Review: "The Drawing of the Three" by Stephen King

From Goodreads:  After his confrontation with the man in black at the end of The Gunslinger, Roland awakes to find three doors on the beach of Mid-World's Western Sea—each leading to New York City but at three different moments in time. Through these doors, Roland must "draw" three figures crucial to his quest for the Dark Tower. In 1987, he finds Eddie Dean, The Prisoner, a heroin addict. In 1964, he meets Odetta Holmes, the Lady of Shadows, a young African-American heiress who lost her lower legs in a subway accident and gained a second personality that rages within her. And in 1977, he encounters Jack mort, Death, a pusher responsible for cruelties beyond imagining. Has Roland found new companions to form the ka-tet of his quest? Or has he unleashed something else entirely?

My Thoughts:  I can't believe I put off reading this for so long!  I read The Gunslinger about a year ago and then bought The Drawing of the Three soon after.  I wasn't a huge fan of The Gunslinger so it, obviously, took me a long time to pick up the next book in the Dark Tower series.  Needless to say, I was surprised to find how quickly I got sucked into this book.  It's definitely weird and I swear Stephen King had to have been high when he wrote it, but the story is really good.  There is a lot more action in this book than in the first and you don't have to spend the entire story inside Roland's head.  The new characters introduced, Eddie and Odetta/Detta, are incredibly well-developed and really interesting.  Okay, Odetta/Detta is scary as hell but still a fascinating character.  Eddie was also a great character who definitely redeemed himself in my eyes; he seemed like a punk in the beginning but as I learned more about him, I came to like him.  It was also neat to see how all the new characters in this story intertwined with each other and with characters in the first Dark Tower book.   I do have to say that, once again, Stephen King created a truly evil character in Jack Mort.  That dude was messed up!  I don't know how King thinks up these terrible human beings but he is so good at it.

If you have read the first book in the Dark Tower series and aren't sure if you want to continue, I highly recommend reading this book.  I enjoyed it way more than The Gunslinger and am really glad I read it.  Now on to the third book!  4 stars.