At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of the nested structure of the stories, but King’s storytelling power is as irresistible as ever. We spend very little time with Roland’s ka-tet, a little more with Roland and Jamie DeCurry in Debaria, and by far the biggest chunk of the book in the long-ago, with Tim Stoutheart. Jenny: Yes, and in fact, that’s more or less what this book is. I would be thrilled if King just wrote more stories set there, whether Roland and his friends appear in them or not. I love the characters so much that I want to spend more time with them, and after reading this, I realize that I love Mid-World for its own sake. I came around a bit when I saw it was going to fit within the series, and after rereading the series last year, I became downright excited about this book. The story is complete as is adding to it would only wreck it. Teresa: When I first heard that Stephen King was writing a new Dark Tower book, I got grumpy. On this journey, Tim encounters good and bad magic and discovers his own strength.

This tale, “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” is about a boy named Tim who goes on a journey to save his mother’s life. Nested inside this story is a fairy tale that Roland tells to a frightened little boy who has witnessed the latest skin-man attack. He and Jamie DeCurry go to the old railtown of Debaria to investigate the appearance of skin-man, a cannibalistic shape-shifter. When a massive windstorm–a starkblast–descends on them, they take shelter in an abandoned town, and to pass the time Roland tells his friends a story from his own past that occurred just after the events he told them about in Wizard and Glass. The story begins shortly after the end of Wizard and Glass with Roland, Susannah, Eddie, Jake, and Oy continuing along the path of the beam to the Dark Tower. The action, however, falls between books 4 and 5 in the series. This is King’s eighth novel about Roland, a gunslinger from the kingdom of Gilead, and his ka-tet of companions. So of course we got our hands on the newest Dark Tower book, The Wind Through the Keyhole, as quickly as we could. Jenny and I are both tremendous fans of the series, as you already know if you followed our Dark Tower readalong last year. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is a magnificent achievement in fantasy fiction and among King’s best work.

The dark tower 4.5