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From Publishers Weekly
Elaborating at great length on Robert Browning's cryptic narrative poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," the second volume of King's post-Armageddon epic fantasy presents the equally enigmatic quest of Roland, the world's last gunslinger, who moves through an apocalyptic wasteland toward the Dark Tower, "the linchpin that holds all of existence together." Although these minor but revealing books (which King began while still in college) are full of such adolescent portentousness, this is livelier than the first. Roland enters three lives in the alternate world of New York City: junkie and drug runner Eddie Dean, schizophrenic heiress Odetta Holmes and serial murder Jack Mort. If King tells us too little about Roland, he gives us too much about these misfits who are variously healed or punished exactly as expected. Typically, King is much better at the minutiae and sensations of a specific physical world, and several such bravura sequences (from an attack by mutant lobsters to a gun store robbery) are standouts amid the characteristic headlong storytelling. BOMC alternate. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
In a re-issued collection of the first three books of King's fantasy saga, Frank Muller revisits the world of Roland of Gilead, Jake Chambers, and Eddie and Susanna Dean. King himself originally recorded the three books as he wrote them over a period of ten years. Muller recorded book four, Wizard and Glass, in 1997. The series centers around Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger to walk the earth since the world "moved on." Roland travels in search of the dark tower, a mysterious, never-seen entity he believes holds the key to the world's having moved on. In a series that provides 36 hours of listening to the same voice (with no special effects), one expects a lapse in interest. But Muller, the master of narration, pulls out all the stops here. He makes characters unmistakable through dialogue and timing. In fast-paced conversation, dreams or breakneck bursts of action, he moves effortlessly among dozens of people. Narrative passages flow with equal grace and fluidity. Muller uses tricks, such as dragging out words and phrases, singing when the characters sing, and contriving animal and mechanical voices. Even his Foreword and Afterword sound like Stephen King . . . with one exception: The author would never pronounce his home city "Bang-er," rather than the "Bang-gore" of a native Mainer. R.P.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Stephen King returns to the Dark Tower in this second mesmerizing volume in his epic series. Roland of Gilead has mysteriously stepped through a doorway in time that takes him to 1980s America, where he joins forces with the defiant Eddie Dean and courageous Odetta Holmes. A savage struggle has begun in which underworld evil and otherworldly enemies conspire to bring an end to Roland's desperate search for the Dark Tower. Masterfully weaving dark fantasy and icy realism, The Drawing of the Three compulsively propels readers toward the next chapter. Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you've ever read. Here is Stephen King's most visionary piece of storytelling, a magical mix of fantasy and horror that may well be his crowning achievement.

SYNOPSIS

While pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland, The Last Gunslinger, is drawn through a mysterious door that brings him into contemporary America.

Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean, and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Ruth P. Ludwig