The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King

   1987; 380 pages.  Original Title : Napkins.New Author? : No.  Genre : Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    King Roland is dead, and it was Murder most foul.  Someone poisoned him, and all the evidence points to his eldest son, Prince Peter.

    This is shocking to many, since Peter had always seemed the devoted son.  And head-scratching too, since Roland was aged and in poor health.  Upon his natural death, Peter would inherit the crown.  But perhaps the heir grew impatient.

    The younger son, Prince Thomas, now rules instead, and with some reluctance.  Thomas may have been jealous of his brother when Roland doted upon Peter, but he never aspired to sit on the throne.  And he has seen something that puts the lives of both siblings in peril.

    Through the Eyes of the Dragon.

What’s To Like...

    The Eyes of the Dragon is a nice one-off offering by Stephen King, in that it is purely a fantasy novel.  Yes, there is a scary Ultimate Evil, but all Fantasies have such a baddie.  And this would never be shelved in the Horror section of a bookstore.

    Stylistically, it is written in an almost singsong fashion, as if the target audience is YA.  The chapters are short, and there are some way-kewl drawings scattered throughout the book.  There is a lot of “scene-setting” in the beginning of the book, and a lot of the events therein seem somewhat superfluous.  But don’t be lulled into skipping pages, Stephen King is a master at weaving such tangents into a twisty and unexpected plotline later on, and he does so here, even with such mundane things as napkins and dollhouses.

    OTOH, King tends to ‘telegraph’ events throughout the first third of the book, which for me lessened the tension of the storyline.  You know that Peter will be imprisoned and Thomas will spy on matters he’ll later regret because King tells you about such events many chapters ahead of their taking place. 

    Still, once the scene is set, with Peter in jail (and forced into being a stylite, no less) and Thomas sitting uneasily on the throne, King stops telling you what’s going to happen, and it is an action-packed ride from there on.  The ending is clever, spellbinding, exciting, and surprising, especially with regard to Thomas.  You’ll be happy you didn’t give up on the book in the early going.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Forrad (adj.)  :  dialectical variant of ‘forward’.  Here, “things’ll go forrad here just as the always have…”

Others : Buttle (v.).

Excerpts...

    In stories of wizardry, there are three kinds that are usually spoken of almost carelessly, as if any second class wizard could do them.  These are turning lead into gold, changing one’s shape, and making oneself invisible.  The first thing you should know is that real magic is never easy, and if you think it is, just try making your least favorite aunt disappear the next time she comes to spend a week or two.  Real magic is hard, and although it is easier to do evil magic than good, even bad magic is tolerably hard.  (pg. 76)

    Outside, the wind screamed and gobbled – old wives cringed in their beds and slept poorly and told their husbands that Rhiannon, the Dark Witch of the Coos, was riding her hateful broom this night, and wicked work was afoot.  The husbands grunted, turned over, told their wives to go back to sleep and leave them alone.  They were dull fellows for the most part, when an eye is wanted to see straws flying in the wind, give me an old wife any day.  (pg. 108)

 “My head is a silly thing, but I’ve decided I’d like to keep it on my shoulders a while longer.”  (pg.  377)

    Stephen King already had a slew of Horror best-sellers by the time he published The Eyes of the Dragon in 1987.   Reportedly, some of his fans were a bit tepid about his diverging to write a Fantasy novel.

    Personally, I like it when an author tries something new.  There is an inherent risk to this, of course.  J.K. Rowling was hugely successful with the Harry Potter series, but got slammed by critics and readers alike when she tried to expand into the “adult fiction” genre with A Casual Vacancy.

    FWIW, I think King’s foray into Fantasy was successful.  The “telegraphing” in TEotD bothered me a bit, but only mildly.  Then again, I doubt I’m part of the target audience.  Maybe those telegraphs turn into “hooks” when a teenage boy reads this book.

    8 Stars.  Add ½ star if you happen to be a YA reader.  This book’s aimed directly at you.

Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King

    2003; 925 freakin' pages.  Book 5 of “The Dark Tower” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Fantasy.  Overall Rating :  8*/10.

