The Dark Tower 2 - Stephen King,

The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three
Stephen King
NEL £7.99

The book kicks off immediately following on from the events told in the first book - Roland is slumbering on the beach, after confronting The Man in Black in the previous book, when he is rudely awakened by a large creature who proceeds to chew off one of his toes and several of his fingers. Roland manages to kill the creature but he is left in incredible pain from his injuries and his body weakened by infection. He has no food or water and the chances of survival are slim. That is until a door pops up in the beach, a door that leads to another reality. The description of the Gunslinger's first impression when stepping through the door and finding himself looking down on the Earth from a great height, seeing it as an eagle that could fly thrice as high as any eagle would, is breathtaking and obviously come deep from King's own well known phobia of flying. The passages are so well written that they give the reader vertigo.

The Dark Tower II continues King's epic tale and it's barking mad - but also enthralling and widely inventive. The author said in his introduction that the series was inspired by The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that he wanted to create a story with the same epic sweep. But the similarities really are slight and although Middle Earth had it's own laws, the worlds of The Dark Tower are far more fluid with boundaries set at the very edge of imagination. One moment we're on a desolate, monster filled beach and the next we're in New York or at least a New York, travelling via the an aeroplane which is entered by walking through the strange door on the beach.

The Drawing of the Three is a vast improvement of the first volume - it's double the length but moves at twice the speed, where The Gunslinger dragged in places this book is in top gear from first page to the last. The new characters, especially Eddie Dean, are wonderfully drawn - any novelist would give a couple of fingers to have sketched such believable, well rounded creations. And at the end of the book you are left with no idea what to expect next, but eager for the third volume.

I think the most important thing about this volume is how much more assured the writing is than in the first novel. King wrote the first novel over a long period of time and it shows, at times the prose was so purple the reader needed sunglasses, but this second volume is top grade King. Characters become real through their speech and actions, and I had no problem following a story that takes place in multiple time zones with differing pacing and widely contrasting moods.

Wonderful stuff - if the rest of the series lives up to this I'll be one happy constant reader.