alright now that's more like it. this writing was what i've come to expect from king and it worked so much better than what he did in the first book. there are still plenty of unanswered questions but now they serve to pull the reader along whereas before they were more confusing. i didn't like everything he did in this book, but it all felt like him again. the idea of schizophrenia as multiple personality disorder is annoying today but not anachronistic for when he wrote this. also i remember it being in so many stories around that time, so this fits really well also in the zeitgeist of the time. (i even wrote a story where this was the premise, just a few years after this, with the same misunderstanding of the disorder and how it operates.) anyway, this wasn't perfect by any means (there was literally no reason for eddie to fall in love with odetta in minutes, and every reason that he could have over the course of the months that followed, for one example) but it is leaps and bounds better than the gunslinger and much more like what i expect from the other books moving forward. ( )

Well, NOW we're fucking talking. Yes. If the first book felt like a prologue, this really felt like a book on its own. One that didn't necessarily have a proper ending, but since it's not meant to be the last book in this series that's totally fine.

Yeah, the plot in this one is good and there were many times where I did not want to put it down. The characters are interesting and there are some twists that keeps it going in a nice way.

The whole Odetta/Detta thing feels ~*problematic*~ because the way Detta - a black woman - is described (like an animal or sometimes just as a bad stereotype) seems kinda offensive, but it's not like the book isn't aware that it's a stereotype or that racism is a thing, so that's something. It was weird reading he Gunslinger described as a white person also, because obviously in my head he looks like Idris Elba (honestly is that the perfect casting or what??).

I guess I'll have to buy the rest of the series now. Sigh. ( )

1985

This book is not only the drawing of the three for the tower, this is the one that draws the reader into the tower saga. The first book, the gunslinger, was a good story but it really was just the background and introduction for this. I hope everyone continues after that introduction because the second book is amazing and although the story is not typical King, his amazing writing and ability to draw a picture and emotion is definitely there. I cannot wait to continue on the adventure with Roland and his newly discovered gunslingers to see how the rest of the tower saga develops ( )

Roland finds the 3rd in his quest through the doors. Let the adventure begin. ( )