that he must seek out the Dark Tower to find the answers to the
questions of why he must embark on this quest and what is
contained in the Tower.
The next book, The Drawing of the Three, shows Roland recruiting
three people from present-day Earth to join him on his way to the
Dark Tower. They are Eddie, a junkie 'mule' working for the
Mafia; Suzannah, a paraplegic with multiple personalities; and
Jake, whose arrival is startling to Roland, who sacrificed Jake in
his own world during his pursuit of the Dark Man. Roland saves
Jake's life on Earth, but the resulting schism nearly drives him
insane. Roland must also help the other two battle their own
demons, Eddie's being his heroin addiction and guilt over not being
able to save his brother's life, and Suzannah's the war between her
different personalities, one a kind and gentle woman, the other a
racist psychopath. Each of the three deals with their problems with
the help of the others, and together the quartet set out on the
journey to the Tower.
The third book, The Waste Lands, chronicles the first leg of that
journey, examining the background of the three Earth-born
characters in detail. The book reaches its climax when Jake is
kidnapped by a cult thriving in the ruins of a crumbling city, led by
a man known only as Flagg (a character who has appeared in
several of King's other novels as the embodiment of pure evil).
Roland rescues Jake and the group escapes the city on a monorail
system whose artificial intelligence program has achieved
sentience at the cost of its sanity. The monorail challenges them to
a riddle-contest, with their lives as the prize if they can stump the
machine, who claims to know every riddle ever created.
Wizard and Glass, the fourth volume in the series, finds Roland,
Jake, Eddie and Suzannah continuing their journey towards the
Dark Tower, moving through a deserted part of Mid-World that is
eerily reminiscent of twentieth-century Earth. During their travels
they encounter a thinny, a dangerous weakening of the barrier
between different times and places. Roland recognizes it and
realizes that his world is breaking down faster than he had thought.
The thinny prompts him to recall the first time he encountered it,
many years before on a trip out west with his friends Cuthbert and
Alain, when Roland had just earned his gunslinger status. It is this
story - of the three boys uncovering a plot against the ruling
government and of Roland's first love, a girl named Susan Delgado
- that is the central focus of the book. While the three manage to
destroy the conspirators, Susan is killed during the fight by the
townspeople of Hambry. The story gives Jake, Eddie and
Suzannah new insight into Roland's background and why he may
sacrifice them to attain his ultimate goal of saving his world. The
book ends with the foursome moving onward once more towards
the Tower.
THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA
BY STEPHEN KING
[Author's Note: The Dark Tower books begin with Roland of