    The wolves are coming!  Riding horses and forcibly taking one of every set of twins in Calla Bryn Sturgis.  And when they’re done with their hostages, they return the kids to the farming town as drooling idiots.

    Since almost all births in Calla Bryn Sturgis are sets of twins, this is a dire situation.  As Luck would have it (or is it Fate?) Roland and his ka-tet are passing nearby.  Perhaps they can be persuaded to fight for the farmers.  Perhaps this time, no children have to be sacrificed.

 What’s To Like…

    As always, Stephen King spins a gripping story, filled with twists, details, and fascinating new characters.  Here, our four gunslingers become Magnificent Seven-type stand-ins, organizing the defense of the town, and training the farmers (and their wives) to show some spine.  But it’s also an opportunity for Roland’s apprentice gunslingers to do some growing.

    There are a ton of threads.  Some – such as who are the wolves, why do they only take one of the twins, and why do they lobotomize them – are answered in the story.  Some – such as Susannah getting another personality and what 19 or 99 portend – are left dangling.  Some – such as muffin balls and the commala – are just there for the reader’s enjoyment.

    The setting hops back and forth from the New York City of our world to Calla Bryn Sturgis of Roland’s.  It works smoothly.  The story builds to an exciting and satisfying climax.  Yeah, it’s also a cliffhanger ending, but that’s par for the Stephen King course in this series.

Kewlest New Word…

Anomie : A lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group.

 

Excerpts…
    (T)ime had likewise begun to soften.  There were days Eddie could have sworn were forty hours long, some of them followed by nights (like the one on which Roland had taken them to Mejis) that seemed even longer.  Then there would come an afternoon when it seemed you could almost see darkness bloom as night rushed over the horizon to meet you.  Eddie wondered if time had gotten lost.  (pgs. 45-6)

 

    Once before, the gunslinger had stood on this stage and danced the commala and won their hearts.  Did Tian doubt that Roland would win their hearts again?  In truth, Tian did not.  What he was afraid of in his heart was that this time it would be a death-dance instead of a life-dance.  Because death was what this man and his friends were about; it was their bread and wine.  It was the sherbet they took to clear their palates when the meal was done.  (pg. 784)

"(F)irst the smiles, then the lies.  Last comes gunfire."  (pg. 768)

      If Wizard and Glass (Book IV) was a humongous back-story, Wolves of The Calla (Book V) is an even longer side-story.  And as good of a tale as this is, you have to ask yourself why Roland and his ka-tet  go off on an adventurous tangent for a whole month while the fate of the Dark Tower (and the world) hangs in the balance.  Entertaining it is.  Logical it ain’t.
 

    I enjoyed Wolves of The Calla.  It kept my attention for 925 pages, and that’s a testimony to Stephen King’s storytelling skills.  But Books 6 and 7 are not on my TBR shelf, and I’m thinking it’s time for me to part ways with this series.  8 Stars if you read it as a stand-alone.  Subtract 2 stars if you were expecting to see any progress in the Great Quest.

Duma Key - Stephen King

2008; 609 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Contemporary Horror.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    Edgar Freemantle is a broken man.  A construction site accident took away one of his arms, crushed a leg, and scrambled up the insides of his brain.  His wife has divorced him, and he's contemplating suicide.

    At his therapist's suggestion, he's moved from Minnesota to a small island just off the west coast of Florida ("Duma Key"), and has taken up drawing and painting.  Seascapes mostly, cuz that's what he sees out his upstairs window.

    Edgar discovers he has a flair for painting.  His works are moving.  And powerful.  In fact, they're becoming too powerful.

What's To Like...
    Duma Key opens as if it's going to be a straight-up person-finding-himself drama.  Then the tension creeps in, with Stephen King oh-so-gradually ramping it up a notch with each chapter.  The drama segues into mystery; the mystery segues into horror.  And in case the tension-increase is too subtle for you, he puts a "hook" at the end of almost every section.

    The characters are fascinating, complex, and develop nicely as the story progresses.  Wireman is a hoot.  So is Elizabeth Eastlake.  There are unexpected twists and an exciting and satisfying ending.  No "to be continued" hogwash here.

Kewlest New Word...
Expatiate : to speak or write at length or in detail.

