Stephen King: The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2) (review)

So I’m participating in this epic read-along of The Dark Tower hosted by The Stephen King Challenge blog and I have fallen a bit behind. Still, I think that I enjoy this so much that I will definitely catch up – if not even get ahead of schedule. Here’s the updated schedule for anyone else interested in reading along – you won’t regret it!

• September–The Gunslinger, Book 1
• October–The Drawing of the Three, Book 2
• January–The Waste Lands, Book 3
• February/March–Wizard and Glass, Book 4
• April–The Wind Through the Keyhole, Book 4.5
• May/June–Wolves of the Calla, Book 5
• July–Song of Susannah, Book 6
• August/September–The Dark Tower, Book 7

The Drawing of the Three kicks off just seven hours after The Gunslinger ended. The Gunslinger Roland Deschain is lying on the beach after his encounter with the man in black. And true to Stephen King, the action starts right away. Some weird-looking sort of lobster is carefully approaching him and Roland seriously underestimates it. Which means that on page 10, Roland has lost not only two of his fingers on his right hand but also one of his big toes… Being on an unfriendly beach with hardly any water or food and a bleeding hand and foot, would dampen everyone’s spirits but Roland is a determined chap and of course, he soldiers right on, following his instinct down the beach.

And finds a door. Just standing there. Right on the beach. No wall around it. Just a door. And only visible from one side.

It turns out that through doors like this, Roland can get in touch with the people who are to become parts of his quartet. He encounters three doors, each one leading to New York, each one leading to a new person. And through these doors, he meets up with the people, the man in dark foretold he would meet: The prisoner (Eddie), The Lady of Shadows (Odetta/Detta) and The Pusher (Jack).

I loved The Drawing of the Three. It just sucked me right in and took me along for the ride and it has some terrific scenes. When Roland meets Eddie and has to help him avoid being busted leaving a plane with a lot of drugs, priceless! It’s so funny reading about these two trying to orchestrate an escape plan for Eddie with Roland not really knowing our world or the English language quite enough to completely know what’s going on – but being shrewd enough to be aware that things are not going the way they should if he is to have his way and get Eddie to join and help him.

Despite the issues Roland has with getting Eddie back through the door, it’s nothing compared to the issues he faces with Odetta and Jack. And the battle he has to fight with his own poisoned body. But the gunslinger is nothing if not able to just keep on and on, put mind over matter and do what has to be done. He is tougher than Clint Eastwood ever looked and I do believe that if he dies before reaching the tower, his dead body will just get up and walk on. This being a King novel, that’s not altogether unlikely!

As usual, King knows exactly how he not only gets the action going but also keep turning up the pace so you just have to keep on reading and reading to find out what happens with these four characters and how Roland handles them all. King also has some nice comments on how our culture and society has evolved. At one point, Roland gets some medicine. He pays for it with an expensive Rolex watch – and the shop owner is flabbergasted that he pays for this cheap medicine with that kind of watch. But the thing is, in Roland’s world, that medicine is the difference between life and death so of course Roland is going to think it’s expensive. I don’t think medicine should be expensive – everyone should be able to afford getting what they need to be well – but I do think that this scene shows how the way we value things are sometimes a bit skewed.

I still really like how our world and Roland’s world exist parallel in some ways but still different from each other. How some things have overlapped – like Hey Jude, mentioned in both The Gunslinger and this book. But I’m curious about how King pulls it all off because I still have so many questions. How come there was three doors leading into three people, the three people who Roland needed to start forming his Ka-tet? In the first  book, Jake died in our world and then appeared in Roland’s world. And now Roland can walk through a door and appear in our world? How are they connected? I guess I’ll just have to read on and see how King solves it all.

The Drawing of the Three definitely kicks The Dark Tower series up a notch. I liked The Gunslinger but not only was this a better book, it also made me even more interested in reading this series, even more interested in finding out what the dark tower is and what happens if and when Roland finally catches up to The Man in Black.

Related posts:

• The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1)
• The epic Dark Tower read-along

Also read:

• The Stephen King Challenge: The Drawing of the Three – Discussions … Final thoughts (but beware of spoilers!)