Most people who know me, know that despite my outward "coolness", on the inside, I'm a raging fantasy nerd. So, for years, I've had the gents in my life recommending Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series to me. He may be known for his horror books, but his fantasy series is his true legacy.
A few years ago, I decided to give it a shot by reading "The Gunslinger" (the first book in the series. Not being a western fan, I was immediately turned off by the title, but I read it anyway. To be honest with you, it didn't grab me, and I don't remember too much of the story. It wasn't a bad book, just not my thing. Needless to say, I didn't continue with the series...
... until the other day. A good friend of mine made me a deal. He would read my favorite series (The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind) if I would read his. That brought me back to The Dark Tower.
"The Drawing of the Three" is infinitely more interesting than "The Gunslinger". It still has the "shoot-em-up" wild west gunslinger, Roland, but in this one, he travels through dimensions and time, fighting dope slinging mob bosses in the 80's and taking the reader into the hate-fueled race battles of the 60's. (In fact, I can't think of another time that I've heard the word "honky" thrown around quite so much.)
The book is much more sci-fi than fantasy. In fact, the only fantasy aspect is the gaint lobster creatures, but it was still interesting. Graffic, but interesting.
The place where the book scores major points in my book, is simply in the writing. There where several passages that caught my attention enough for me to actually highlight them, something I rarely do.
"'There is steel in him, I dispute it not. But there is weakness as well.'"
"'If we were going to rape you, you would be one well-raped woman by now,' the gunslinger said evenly. 'Don't do it again.'"
and my personaly favorite, which is by far the most romantic description I've ever heard of a house of cards -
"But they would have been amazed if he had had the words to describe it - how delicate it had been, how it had reached almost three quarters of the way from the top of the desk to the ceiling, a lacy construct of jacks and dueces and kings and tens and Big Akers, a red and black configuration of paper diamonds standing in defiance of a world spinning through a universe of incoherent motions and forces; a tower that seemed to 'Cimi's amazed eyes to be a ringing denial of all the unfair paradoxes of life.
If he had known how, he would have said: I looked at what he built, and to me it explained the stars."
I'll continue on with the series once my dear Mr. Shaw has finished the second book of his part of the bargain. For now, it's on to some Terry Pratchett.
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