Excerpts...
    What I remember most clearly about that visit is how embarrassed and ill-at-ease Tom seemed.
    I offered him a beer and he took me up on it.  When I came back from the kitchen, he was looking at a pen-and-ink I'd done - three palm trees silhouetted against an expanse of water, a bit of screened-in porch jutting into the left foreground.  "This is pretty good," he said.  "You do this?"
    "Nah, the elves.  They come in the night.  Cobble my shoes, draw the occasional picture."  (pg. 17)

    I smiled.  I tried to put the champagne bottle back and missed the bucket.  Hell, I missed the table.  The bottle hit the carpet and rolled.  Once the Daughter of the Godfather had been a child, holding out her picture of a smiling horse for a photographer's camera, the photographer probably some jazzy guy wearing a straw hat and arm garters.  Then she had been an old woman jittering away the last of her life in a wheelchair while her snood came loose and flailed from one final hairpin under the fluorescent lights of an art gallery office.  And the time in between?  It probably seemed like no more than a nod or a wave of the hand to the clear blue sky.  In the end we all go smash to the floor.  (pg. 405)

"Abyssus abyssum invocat."  "Hell invokes Hell."  (pg. 590)
    Stephen King has proven over and over that he's a masterful story-teller, and here he delivers yet again.  Think it's easy?  Consider this.  He takes 600 pages to tell you about a geezer that paints beachfront sunsets.  And somehow turns that into a horror story.  And keeps you ravenously turning the pages the whole way.  Do you think any other author could pull that off?

    9 Stars.  Yeah, a good editor could've shortened Duma Key by 150 pages or so.  But telling Stephen King to be short-winded is like telling Allen Ginsberg to keep it clean.  It might be possible, but why would you want to?

Wizard and Glass - Stephen King

1997; 694 pages.  Book #4 in the Dark Tower series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Epic fantasy.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    The ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Jake, Susannah, and Oy continue their quest to reach the Dark Tower.  Alas, as the story opens, they're trapped on a psychotic monorail train called Blaine, bound for an otherworldly Topeka, Kansas.  They will either arrive in peace, or in pieces.

What's To Like...
    At last we get some much-needed background about Roland the Gunslinger.  Specifically, he tells the rest of the band the saga of his first true love, Susan Delgado.  We are also introduced to his two bestest buds, Alain and Cuthbert.

    The backstory is a fantastic piece of story-telling by Stephen King.  The bad guys are formidable and cunning; the good guys make mistakes (especially Roland), particularly in underestimating the baddies.  There is romance and sorcery, and a kewl Alt-History world.  There is plenty of action and unexpected plot twists; and a few nuggets of wit and humor are scattered about amongst the drama.

    The ending is an improvement over the cheap cliffhanger device used to close out Book #3.  The cast of characters in Roland's tale, even the secondary ones, are fully-developed and fun to get to know.

Kewlest New Word...
Ruction : an unpleasant reaction to, or a complaint about something.

Excerpts...
    Jutting from the center of the falls, perhaps two hundred feet below the point where the river actually went over the drop, were two enormous stone protrusions.  Although Jake had no idea how a sculptor (or a team of them) could have gotten down to where they were, he found it all but impossible to believe they had simply eroded that way.  They looked like the heads of enormous, snarling dogs.
    The Falls of the Hounds, he thought.  There was one more stop beyond this - Dasherville - and then Topeka.  Last stop.  Everybody out.  (pg. 33)

    Roland looked up and saw Susan sitting in her window, a bright vision in the gray light of that fall morning.  His heart leaped up and although he didn't know it then, it was how he would remember her most clearly forever after - lovely Susan, the girl at the window.  So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all.  The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds.  Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.  (pg. 376)

Argyou not about the hand you are delt in cards or life.  (pg. 179)
    The weird thing about Wizard and Glass is that the backstory is literally 3/4 of the book.  It is therefore not surprising that the main story - the quest for the Dark Tower - hardly progresses at all.

