WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

This was such a welcome return to Stephen King and The Dark Tower. I didn’t realize how much I missed my ka-tet until I was once again dropped into the world of Roland, Eddie, Susannah and Jake, and, honestly, it felt like coming home again.

For those unfamiliar, The Dark Tower is a seven-book fantasy series spanning from 1982-2004 and The Wind Through the Keyhole is a 2012 release that nestles between books four and five. Effectively, our gang stops to wait out a storm and the Gunslinger passes the time by telling a story from his youth.

That story is The Wind Through the Keyhole, a sort of fable that was told to the children of Gilead and serves as a ‘story within a story’ for us; the readers.

I won’t go into too much plot because this is, after all, a spoiler free review, but I will say this! I love how Stephen King continues to develop and build out his universe. All books – including this one – very much stand on their own two feet, however avid King readers get the extra bonus of seeing the connections and throughlines throughout all his works.

Things as simple as tying in ‘Shawshank Prison’ or ‘The Overlook Hotel’ into various books create a plethora of Easter eggs for fans, but The Dark Tower is almost like a behind-the-scenes look into King’s writing process. It’s the roadmap for his entire bibliography, tying in everything from It, Salem’s Lot, and The Stand to lesser-known works like The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia and Black House.

It’s a bit out there, granted, but I really enjoyed it and this 2012 return to the series was extremely enjoyable. Plus, as a side note because I never reviewed it on this site, the opening line to the first book in the series is one of my favorite openers of all time:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” – Stephen King, The Gunslinger (1982)

This is a hard one to recommend, because while it holds some value as a stand-alone novel, you really should complete the seven-book series prior to picking this one up. But as someone who already has finished the original series, I really enjoyed this experience.

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“The Wind Through the Keyhole” by Stephen King