Drawing of the Three

The second book in King's Dark Tower series, Drawing of the Three is a noticeable improvement on the first entry. King is more confident in his abilities as a writer, and his pacing is vastly improved. Starting off immediately (though that's tough to explain...read it and you'll understand) after the end of The Gunslinger, this novel finds our hero, Roland, trying to gather the remaining members of his ka-tet in order to continue onwards in his quest of reaching the Dark Tower. A ka-tet is a group of individuals gathered together by fate in order to perform an extraordinary task. Essentially, a ka-tet is the King version of the Fellowship of the Ring. The first thing you'll notice in this book (and the series as a whole) is that King is emulating the classic fantasy stories: we've got the fellowship setting out on a dangerous journey to save the world, an evil wizard, magic weapons, monsters, etc. But what sets these fantasy book apart from others is that bit of magic we like to call Stephen King. Make no mistake, these books are written by King. For instance: in this book, Roland must travel to our universe in order to gather together his ka-tet. These people consist of a heroin addict in over his head in a crime syndicate in New York City in the seventies and a crippled black women who has multiple personalities: one is a well-educated and well-spoken businesswoman, and the other one is an extremely vulgar, extremely angry woman who speaks in ebonics and constantly feels threatened by "white boys." This is just a taste of what to expect from a fantasy series penned by King. It's a shame that The Gunslinger is such a poor start to this series because Drawing of the Three is an extremely clever, extremely original piece of fantasy literature that more than makes up for its predecessor's missteps. I encourage all readers to push through the mediocre first novel because the reward is well worth the effort.