    Blaine-the-train is quickly dispatched; our heroes land in a parallel-world Kansas that has been laid waste by some sort of plague; Roland tells his story; and that's pretty much it.  There is a closing, climactic encounter with some baddies, but it doesn't resolve much.  One wonders when Stephen King is going to get around to advancing the main plotline.

    Still, the merits of the backstory far outshine the slow-moving main tale.  So let's sit back and enjoy an enchanting saga from Roland's youth, and we'll worry about the Dark Tower some other day.  8½ Stars.

The Waste Lands - Stephen King

1991; 588 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book #3 in The Dark Tower series.  Genre : Fantasy Quest; Horror.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    With Eddie and Susannah having been extracted and enlisted for Roland's search for the Dark Tower in Book 2 (The Drawing of the Three), the quest now begins in earnest.

    The direction is easy - there is a subtle but persistent "beam" showing a straight path heading southeast; but the distance to be traveled is mind-staggeringly huge.   And the journey of a thousand miles begins with a kill-or-be-killed encounter with a cyborg bear.  So it's time to get moving.

What's To Like...
    The first half of the book deals with adding two more questors - one familiar, one new.  There are thrills and mysteries; riddles and choo-choos, and of course, some patented Stephen King horror episodes.

    Once the band has been assembled, it's on to a geezer village to rest and stock up.  Cuz next stop is the city of Lud, and that's where the action really heats up.

    There are strong characters-with-disabilities throughout this series, reminiscent of Robert Heinlein stories.  And the billy-bumblers are delightful.  It is somewhat strange to combine an epic fantasy quest with horror, but King handles it adeptly.

Kewlest New Word...
Scrofulous : morally degenerate; corrupt.

Excerpts...
    This is the way he was when he still had wars to fight and men to lead and his old friends around him, she thought.  How he was before the world moved on and he moved on with it, chasing that man Walter.  This is how he was before the Big Empty turned him inward on himself and made him strange.  (pg. 319)

    "They must have been the Supreme Court, or something," Eddie said, uneasily scanning all those thin lips and cracked, empty eyes.  "Only judges can look so smart and so completely pissed off at the same time - you're talking to a guy who knows.  There isn't one of them who looks like he'd give a crippled crab a crutch."  (pg. 483)

"This time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn't it?"  (pg. 93)
    To be honest, there are a couple slow spots in the first half of The Waste Lands but there are enough action sequences to keep your interest.  Some of the episodes, such as the geezer village and "the house", seem disconnected from the main storyline.  Maybe they get tied in at a later point; maybe not.  But this is a minor quibble; even Tolkien had his Tom Bombadil.

    The second half of the book is excellent.  The excitement is nonstop, and the attention stays focused on the quest.  My only beef is the tawdry use of a cliffhanger ending.  -½ Star for that.  I will read the next book, Mr. King, but that's due to the overall merits of this one; not because of some hung cliff.

    The Waste Lands is the best so far in this Dark Tower heptad.  We shall see if Book 4 (Wizard & Glass)  maintains the pace.  8½ stars.

The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King

    1987; 463 pages.  Genre : Thriller.  New Author? : No.  Book #2 (out of 7) of the Dark Tower series.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

   Roland (aka, "the Gunslinger") is ready to continue his quest to find the Dark Tower.  But first it is predestined that he open three doors - three portals in time, and probably to a parallel universe as well.  There are people he needs to meet ... and experience.

What's To Like...
The Drawing of the Three is a quantum improvement over Book 1, The Gunslinger, reviewed here.  The writing is better; the story is more coherent; and by now Stephen King has learned how to write a thriller.

    An Introduction is included, which revises the early version of Book 1 to fit it better into this story.  Since by chance it was the early version that I had read, this was much appreciated.

The people that the Gunslinger meets via the doors are not paragons of virtue.  One's a junkie; another's a schizo; the third kills for thrills.  There is loss (two fingers and a toe); there is action; there is romance (with a whole new meaning given to the term "threesome"); and there is time-travel, which I'm always a sucker for.  There's even a neat little tribute to Rosa Parks, one of my personal heroes.

Finally, there is some humor to offset the suspense, particularly the Gunslinger's confusion as he tries to understand our world and mis-hears its vocabulary.  So we get "astin", "magda-seens", tooter-fish", "tach-sees" and "fotter-graffs".  I'll let you work out what these are. 

