Review: The Drawing of the Three

The Drawing of the Three is the second installment of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, and unfortunately it is not very good.

The basic plot is that our protagonist Roland draws three people from our universe (or world, or time, or whatever) to help him in his quest to find the Dark Tower. While the plot twists toward the end are interesting (don’t worry, no spoilers here), the novel suffers from the standard King draaaaaawiiiing out of the story, which gets dull.

But a bigger problem with this installment is that while Roland’s über-post-apocalyptic Spaghetti Western world is interesting, the stories taking place in New York are not. Yes, I started to skim, muttering to myself Just get on with it, dammit, Steve–draw the three so we can get on with the journey to the Dark Tower. The Great Quest for Penicillin just isn’t that exciting.

Nevertheless, the series has enough potential that I’ve started on The Wastelands…