The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass: (Volume 4)

When I started this book, I mentioned in my reading group on Facebook that I really liked Stephen King's "The Story So Far" bit that he books at the beginning of each instalment in this series. And, since there was originally a six-year gap between publishing the previous instalment and this one, the entire prologue of Wizard and Glass is, in fact, a verbatim reprinting of the final chapter of [book:The Waste Lands|34084]. Even though it was less than two months between reading those two books, in my case, I still thought that was really cool, because it set the stage beautifully and put me straight back into the correct headspace for the story. But it's taken me a long time to read this book. Almost a month, in fact. The book is just... THAT long! Oh, I've read longer books in less time, but this one feels like one of the longest, most drawn-out books I've ever read. I think that's because there are two massive stories in this one volume: there's the "main" story of the Roland Deschain and his friends in search of the Dark Tower, but there's also the story that Roland tells his friends. It's a story of his youth, and of a lost love, which he believes is important for them to know. That secondary story is easily over 500 pages long! And it was richly detailed and fascinating in its own right, but I kept wondering when we were going to get back to the present day. I feel that the parts of it which were necessary for us to know could've been told in a page or two. Once that insanely long piece of backstory ended, though, I got sucked back into the quest at hand super quick, and I enjoyed how the story progressed from there. But... really, Stephen? 500 pages of BACKSTORY?!

Stephen is a wonder he has weaved so many of his other novels into one amazing journey. That I'm glad read so many.I feel I would be missing part of The Dark tower if I hadn't.I started reading theDark Tower in the early ninties. It quickly dried up after years of searching for the next one.I gave up, I actually lost all interest in reading.I read all Kings work upto about 94.Never picking up a book until 2015. When I saw more Dark Tower books. Thank you for conecting so many of our worlds togetherTruly KA

I am currently reading the sixth one, and I have to say rhis is the best one by far. I like lnowing about Roland's chilhood friends an the story is quite compelling, compared to the 5th and 6th ones, which are getting way too forced.