Roland Deschain and his ka-tet — Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, the billy-bumbler — encounter a ferocious storm just after crossing the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two... and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.
In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man” preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day’s trials by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother often read to him at bedtime. “A person’s never too old for stories,” Roland says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them.” And indeed, the tale that Roland unfolds, the legend of Tim Stoutheart, is a timeless treasure for all ages, a story that lives for us.
King began the Dark Tower series in 1974; it gained momentum in the 1980s; and he brought it to a thrilling conclusion when the last three novels were published in 2003 and 2004. The Wind Through the Keyhole is sure to fascinate avid fans of The Dark Tower epic. But this novel also stands on its own for all readers, an enchanting and haunting journey to Roland’s world and testimony to the power of Stephen King’s storytelling magic.
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Almost a decade ago from the time of this writing,
The Dark Tower - a saga near and dear to the hearts of many fantasy fans, and at least as meaningful to a multitude of mainstream Stephen King readers who would never think to identify themselves as such - drew to a calamitous close. It marked an end to the entire affair, assuredly - and these days there is worth in that and that alone - but a dissatisfying one, I dare say, courtesy three long novels composed and published within months of one another versus the twenty-odd years their author had occasionally dedicated to unraveling this epic weird western before the awful accident that seems to have defined his career since.
The subsequent rush to wrap things up showed, of course. But on the bright side, at least the thing was finished.
Back then, though, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that
The Dark Tower was actually over... that the series I'd spent my whole reading life looking forward to following through most of the rest of it was suddenly done and dusted, and with what passed for a whimper rather than the thunderous bang I still insist it had earned.
Well: good news, everyone!
That being said, there's bad news too.
The Wind Through the Keyhole may motivate a few Johnny-come-lately types into giving
The Gunslinger a shot, and perhaps thereafter the remainder of the mostly magnificent series it begins. Old timers, however - which is to say those of us who have been there, done that before (AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS STUPID SIDEARM!) - are likely to find themselves frustrated by this so-called midquel's essential insignificance.
"Time is a keyhole. [...] We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do - the wind that blows through the keyhole - is the breath of all the living universe." (p.263)
Ostensibly,
The Wind Through the Keyhole takes place between Volumes IV and V of
The Dark Tower saga, so after Roland's stupefying showdown with Marten Broadcloak in the Emerald City but momentarily before the ka-tet come to Calla Bryn Sturgis and Father Callahan. That, alas, is only important insofar as it represents an empty spot in the mythology where King can stage this postscript of sorts, composed of three stories nestled one within the other within the other.
In the first, whilst traveling along the Path of the Beam, Roland and his oddball posse - including fan-favourite Oy, the billy-bumbler - sense the coming of a Starkblast, and take shelter in an abandoned building to wait out the storm. To help while away the time that night, the wizened old gunslinger of Gilead tells a tale about a tale he was himself told, and once, in his youth, told in turn. This is "The Skin-Man," and though it recalls the extended fiction Peter David has purveyed in Marvel's current comic book cut of
The Dark Tower more than anything in the official King canon, it's not half bad for all that. If anything, in (ahem) stark contrast to the narrative within which the other narratives nestle, it's overstuffed... particularly in terms of character.
To his credit, one senses that King is completely cognisant of how very little room he has to maneuver in "The Skin-Man," given that his constant readers know both what comes
before it, and
after. Thus, there can be no real jeopardy in terms of those folks we know and adore - or not - in advance. In the attempt to redress this balance, however, King goes too far in the other direction, introducing a host of nobodies it's honestly tough to tell apart, far less give a fig for.
It certainly doesn't help that "The Skin-Man" is sliced in half, either. Bifurcated, if you will, by the titular tale, a long novella wherein a woodsman's son, spurred on by two adults - one abusive, the other attractively enigmatic - comes of age after the death of his dear departed father. "The Wind Through the Keyhole" also takes in dark forests, black magics, dragons, SatNav spirits and - to come full circle - a Starkblast, the sister of the very storm you will recall inspired the telling of this old story.
But I've saved the best for last, haven't I? Because finally, not to mention fittingly, there
is a reason you need to read
The Wind Through the Keyhole, and "The Wind Through the Keyhole" is it. It's a
tour de force story: an endearing olde world fable much more ambitious than "The Skin-Man," vastly more satisfying than "Starkblast" or "Storm's Over" - the pointless short with which this midquel concludes - and far better put than anything else in this curiously fragmented collection of loose ends.
Be you a die-hard fan of
The Dark Tower or a complete newcomer to King's fiction - assuming such a species of people still exists - "The Wind Through the Keyhole," at least, is well worth the investment. Deeply resonant and sweetly redolent of the good old days of this sadly slightly stymied fantasy saga, it chronicles an author at the top of his game, with some terrific stories yet to tell, and a natural talent for telling them that - at its best, as in this novella - knows no equal.
As to the rest of
The Wind Through the Keyhole, though? Well thankee-sai, sincerely... but no thanks.
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The Wind Through the Keyhole:
A Dark Tower Novel
by Stephen King
UK Publication: April 2012, Hodder & Stoughton
US Publication: April 2012, Scribner
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