The Wind Through the Keyhole [Hardcover]

The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel is King's eighth Dark Tower novel, although it takes place between the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4), and the fifth, The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla. (I tell you that for context, but if you're reading this, you are probably well aware of that fact :)

The story revolves around the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his fell questers taking refuge from a violent storm that brings deathly cold temperatures and mass destruction. Roland tells his group stories from his early days as a gunslinger from Gilead and how he joined up with another young man to investigate a shape-shifter, called "the Skin-man," who started a killing spree in and around a mining town. But the story does stop there. You, dear constant reader, get treated with tales of murder, crazy magicians, dragons, swamp people, and vengeance.

While this sounds like a lot to pack into one novel (a novel that takes place between two finite points, I might add), you would be right. It is a lot--but Mr. King again nails it. His writing is clear and cohesive, the characters well-fleshed, and the plot well-paced. The story adds detail and enriches his masterpiece in all the right ways, while not detracting from the Dark Tower mythos.

That said, I'll have to echo a previous reviewer--if you haven't delved into the Dark Tower stories, this is not the place to start (although I recommend starting from the beginning and reading through the entire series--its good enough to be one of those bucket list things you do before you die). If you are familiar with the Dark Tower series, you can't pass this one up.

As a longtime fan of King, I've not always agreed with every decision he's made, while respecting his right to do whatever he wants with his own writing. The one glaring conflict I've had stems from the revised edition of The Gunslinger, in which he made several changes to the book's tone and some aspects of the characters' personalities, as well as to much of the dialogue. I appreciate any and all Mid-World fiction King wants to treat us with, but I'm not happy with changes being made to beloved material. That brings us to The Wind through the Keyhole, King's latest re-entry into the Dark Tower universe. Noting the five-star rating I've given it, you can safely assume I'm pleased with this addition to the canon. Here's why.

When I first heard about this project, I thought it made good sense. King mentioned that after some reflection, he realized there was a gap between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, and has referred to this novel as "Dark Tower 4 ." Let's go back in time a bit. Years before King was hit by a van and nearly killed, he always said that The Dark Tower would be a series of about seven or eight novels. After the accident, King attacked the story like a man possessed, determined, as he also mentioned several times, not to end up like Geoffrey Chaucer with a hugely ambitious literary work that didn't get finished. He steamrolled through writing three final novels, ensuring that his story's fate wouldn't end up the same as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Now, after several healthy years recovering from the accident and resuming his career, he seems less pressured and more interested in enriching the story. And like King, I also sensed a gap between DT 4 and 5, one that didn't exist between the other novels. Sure, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah have progressed noticeably from the end of The Drawing of the Three to the beginning of The Waste Lands, but not to the point that it seemed like years had passed, as it did between 4 and 5.

The best thing about The Wind through the Keyhole to me is that the book doesn't change anything, but it adds much. It bridges the gap and fills in that missing time, establishing a more cohesive flow between books 4 and 5, while offering Dark Tower junkies like myself another glimpse into King's fantastic creation with stories of Roland's past. I don't know if I'm alone here, but I was looking for more of Roland's back-story than I got when Wizard and Glass was published. I loved the story of his ordeal in Mejis, but I thought the flashback would have a wider scope, that it wouldn't be mostly concentrated on one summer from his youth. The stories within Wind through the Keyhole open up that past with rich storytelling that helps flesh out Roland's early years and negates the concern of what the stakes will be for him and his current ka-tet. As others have noted, we know all of the characters are safe, so a worry going in was, what is there to provide suspense? Once you get lost in Mid-World's past, that concern will fade and the joy of experiencing that magical world only presented in tantalizing fragments in the other Dark Tower novels (except DT 4, of course) will set in. Wizard and Glass proved that flashbacks like these can be thrilling even if you know the characters will survive. They're great fun, allowing King to delve into the history of Mid-World and the forces that shaped Roland's personality. The Wind through the Keyhole is, for me, a welcome addition to Tower lore.

