The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
The Wind Through the Keyhole is an interesting addendum to The Dark Tower series. It’s dedicated to “Robin Furth and the gang at Marvel Comics” and was published in 2011. It’s the last book Stephen King has written in the epic series but is placed chronologically between books four and five. It’s even sometimes referred to as Dark Tower 4 ½.
I go back and forth on whether I would have liked it better if I had read it between 4 and 5 or if it was best enjoyed as a return to these beloved characters. I’m not sure. After all the extended flashback in book 4 that halted me when I was younger, the flashback setup in this book probably would have driven me mad. Reading it after finishing the series and getting the chance to see the characters again may have made me appreciate it more.
This novel is a story within a story within a story. Not only do we get the extended flashbacks that are really hit and miss for me in this series, we get two of them layered together. King is kind of putting a thumb in my eye with one of my running complaints of this series. I sort of think he was just seeing if he could get away with it.
There is a storm coming. King sets up an interesting new location to open the frame of his extended flashback. The nature of the storm itself was a creative threat I had never seen before in its details. The story within the story within the story reveals a plausible explanation for the intensity of the storm based on the influence of the beams that lead to the Tower.
The flashbacks in this series tend to be western mysteries. We get that in the first step back. With the second step back into a fairytale that contains truth about Roland’s world, we get a fantasy mystery.
We find ourselves on the beam of the cat and bird. Aslan the lion is at the end of the cat beam according to legend. I’ve always wondered what life was like on some of these other beams. And, if the story is to be believed, we are possibly searching for Merlin himself.
We discover that a wheel, a common measurement in this world, is .8 miles. I don’t believe that has ever been explained before. There are Northern Positronic satellites above the world of the Dark Tower at least at some point in the past when gunslingers still roamed the land.
All three of the stories in this layered tale ramped up nicely and resolved well. I believe I have to give Stephen King credit for pulling off this experiment in storytelling.
Before the centermost tale ends, we get another tempting hint of the future like what he dropped in Eyes of the Dragon. A tale that will never be told, at least not to us. Our main character parts ways with a helper and “saw him one more time, but that is a story for another day.”
Roland gets a chance to resolve some of the hurt and loss in his own life in the conclusion of the second layer of the story. A troubling figure in his life is redeemed a little too. The two most beautiful words in any language are “I forgive.” That’s a powerful sentiment in this story.
I am left to conclude that The Wind Through the Keyhole is an underrated addition to the Dark Tower series.
My next post in this series will be Before Joyland which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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