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imstephtacular's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
4.0
I keep reading Stephen King because he's a hell of a storyteller. This story is GOOD. The writing is compelling, the pacing keeps you wanting to turn the pages, and the characters give you whiplash rooting for and against them.
That being said, I didn't love the first book in the series, but am glad I continued.
However, this book is dated in a lot of ways. There are outdated slurs of all kinds and horrible ableist language. This is hard to overlook, despite the book's publishing date. I can forgive some of it, but not all of it.
Overall, I had a great time reading this and will continue reading the series over time
That being said, I didn't love the first book in the series, but am glad I continued.
However, this book is dated in a lot of ways. There are outdated slurs of all kinds and horrible ableist language. This is hard to overlook, despite the book's publishing date. I can forgive some of it, but not all of it.
Overall, I had a great time reading this and will continue reading the series over time
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Body horror, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Violence, Blood, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Death, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Murder, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Hate crime and Islamophobia
misfitnightmare's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Cringed a lot for unnecessary use of n slur in the book. Plus it seems that S. King didn't do very good research about mental disorders because Odetta doesn't have schizophrenia, she has DID. Other than that it was better than the first book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Blood, Murder, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
joshkiba13's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
"In matters of the Tower, fate became a thing as merciful as the lighter which had saved his life and as painful as the fire the miracle had ignited. Like the wheels of the oncoming train, it followed a course both logical and crushingly brutal, a course against which only steel and sweetness could stand."
What a trip. The Gunslinger served as a slow-burning prologue to this series; The Drawing of the Three was the race following a starting gun. It begins hours after the end of the first book, and follows Roland on a journey to survive and to fulfill one of the many prophecies from the first book.
Destiny (or ka) leads our gunslinger to people to aid him in his quest for the Tower. I love how unconventional his companions are. We have a guy in his 20s suffering from a heroin addiction and sticky dealings with the mob, and a legless woman plagued by a split personality. Roland doesn't understand why these people have been placed in his path, but he accepts it with radically relentless trust in ka and moves forward.
There were a lot of intense and gripping action sequences, and many tender moments between characters, as well as ones of great introspection. I loved this passage of Roland understanding that to live without love would mutate his quest beyond its worth:
"A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell's own price in the end . . . If there is naught but darkness in your heart, what could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? . . . But to gain one's object as a monster . . . To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it?"
The entire nearly 500 page book took place over a few days, and in the grand scheme of the series it really seems like a prologue part II since it's completely the assembly of Roland's team. I'm excited to continue toward the Tower in The Waste Lands (following the reading a few offshoot books to prepare).
This book was waaay more King's regular style compared to the very prose-y first book, but there were still some cool phrases here and there, such as this one describing Roland from a mob boss's point of view:
" . . . a tall man with dirty gray-black hair and a face that looked as if it had been chiseled from obdurate stone by some savage god."
There are still a ton of questions from the first book left unanswered, principal among them being what set Roland on this quest to the Dark Tower in the first place. I really hope that is touched on early on in the next installment so that I can connect more with his determination. I know the fourth book, Wizard in Glass, is almost entirely a backstory for our gunslinger, but crossing my fingers that we can have just a little more to go on in the third book first.
Overall a quick and fun read. Excited for more to come soon.
What a trip. The Gunslinger served as a slow-burning prologue to this series; The Drawing of the Three was the race following a starting gun. It begins hours after the end of the first book, and follows Roland on a journey to survive and to fulfill one of the many prophecies from the first book.
Destiny (or ka) leads our gunslinger to people to aid him in his quest for the Tower. I love how unconventional his companions are. We have a guy in his 20s suffering from a heroin addiction and sticky dealings with the mob, and a legless woman plagued by a split personality. Roland doesn't understand why these people have been placed in his path, but he accepts it with radically relentless trust in ka and moves forward.
There were a lot of intense and gripping action sequences, and many tender moments between characters, as well as ones of great introspection. I loved this passage of Roland understanding that to live without love would mutate his quest beyond its worth:
"A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell's own price in the end . . . If there is naught but darkness in your heart, what could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? . . . But to gain one's object as a monster . . . To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it?"
The entire nearly 500 page book took place over a few days, and in the grand scheme of the series it really seems like a prologue part II since it's completely the assembly of Roland's team. I'm excited to continue toward the Tower in The Waste Lands (following the reading a few offshoot books to prepare).
This book was waaay more King's regular style compared to the very prose-y first book, but there were still some cool phrases here and there, such as this one describing Roland from a mob boss's point of view:
" . . . a tall man with dirty gray-black hair and a face that looked as if it had been chiseled from obdurate stone by some savage god."
There are still a ton of questions from the first book left unanswered, principal among them being what set Roland on this quest to the Dark Tower in the first place. I really hope that is touched on early on in the next installment so that I can connect more with his determination. I know the fourth book, Wizard in Glass, is almost entirely a backstory for our gunslinger, but crossing my fingers that we can have just a little more to go on in the third book first.
Overall a quick and fun read. Excited for more to come soon.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cursing, Drug use, and Gun violence
Minor: Homophobia, Racial slurs, and Rape
mlizzi88's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Racial slurs, and Racism
Minor: Rape
jrmrf's review
adventurous
dark
lighthearted
slow-paced
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, and Rape
Moderate: Drug use
bluejayreads's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.0
This was a weird reading experience. I’m reading this series more to talk about it with a friend than because I want to read it, and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have continued after The Gunslinger. This book does get more into the action, so it felt less like an extended beginning and more like an actual story. At some points it was even enjoyable.
Roland spends this book going back and forth through doors that are only half there to collect the three people the man in black told him he needed. These three people are in our world in different times. There’s Eddie, a drug addict who’s on his first smuggling run when Roland meets him and who quickly became my favorite. There’s Odetta, a black amputee and two different varieties of racist stereotype. And there’s Jack Mort, whose section was fairly enjoyable even though I spent the entire time hoping that he would not have to end up joining the group.
That’s pretty much the plot. There’s an overarching plot of Roland has an infected injury and is trying to stay alive and the three shorter plots of what’s through the doors and trying to get the three people to join him, tied together by sections of walking down a disturbing beach. It is slow-paced, but it’s interesting enough, and compared to book one it’s absolutely action-packed.
It was true of book one, and only got more extreme in this book, but The Drawing of the Three falls into one of my biggest complaints with adult fantasy-adjacent books: relying on grossness and bodily fluids to portray “realism.” There’s a lot of urine, feces, sweat, pus, saliva, and all other kinds of disgusting liquid-ish things that the human body can produce. I know that it is realistic, but personally I read for fun and prefer all the gross stuff to be sanitized by the lens of fiction. I’m aware this is a personal opinion, but if bodily fluids make you squeamish you may want to skip this one.
I was also pretty weirded out by the preteen girl masturbation scene and the guy who orgasmed by murdering people, but it’s not like Stephen King has never written creepy sexual scenes before, so I guess that’s a risk you take when reading his books.
When I finished this book, I was really ambivalent about reading on. Even though this series isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever read, it’s a little too slow and gross for me. This series was starting to feel more like an obligation than anything I particularly want to read. But my friend who’s also reading the series gave me a spoiler for future books that makes me more interested in reading on. So I guess I am continuing the series after all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Blood, Excrement, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Racism
Minor: Rape, Sexual content, Medical content, and Murder
Sexual content involving minors, mind control, someone inside your mind without your consentyodamordecai's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Mental illness, and Racial slurs
Minor: Rape
lou_o_donnell's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
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