sadly, there are nine books standing between me and the next DT book. However, several of the books leading up to them do tie in to the series (all things lead to the Tower, after all) AND books 5, 6 and 7 all came out back to back to back. This means that the next time I get to a DT book, I get to read all the way to the end. So that is very exciting.
I feel like I could never say enough to express how great this book was but I hope what I did say was enough. I am going to prolong my spooky season a little longer, I suppose, because my next read will be Bag of Bones. Long days and pleasant nights.
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