The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole

I purchased the newest Dark Tower book Thursday night and started reading it Friday.  I finished it Sunday night.  It was fantastic.  I could not put it down.  I was afraid about reading a new story set in this world with those characters.  My biggest fear was that it would let me down or it would not fit well with the main story.

Fortunately, this book makes sense.  It is supposed to go between books four and five, and honestly, it is perfect.  The biggest problem I had in the original series was the way that after Wizard and Glass, there seemed to be a shift in the way Jake behaved.  He was a boy and then in Wolves of the Calla he seemed to have grown up a bit and became a gunslinger.  It just seemed like such a huge shift (also in the world they ended up in, they went back to that world, yet into a whole new place).

The book starts out with the ka-tet traveling to a river and taking a ferry across.  The ferryman tells them that there is a starkblast coming and they need to find shelter.  He even tells them about Andy the Robot. 

As they take shelter from the super-storm, Roland tells them a story about his follow-up adventure after killing his mother.  He and Jamie DeCurry must investigate a skin-man in a town called Debaria.  Once inside the story, Roland then tells another story to a young boy named Bill.  This story is the majority of the book, which is about a boy who goes on a quest to save his mother.  The structure reminded me of the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, with the different layers of stories.

For fans of the series, it is actually sad when you see Jack, Eddie, Susannah, and Oy again.  They were part of our lives for so many years and I had no idea how much I actually missed them.  Especially Jake and Oy.

I highly suggest picking it up.  You will not be disappointed.  Below are some of the images from the special edition book (which I did not buy).