Believe it or not, I survived that terrible ordeal and took it upon myself to devour this tasty morsel in as few sittings as possible. Of course school and life conspired to make that dream shatter and I was instead relegated to scraping together all the tiny quiet moments in my life and turning them into Dark Tower reading moments. In the end, the consumption arrangement didn't matter, because damn it, I was once again back in Mid-World with my old pals Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susannah and Oy, and I was willing to say a big thankee to Sai King for that.
The Wind Through The Keyhole is best described, as it has been elsewhere a hundred times over, as Dark Tower 4.5, meaning that it fits nice and snug between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. If you are new to the series, or just working your way through, and you get to read this one in sequence, I am pretty fucking jealous, because I think this book works best in sequence rather than as an add-on after one has read the whole series. The reason I say that is because, with the whole series behind me, there was a bit less tension in this one than there could have been. Still, this was a fun and entertaining addition to the Dark Tower series.
My favorite thing about this book is that it is a story-within-a-story-within-a-story. I don't know why, but I love that kind of shit. The novel begins with Roland and his ka-tet holing up in an abandoned town to wait out a brutal storm called a Starkblast. While the weather rages on outside, Roland entertains the crew with a story from his gunslinging youth, titled Skin Man.
This story features Roland and his former ka-tet mate, Jamie DeCurry, as they travel to a distant barony to investigate a series of grisly killings that may be the work of a shape-shifter. When they arrive in Debaria, Roland and Jamie encounter a town still reeling from the night's previous attack which left a score or more farmers, field hands, women and children dead. Miraculously, there's one survivor, a young lad by the name of Bill Streeter. Since young Bill is Roland's only and best lead in finding the killer, he quickly puts together a plan to nab the skin-man. The catch is, young Bill plays a critical role in said nabbing and in order to calm Bill's nerves before the big event, Roland tells him the story of The Wind Through The Keyhole, an origin story/coming of age tale of sorts for Tim Stoutheart, a legendary Gunslinger.
Though I enjoyed each of the three stories this book provides, my hands-down favorite was the title story itself, The Wind Through The Keyhole. This is one of the finest works of storytelling I've had the pleasure to enjoy. It felt like I was reading a classic fable or folktale as told by Stephen King...a very awesome experience. This one had some great classic fantasy elements in it, complete with haunted forests, dragons, dark magic, and even strange little people that I pictured as a cross between oompa-loompas and brown barbaloots. (Probably not how King intended them to be imagined, but fuck it, I'm my own man.) All this with some decidedly King-esque twists and mutations to old standards and you have one fantastic story.
Aside from The Wind Through The Keyhole portion of the novel, the rest of the book was borderline mediocre in terms of entertainment value...which is kinda strange given that The Wind Through The Keyhole story is the furthest removed from having a connection to the actual Dark Tower series. The reason I didn't enjoy the other two portions as much boils down to the fact that I already knew what happens before and after those events; so there wasn't much tension to either story line. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy this book, or that I didn't savor each new, fresh moment with Roland and his ka-tet, but this one lacked the power that a book possesses when the reader does not know how things will turn out. Don't get me wrong, the whole book is a good one, but for me, it suffered from being an after-the-fact addition to the main storyline.
All told, it was pretty sweet to back in Mid-World and I'm grateful for the opportunity for new Dark Tower material, especially stuff that didn't alter or change what had already come before. The kicker is, this didn't really add anything to the story either and in no way feels essential to the series. Sure it's a good book, but it could be taken completely out of the series and it wouldn't effect a damn thing. You can't say that about any of the other books in the series, and I think that's where King faltered most. Sure, he slipped this one in nicely between books 4 and 5, but it doesn't really matter because he doesn't really do anything other than give some side story and fill in unnecessary details that we don't really need to know.
So...yes, I'm happy this book exists; purely because I'm a big fan of the Dark Tower books. Yes, the book is a fun and entertaining read, and even has some extended moments of sheer brilliance, but for me, the book was lacking because it fails to be an essential addition to the Dark Tower series. Solid, but not solid gold.
Grade: B
