Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

This is the best series I've ever read, I love all of the DT books so much. It is such an epic story that spans across so many different genres. The characters are amazingly well written, and you can't help falling in love with all of them. In this fourth book the tet has just gotten off from Blain the pain, and find themselves in a Topeka destroyed by Captain's Trip. That is another thing I really enjoy with these books, how Stephen King manages to tie so many of his books into this universe. Awesome books. Everybody should read them.

This entry and continuation of The Dark Tower quest is predominantly a flashback, a look into Roland's past a look at what set him on the journey to who he became, but it is so much more than that because it is also about the current relationships and who Roland and the rest are now as ka-tet... An excellent view of the past that informs the present and moves the tale forward. Read it, read it well. Read it and be true.

Wow! That's all I can say right now. I was completely captivated and enamored by Roland's first and most tragic love story. I have read few better. King wrote this book so well, I can only liken it to how it must feel to go through "Inception", to use a very recent metaphor. To dream about Roland's world (the story proper) but go within that dream to another, which was Roland's past. What an odd feeling I had when the story ended and we were back with our "present day" Roland and his ka-tet. It was sad the tale he was telling them was over. I wanted to stay in Roland-of-the-past's time. I came to care so much for those characters in his tale I didn't much care to rejoin Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. Heh....I was captured by my own pink glass, I suppose. My appreciation for Roland's tragic position and all that a hero must sacrifice has grown tremendously. There were parts I didn't like, and as I alluded to, they were events in "present" time. I guess I'm more accustomed and prefer magical tales where the magic is bound by rules. The magic in this world does not appear to have any bounds. I get frustrated with this series sometimes when things just appear or members of the ka-tet just know something, or at least they think they do, which causes me confusion too. In this book, I just didn't understand the point of the Wizard of Oz setting. It felt out of place and some things that happened seemed to do so just for convenient writing. The book was long but it didn't feel dragged (drug?) out by any means. The Kindle edition was good; the pictures were a little difficult to see in a few places though. Alas, onward we follow the Path of the Beam!

This replaced a copy I'd worn out. A King fan, I read the Dark Tower series for most of my adult life - Wizard and Glass is my favorite, almost entirely a flashback to the series' hero's youth and coming of age. It stands on its own as a great self-contained story, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I've re-read this book more than any other by far!

Ever since I watched The Stand miniseries, my favorite adaptation of any of King's works, I've had the voice and look of Jamey Sheridan in my head whenever I read or think of Randall Flagg. I think that will always be the case until the day that I die. That's not necessary for this, I just felt like sharing. When I first got Wizard And Glass in 1998 or 99 I was very excited to read the fourth chapter in this story. Waste Lands had ended on a really annoying cliffhanger so long before, and in preparation for the fourth book I reread the previous three (along with The Stand and if memory serves Eyes Of The Dragon). I was ready and couldn't be happier to move forward with Roland, Eddie, Jake, Oy, and Susannah. And then I read those first hundred plus pages, and then I stopped. Spoiler, this is now my favorite of the series to date, but all those years ago when I first started to read it, it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to move ever onward towards The Tower, not take an unnecessary detour backwards to see beginnings. I did not care what started Roland's quest, and I certainly did not care about his first, only, and lost love Susan. As such, I laid the book down and walked away. Clearly I was dumb. Had I made it another 20-50 pages or so I would have come to the showdown in the bar and I think I would have read to the end. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I was too young to appreciate this tale for what it is. I don't know, but here I am in 2013 and I loved it. Easily, thus far in the series, this is my favorite part of the Dark Tower series. I fell in love with young Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, Sheemie, and Susan (And Rusher too a bit), and grew to hate Rhea, The Coffin Hunters, Rimer, Mayor Thorin, Avery, and especially Cordelia. When there was the interlude featuring Eddie, Jake, and Susannah again I angrily yelled at Eddie to shut up so I could learn the fate of Mejis and the past. And when the ending of that tale came I was saddened at who we lost and who we would likely never see again. And yet, for some reason, I hold out some sort of hope that one of those lost is maybe not gone from this tale. I hope Ka is kind in this regard. Reading them as they came along, book by solitary book up to Wizard And Glass, I wanted the main tale to move faster, needing to get to the end of the search for The Tower. Reading now, at 41, with the goal in my mind of finishing all 8 books (next up is the newly released 4.5 before I move on to The Wolves Of Calla) I can enjoy this side trip into the past to learn more about Roland and how he started on this journey. I know the journey has already come to an end for so many before me, and I can relax and read the tale as Stephen King meant for me to. I've made it through the first four books in the first four months of 2013, I have no doubt that I will not finish this magnum opus finally, almost thirty years after I started it, by the end of this year. Bird and bear and hare and fish.... QUICK EDIT: I love The Wizard Of Oz bits and I don't know why so many seemed to hate it. It just feels right for this whole book.

I should know better than to fall in love with characters from the Dark Tower series. SK breaks my heart every book.

What a great ride...

I enjoyed this book, another great title in this historic series. Worth the read if you’ve gotten this far in Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower. Only draw back is the pacing. It felt like my feet was dragging for a portion of the book, but overall I enjoyed the read.

It's the longest read in the series, but it is hard to pull back. I am lucky that I can rush immediately to the next tale

This contribution of the Dark Tower series bring you to Roland’s past youth. It delves into his younger days that helped to harden him and form into the “gunslinger” that has become. It is a captivating telling of a man looking back into his to share with his new family. A sharing which he knows may turn them against him!

I've read the whole series and was very sorry to be done with it. Fascinating reading, sometimes a bit confusing with people hopping in and out of dates and years, but always interesting.

Todo correcto.

Wizard and Glass picks up where the last book left off, with our hero, Roland, and his unlikely band of followers escaping from one world and slipping into the next. And it is there that Roland tells them a story, one that details his discovery of something even more elusive than the Dark Tower: love. But his romance with the beautiful and quixotic Susan Delgado also has its dangers, as her world is tom apart by war. Here is Roland’s journey to his own past, to a time when valuable lessons awaited him, lessons of loyalty and betrayal, love and loss. Book 4 of The Dark Tower and one that is often described as being the best of the lot, a favourite of a lot of Dark Tower fans and having re-read it I can see why quite clearly. That said it is also the least favourite of a fair few. Perhaps therefore, this is the one that divides us, the constant readers. Either way the sheer brilliance of the storytelling remains undiminished. Here we take a break if you like from the path of the beam and head back into Roland’s past and learn a little more about what has led him to this quest. As a glimpse of the boy now a man it is compelling, fascinating and addictive reading. Whilst only a small part of the journey is undertaken in this instalment, in some ways it is the also one of the greatest parts. The main thing I love about this novel is for me, this is where the mythology as a whole started coming into focus. The world that Roland and friends have slipped into here is a world that is very familiar to me, belonging as it does to my favourite King novel. And of course, if you read it all you realise that everything written sits somewhere along the path of the beam..whether you are in a Dark Tower story or not. As an overall body of work, with hopefully a fair bit more to come, I call that pretty amazing. Hey, what can I say. Unapologetic fangirl. When you are re-reading a series like this and reviewing as you go, its hard to find new ways of describing each particluar part within the whole – they are all fantastic. What else is there to say? Perhaps that this one, Wizard and Glass, is like the eye of the storm…because I know whats coming. Happy Reading Folks!