C

After thoroughly enjoying Stephen King’s first novel in the Dark Tower saga, The Gunslinger, I had pretty high expectations for the second in the series, The Drawing of Three. Unfortunately, I came away a little disappointed. Now don’t get me wrong, The Drawing of Three was a decent read, but it just wasn’t nearly as good as The Gunslinger.

The second novel in the series begins shortly after Roland’s confrontation with the Man in Black at the end of the first novel. We find Roland ten years older, on a seemingly endless expanse of beach where he faces a new set of challenges in his quest to find the Dark Tower. The main focus revolves around the drawing of three individuals (the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, and the Pusher) that will help Roland achieve his quest. Those three were predicted by the Man in Black during his encounter with Roland at the end of the first novel.

With the drawings, we are introduced to three new characters. This is where the novel starts to have some problems for me. I’m used to reading fantasy novels where the protagonist is typically surrounded by a loyal band of friends. Well, Roland isn’t your typical protagonist and the individuals that he encounters are even more atypical. I didn’t mind Eddie too much, the first character he meets, but I couldn’t stand Detta Walker. I didn’t like anything about her character. I couldn’t relate to her at all and I didn’t like the way King wrote her. The action picked up and my feelings towards the novel generally improved with the sequence with the third character, Jack Mort.

Overall, novel was pretty good and I’m glad I stuck with it, because I went on to read the third novel in the series and it was a bit better. I had trouble getting through certain parts of The Drawing of Three, mostly because the character Detta was just awful to read. I hated reading her parts and not in the good way that you can hate a villain. Another thing that I don’t always like is just how dark and gruesome it can get. It’s very obvious that King is primarily a horror writer. The villains and obstacles are definitely more the fitting for the horror genre than the fantasy, and I’m not a horror fan to say the least.

Anyways, if you’ve read The Gunslinger and enjoyed it, you should give The Drawing of Three a shot. I think this will be a good series in the end, but the second definitely won’t be my favorite.