For readers new to The Dark Tower, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE is a stand-alone novel, and a wonderful introduction to the series. It is a story within a story, which features both the younger and older gunslinger Roland on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Fans of the existing seven books in the series will also delight in discovering what happened to Roland and his ka-tet between the time they leave the Emerald City and arrive at the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis.
This Russian Doll of a novel, a story within a story, within a story, visits Mid-World's last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. (The novel can be placed between Dark Tower IV and Dark Tower V.) Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother's death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape shifter, a 'skin man,' Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast's most recent slaughter. Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, 'The Wind through the Keyhole'. 'A person's never too old for stories,' he says to Bill. 'Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.' And stories like these, they live for us.
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During the days after they left the Green Palace that wasn't Oz after all - but which was now the tomb of the unpleasant fellow Roland's ka-tet had known as the Tick-Tock Man - the boy Jake began to range farther and farther ahead of Roland, Eddie, and Susannah.- STARKBLAST, 1
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(@HodderBooks, 1 January 2017, hardback, first edition, 335 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I've only read The Wind Through The Keyhole a couple of times. I love it. I should read it between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla but I never do. This is more of a story-within-a-story book rather than a straight-forward novel. The book opens with Roland and his ka-tet stranded by a storm after leaving the green palace at the end of Wizard and Glass. Roland tells his companions two stories, one true story about his life after Susan Delgado's death called The Skin Man and the title story, a fairytale from his youth that might be true as well. I loved The Skin Man and the title story equally. I also loved the framing story with Roland and his ka-tet. It was great to return to the gunslinger's again. I'd recommend this.
