Come-commala.
I finally broke down and did it.
I finally read 'Wolves of the Calla'.
When 'The Dark Tower' was in trade paperback, and I was a teenager and obsessed with Stephen King, my grandmother bought me a copy, which the boyfriend of my then-best friend promptly stole away. I never told her. I was ashamed. And so, I made it into my twenties without ever having read these books. I even managed to convince myself, to a degree, that I hadn't wanted to -- I managed to sour my own grapes.
When ohimesamamama found this out, she badgered me, she prodded me, and she eventually sent me a set of the first four books in trade paperback, ordering me to read. I started reading grudgingly; I continued like a woman possessed. These were the books I'd been waiting for my whole life, I halfway-thought; this was the story I'd been hoping someone would tell. I was actually lucky: I got to glut myself on four at once, rather than waiting for years and years.
When I got 'Wolves of the Calla', I put off reading it for as long as I could, because I didn't want to be that much closer to the end. (Initially, at least, I was putting it off. Then I was going to England, and simply didn't have space in my suitcase for a seven hundred page hardcover novel. But I digress.)
Friday, I finally gave in, and began.
'Wolves' is very much a grown man's novel, just like, in some ways, 'The Gunslinger' is a young man's novel. The characters have deepened, richened and matured. By the time I hit the first of the (relatively uninspired) illustrations, I was lost. I didn't just read this book: I rationed it like water in the desert. I soaked in it. I bathed in it.
In Calla Bryn Sturgis, every twenty-some years, the Wolves come down out of Thunderclap and steal one of every pair of children away. Yes, pair; nearly all the children born in the Calla are twins. This time, the people decide to fight. And to fight, they need gunslingers, and stories say that the last of the line of Eld is so very, very close...
It's an amazing book. I can't even start to pin down the spinning and spanning in my head. Mars kept saying 'it gets worse', speaking not of quality, but of the fact that the book would keep on hurting me, and she was right; Stephen King can slap me stupid and I'll still love him. Part of that is that he's the only author I truly internalized when I was young: I read everything I could touch, I drank his words like wine, and now his shorthand is almost instinctive to me. Every phrase he uses is weighted not just with the current work, but with everything that came before. Every death hurts. I adore him.
And now I have to wait two months for the next. Why does that seem so long, when I know some have waited years to get this far?
I want to see the Tower.
I finally read 'Wolves of the Calla'.
When 'The Dark Tower' was in trade paperback, and I was a teenager and obsessed with Stephen King, my grandmother bought me a copy, which the boyfriend of my then-best friend promptly stole away. I never told her. I was ashamed. And so, I made it into my twenties without ever having read these books. I even managed to convince myself, to a degree, that I hadn't wanted to -- I managed to sour my own grapes.
When ohimesamamama found this out, she badgered me, she prodded me, and she eventually sent me a set of the first four books in trade paperback, ordering me to read. I started reading grudgingly; I continued like a woman possessed. These were the books I'd been waiting for my whole life, I halfway-thought; this was the story I'd been hoping someone would tell. I was actually lucky: I got to glut myself on four at once, rather than waiting for years and years.
When I got 'Wolves of the Calla', I put off reading it for as long as I could, because I didn't want to be that much closer to the end. (Initially, at least, I was putting it off. Then I was going to England, and simply didn't have space in my suitcase for a seven hundred page hardcover novel. But I digress.)
Friday, I finally gave in, and began.
'Wolves' is very much a grown man's novel, just like, in some ways, 'The Gunslinger' is a young man's novel. The characters have deepened, richened and matured. By the time I hit the first of the (relatively uninspired) illustrations, I was lost. I didn't just read this book: I rationed it like water in the desert. I soaked in it. I bathed in it.
In Calla Bryn Sturgis, every twenty-some years, the Wolves come down out of Thunderclap and steal one of every pair of children away. Yes, pair; nearly all the children born in the Calla are twins. This time, the people decide to fight. And to fight, they need gunslingers, and stories say that the last of the line of Eld is so very, very close...
It's an amazing book. I can't even start to pin down the spinning and spanning in my head. Mars kept saying 'it gets worse', speaking not of quality, but of the fact that the book would keep on hurting me, and she was right; Stephen King can slap me stupid and I'll still love him. Part of that is that he's the only author I truly internalized when I was young: I read everything I could touch, I drank his words like wine, and now his shorthand is almost instinctive to me. Every phrase he uses is weighted not just with the current work, but with everything that came before. Every death hurts. I adore him.
And now I have to wait two months for the next. Why does that seem so long, when I know some have waited years to get this far?
I want to see the Tower.