Book Review and Writing Lessons: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The book begins less than seven hours after the end of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger after The Man in Black has described The Gunslinger’s fate using tarot cards. Roland wakes up on a beach, and he is suddenly attacked by a strange, lobster-like creature, which he dubs a “lobstrosity.” He kills the creature, but not before losing the index and middle fingers of his right hand and most of his right big toe. His untreated wounds soon become infected. Feverish and losing strength, Roland continues north along the beach, where he eventually encounters three doors. Each door opens onto New York City at different periods in time (1987, 1964 and 1977, respectively). As Roland passes through these doors, he brings back the companions who will join him on his quest to the Dark Tower.

Series: The Dark Tower (Book 2)
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (May 3, 2016)
Page Count: 496 pages

I decided to give The Dark Tower series one last shot and I’m just not into it—like at all. Maybe I’m the wrong audience since some guys I know seem to like it, but it’s just not my cup of tea. I feel a little disappointed in Stephen King because he’s heralded as a great writer, but I’m just not a fan of his style.

The Plot

This is another book that I feel like was several hundred pages longer than it needed to be. I often skipped through large swaths of expletive-filled dialogue and random backstories of people you only meet for like one scene. So I’d say the pacing was pretty terrible. I guess the book ended well, but getting there was rough.

The Setting

The majority of the book takes place in Roland’s odd world by the sea with doors in the air and talking giant lobsters or in New York. A good portion takes place in an airport in the 80s and it’s weird how different air travel was pre-911. Like the drug addict Eddie would not have gotten that far with smuggling cocaine nowadays. And the fact that there was smoking on planes and you could travel internationally without a passport is so foreign to me.

The book goes into many many point of views, but it’s interesting when Roland sees the modern world and King describes it through his eyes and how a fantasy character would see New York in the 80s. It was also clever for King to write in a recent event to a time period so the reader knows the time period instead of outright saying the year.

The Characters

Everybody is a jerk. I had a hard time caring for any of them. The only ones I cared about a little bit were Roland and Odetta. Roland because of his mission to find the Dark Tower and Odetta because she’s in a wheelchair and not a horrible person. Then again Roland robbed innocent people at gunpoint so I don’t like him again. Eddie is just selfish and crass and doesn’t get tolerable until near the end of the book. Detta was just the worst character I’ve ever read in my life. Like I skipped most scenes she was in. She was just a horrible person and swore so much.

The Theme

No idea.

Epic Things

I liked how addiction was portrayed as a demon monkey on a man’s shoulder. He doesn’t see it but it’s always there ruining the character’s life. There was also a reference to The Shining.

Content Cautions

I would give this book a strong rated R. Like the characters use every swear word of the rainbow frequently—and I mean EVERY swear word. And there’s just a ton of crass and crude dialogue. There also is a lot a talking about how guys feel about their genitalia. I don’t need to know that.

There’s a good bit of violence including a creature who eats a character’s fingers and toes, a bloody shoot-out, a severed head, a train chops off a woman’s legs, and a dude senselessly drops a brick on a little girl’s head.

There’s also heavy drug use considering one of the main characters is addicted to heroin. There’s a detailed description of drugs, drug use, drug withdrawal, and overdose.

There may have been a sex scene. I don’t know I skipped over it and possible masturbation which is disgusting. And there was also a random description of a disgusting porn magazine. What the heck, King? Was that necessary?

What We Can Take Away For Our Writing

Nowhere to Go Back To – Eddie is very reluctant to help Roland with whatever his quest is but after his brother’s death, he finally decides to go with Roland to the other world on the journey to the Dark Tower–whatever that is.

How this can be applied to writing: Sometimes a character won’t move forward with the story until they have nothing to go back to. Think Luke Skywalker from Star Wars after his home is destroyed.

Conclusion

I don’t recommend this book. It’s honestly one of the worst books I read in 2020. Stephen King, you’ve lost me.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.

King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King’s books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald’s Game and It.

King was the recipient of America’s prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.

What are your thoughts? Have you read a book where you had to skip around a lot? Do you like books with more or less content?