This book is one the casual reader might want to approach cautiously. If you're only familiar with some of King's work, you might not even have much use for it, since it fits somewhere near the middle of a now eight-novel series. But if you're well-versed in King's fiction, including the many books connected to The Dark Tower, you should have a great time revisiting Roland and his band of gunslingers, both past and present. I actually can't wait to go back and re-read the entire series with this book added to the timeline. It's impossible that King was able to squeeze in all of the ideas that he wanted to develop when he wrote those last three books, considering that he took years in between each of the others, and that Roland promises at the end of Wizard and Glass he has a "tale for another day" that must be told before reaching the Tower. I feel like we're now getting some of those ideas that might've come naturally if King's accident hadn't given him a pressing urgency to finish the story as soon as possible. Maybe not everyone will agree with me, and maybe even some will refuse to accept this book into the Dark Tower family; to that, I'd say they will always have the freedom of skipping it and ignoring what it adds to the story. As for me, I'm grateful that King decided to give us a little bit more. You never know, he might even decide one day to give those readers unhappy with the ending of Dark Tower 7 the final version where Roland reaches the Tower with the Horn of Eld in tow. Whether he does or not, The Wind through the Keyhole opens the door for future possibilities with this series.

Stephen King begins The Wind Through the Keyhole with a nod to Robin Furth and the gang at Marvel Comics. It's a fitting dedication since, with the exception of a narrative framing piece, this really could have (perhaps even should have) been a story arc in the comic series.

That's not to say I disliked it, just that it really adds nothing of value or context to the overall Dark Tower saga. It's nice to revisit friends, and immeasurably comforting to fall back into the language of Mid-World (say thankee-sai), but it lacks the epic feel of the rest of the series. There's no advancement of the greater plot and, rather surprisingly, hardly anything in the way of meta-references or pop-culture trivia. It also suffers, of course, from being an after-the-fact addition to an already finished storyline - no matter how fantastic the Starkblast was, there was never any real sense of danger, since we know the characters all live through to the next book.

Having said that, it's still Stephen King, it's still The Dark Tower, and it's still an enjoyable read - regardless of how it's told.

Let's start with the framing narrative of Roland, Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy. It's definitely nice to revisit the ka-tet in the days when it was whole and healthy, and comforting to spend some quality time alongside them. As for the Starkblast, it may have just been a convenient plot device to gather them together long enough for Roland to tell a story, but it's a force of nature worthy of Stephen King.

The first story-within-the-story is that of Roland as a youth, sent by his father to investigate the murderous rampage of a skin-man. It's an interesting enough tale, and does illuminate a little of Roland's mental state following the death of his mother, but it's also the aspect that most feels 'lifted' from the comics. The skin-man had definite potential as a King monster, but it never really gets its moment to shine. Yes, we get to see the carnage it's left behind (the scene with the children at the farmhouse is especially chilling), but it feels as if King wasn't that interested in the final confrontation. Again, much like the Starkblast, the skin-man is ultimately a plot device designed to give young Roland a chance to tell a story of his own.

It's this second story-within-a-story where the book really shines. Even though it has nothing to do with Roland or his ka-tet, it touches on several elements on the greater saga . . . and does, as the book's only real meta-reference, tie nicely to The Eyes of the Dragon. Part fairy tale and part epic quest adventure, Tim Southeart's tale could have carried the book on its own, with no need for the skin-man framing device. Here we get King's signature take on the family (and step-families) and the horrors of which human beings are capable. We also get an extended look into the more fantastic landscapes of Mid-World, it's mutated denizens, and the very real monsters living there (including faeries and dragons done as only King can do them). Tim's story also provides a new twist/tie to the Arthurian legends, finally weaving Merlin into the larger story in a scene that brings us back to the Starkblast, this time with a very real sense of danger to accompany it.

Overall, a solid book with one particularly great story contained within it . . . and one scene at the very end, between Roland and Susannah, that does add just a little to his character.

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