Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)
The end is near.Start at the beginning.
The Dark Tower saga builds to an explosive climax...
In November 2003, the fifth Dark Tower book hits stores for the first time-followed by books six and seven.
This #1 bestseller heralds the beginning of the end.
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Frank Muller, the recognized virtuoso of audiobook narration (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption), takes on Stephen King's Goliath tale of sorcerers, time travelers, and sci-fi love. Totaling more than 27 hours and spanning 18 cassettes, Wizard and Glass requires the listener to love Muller's Hannibal Lecter-like voice--either that or suffer in audio hell for the equivalent of three full working days. While some might find his breathy staccatos irritating at best, others will find his voice the perfect accompaniment to King's creepy characters and nightmarish plots. (Running time: 27 hours, 18 cassettes)
From Library Journal
Frank Muller's reading of King's fourth book in a projected seven-part series (e.g., The Waste Lands: The Dark Tower, Bk. 3, Audio Reviews LJ 2/15/92) is effective in creating a suspenseful and fearful atmosphere. We find Roland, the knight errant/gunslinger, continuing his quest to attain the Dark Tower, the source of destructive forces in his Mid-World. A major portion of this work is a recounting by Roland of his ill-fated love affair with Susan Delgado. The writing is expectedly imaginative, the story line engrossing, and the characters vivid. The listener is carried along through alternating Western, urban, and futuristic settings. The work stands on its own, incorporating a summary of Books 1-3, but will be better appreciated if listened to as part of the whole. Recommended for sf/fantasy collections and Stephen King fans.?Catherine Swenson, Norwich Univ. Lib., Northfield, Vt.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The fourth volume in King's protean fantasy saga, The Dark Tower, doesn't advance its heroes' journey to that edifice much from where The Waste Lands (1992) left them, but at least it gets them out of the fix they were in and primed to get into another. The book's 720 pages are mostly devoted to a flashback in which principal protagonist Roland of Mid-World relates his initial exploits--at 14--as a gunslinger. Those adventures involved plenty of mayhem and also his first, ultimately disastrous love affair. King acknowledges in an afterword that it took him a long time to write this story because he was not confident of his ability to write of "the heat and passion of seventeen [sic]." Many may feel his mistrust was well placed, for the romantic stuff is rather a yawn. Unfortunately, the blazing action that succeeds it is hackneyed stuff typical of movie and TV westerns--strictly intentionally, though, for Roland's world of origin is a post^-nuclear holocaust culture that has reverted to earlier ways, including those of knightly chivalry and pistol-packin' cowboys. Still, King is the genre fiction writer's genre fiction writer, and the action that is hackneyed here is also, as noted, blazing--brightly. Ray Olson
Customer Reviews
Dark Tower's best. SK's best.
Let me say first that I am not a fan of either King or the Dark Tower series (V VI VII being quite subpar as far as fantasy goes, but that's another story). With that in mind, Wizard and Glass struck me as, probably, no other book has.
Having recently re-read it (for, I think 8th or 9th time), I can with full confidence say, W&G will remain a timeless classic of fantasy - stand-alone, without unnecessary intro featuring the end of Blaine, or the ending, featuring the Tick Tock Man, either belonging to Dark Tower series' present, not past.
I will not discuss the plot, as there is simply too much to spoil. Tension begins building from the first pages of the story, and nothing should be revealed to the new reader.
Read it. Even if you don't care for Stephen King or the Dark Tower series. Flip to the page where Roland begins his tale, and I guarantee, you will enjoy it.
All of this being said, it saddens me that "post-Tolkien" bars set by this book, and several others (namely ASOIAF) have made the genre obsolete. Having read them, most of the much-fanfared fantasy books produced today seem complete drivel. Stuck either still under LOTR's paradigm, formulaic, and filled with useless fluff, they are, for the most part, authors' self indulgence.
Dear fantasy authors.
Please read Wizard and Glass. Please learn from it: you needn't a trilogy to make your impression upon genre. Or the reader, for that matter.
The cracks begin to show
I enjoyed and detested this book. I enjoyed it for the last good look we get at the Old World, where the tale of Roland's coming of age is told. I detested it for being the beginning of the series' decline, where Roland's group begins to wander aimlessly from one random contrivance to another - it's obvious that Stephen puts his imagination into neutral towards the end of Wizard and Glass and just lets it coast along without drive or direction, all the way to the end of the series.
SPOILERS BELOW
- Jonas doesn't even draw when the trap is sprung. He waits slack jawed until he gets blown away point blank? Jonas is probably the only person in that section of the world who can provide any kind of match to Roland gunplay-wise, so this should have been the epic man-to-man battle of the book and turns out to be a huge letdown. However, viewed in the context of the next three books in the series, it foreshadows the convenient ways in which all other big antagonists are eliminated. Jonas, Flagg, Mordred, the Crimson King: all removed from the story almost as afterthoughts, all in offhanded and lazy (on Stephen King's part) ways.
- Come on, ruby slippers and emerald cities? Let the plagiarism begin! Good grief, I wish I really *could* go home again. It looks like Stevie started feeling the same way, returning here to the world of The Stand, and as the series progresses he returns more frequently to characters and locations from his previous works that he is comfortable and familiar with. When he wasn't busy ripping off other authors, that is. Throughout the last 20-30 pages, Stephen beats us relentlessly over the head with a flurry of Wizard of Oz references every 2 or 3 pages. It works out to an average of roughly 1.8 Wizard of Oz references per page over the last 30 pages, it's almost embarassing to read.
- A little too long in Mejis, and not nearly enough time on the fall of Gilead! We spend too much time waiting behind the proverbial Castles hillock with Roland, Alain and Cuthbert. The tale of their first adventure as gunslingers was easily my favorite part of the book, and unfortunately the last interesting part of the series. I spent the rest of the series waiting to learn more of Farson's assault on Roland's world, and how Roland survived and came to be in the desert pursuing the man in black. The old world Stephen created in the flashbacks is far more fascinating than the mishmash of realities he tries to recycle from his previous books from this point forward.
Take the advice offered by others here - stop with Wizard and Glass. Pretend the latter three books don't exist, and be not tempted by them, for they shall utterly destroy any mystique established in the first four books. Perhaps someday Stevie will realize that he still has a chance to fix things, and return one final time to put things right.
Good not great
Book 3 of the series left off with such a cliffhanger that I couldn't wait to start this one. I have fallen in love with Roland's world and am just so intrigued with every little detail that King has imagined into this land. But with this book you spend almost all of it in Roland's past when he is a kid. I personally didn't like this very much. I don't want to say to much but there wasn't that real grand feeling I was getting when Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake are traveling through the "present." I got pretty tired of the love story and corruption going on for the past portion of this book. It just seemed to drag and drag and to be honest that part of the book could of been about half as long.. It did pick up there from about page 500 and on and will say that I really enjoyed the book from then on but before that the story was really slow and definitely could of been way shorter.
I will say that this book is good but is my least favorite of the first 4. The last 1/4 of the book really kicked it back in gear and when the story of Roland's past is over you I was hooked back into the adventure to the Dark Tower.
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