Kewlest New Word...
Rugose : wrinkled; creased; ridged.  (Runner-Up was "Lobstrosity", a great portmanteau.)

Excerpts...
    "It's ka," he said, facing Eddie patiently.
    "What's ka?"  Eddie's voice was truculent.  "I never heard of it.  Except if you say it twice you come out with the baby word for sh*t."  (pg. 205)

    Roland felt a tired exasperation.  Someone - it might have been Cort but he rather thought it had been his father - had had a saying: Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover.  If any proof of the saying were needed, there it stood above him, in a posture that was all defiance and defense.  Go on, the set of Eddie Dean's body said.  Go on, I can answer any question you throw at me.  (pgs. 348-49)

I looked at what he built, and to me it explained the stars.  (pg. 135)
    TDot3 is of course just part of a larger, much longer series; but it is a story-within-a-story, with a discrete ending.  I like that.  It is not, however, a stand-alone book.

    There is some great character development here, but it comes at the cost of there not being a lot of progress to the tale. After 463 pages, about all the Gunslinger has done is picked up some quest-companions.  I'm presuming they play important roles and will be around for a while, but that's not a given.

    TDot3 is a fast-paced, easy-reading page-turner, and a primer on how to keep readers on the edge of their seats.  The books start getting longer now, and all-told there are 4600+ pages in the series, of which I've read about 700.  I don't know if I'll read all seven books, but I'm definitely committed to the next one, The Waste Lands.  8 Stars for The Drawing of the Three.

The Gunslinger - Stephen King

1978-81 (or 1982); 304 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Fantasy (for now).  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."  That's the opening sentence, and pretty much sums up the plot of The Gunslinger.  Along the way, he passes through a town; stops by a way station; matches wits with an oracle; outwits some monsters; and faces an impossible choice given by the man in black.

What's To Like...
    This is really five short stories that Stephen King wrote for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over a three-year period.   This is some of his early stuff when he was still developing his writing style.

    Frankly, the first story - the eponymous "The Gunslinger" is ho-hum.  The storyline is weird and vague, and the style is ostentatious.  For example, there's this sentence : "He did not use the flint and steel until the remains of the day were only the fugitive heat in the ground beneath him and a sardonic orange line on the monochrome western horizon."  Yeah.  Or he could've just written, "He built a fire at sunset."

    But if you persist and read further, the storytelling improves and the style becomes more direct.  You can see/read him refining his technique from one story to the next.  This is Book 1 of the 7-volume (soon to be 8) "Dark Tower" series, which Stephen King considers to be his magnum opus.  Lots of people are gaga about it, so I presume the books continue to get better.  They certainly get thicker.

    There are lots of teasers in The Gunslinger ("Hey Jude" is said to be an ancient song); some humor; some food for thought; and a kewl post-apocalyptic setting.  Maybe.  Or perhaps it's a parallel universe.

Kewlest New Word...
Logy : dull and sluggish in motion or thought.

Excerpts...
    "...in the end, someone always has to have his or her neck popped, as you so quaintly put it.  The people demand it.  Sooner or later, if there isn't a turncoat, the people will make one."  (pg .148)

    But the man in black persisted: "Shall there be truth between us, as two men?  Not as friends, but as enemies and equals?  There is an offer you will get rarely, Roland.  Only enemies speak the truth.  Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty."  (pg. 295)

Beyond the reach of human range
A drop of hell, a touch of strange...  (pg. 179)
    Strangely, The Gunslinger reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.   A man and a boy (the gunslinger picks him up at the way station) go traipsing around.  You're not sure where they're going and why they're going there; and when the ending shows up, you discover very little is resolved.  It should be remembered that this is just a prelude to the main storyline, and because the chapters were really separate stories in a sci-fi mag, the book inherently has a "segmented" feel.

    In and of itself, this is only a so-so novel.  But it gives some vital background about (what I presume are) several of the major characters in the series, and the surreal world they travel about in.   It's a fast read, and it gets more entertaining as you go along.  We'll give it 5 Stars, but call it a must-read if you intend to do the whole series.