Dark Tower aficionados are correct: forge ahead through the first book in the Dark Tower series and then it gets good. While that seems like an odd way to pitch a series to someone, and while I didn’t dislike the first, 1982’s, The Gunslinger, even King admits he was around 19-years-old when writing it. He was ambitious and arrogant in equal measure and hadn’t quite found his voice. On the other hand, with the follow-up book, 1987’s The Drawing of the Three, King is fully in his bag as an author. The Drawing of the Three is far more recognizably a King book than The Gunslinger was.
The Drawing of the Three picks up only hours after the events of the first book with Roland, the gunslinger, near death on a beach with lobster monstrosities looking to eat him. While moving along the beach, Roland encounters a door, which acts as a portal to our world during different times (1987, 1964, and 1977, respectively) to bring him into contact with the “three” from the title. First is Eddie Dean, a heroin addict trying to smuggle drugs into the United States; Odetta Walker, a woman with no legs and dissociative identity disorder; and Jack Mort, a sociopath. In turn, each represents something: Prisoner (Eddie is quite literally “prisoner” to his addiction); Lady of Shadows (Odetta’s “shadow” is her darker, meaner identity, Detta); and well, Mort’s Death as a sociopath, who is responsible for the head injury leading to Odetta’s DID and the incident that caused her legs to be amputated. He’s also the one who killed Jake in the prior book, thus “pushing” him into Roland’s world. It was great how King connected all of those events and put them into one awful character.
Like any great journey story, as the Dark Tower series is, with Roland journeying to the elusive and alluring Dark Tower, there are sub-journeys within the larger journey — not detours or side quests, but cumulatively important sub-journeys — and that’s what The Drawing of the Three is with Roland having to work with Eddie, Odessa, and even Mort. But along the way, it’s hilarious because when Roland comes into our world, he’s doing so through the minds of each person, and his way of perceiving and assessing our world makes for some of the funniest vignettes in any of King’s books. For example, at the end of the Eddie section, Roland needs sustenance, so Eddie gives him a Pepsi. Roland is blown away by the sugar content and can’t understand how our world needs cocaine and heroin when it has sugar. Or how he thinks of our vehicles as “carriages” and airplanes as “flying carriages,” and our police officers as fellow gunslingers he ought to respect. Roland was, in effect, an alien dropped into our world — a “stranger in a strange land,” if you will — and King used it to not only great comedic effect, but to set-up and execute wonderfully thrilling action sequences, such as a Tarantino-like shoot-out with Eddie’s drug-dealer, or a shoot-out with the NYC police in Mort’s time.
Roland’s characterization as the last gunslinger in his world where they’ve moved on is so well-done by King, too. Even though he is near death in his physical form, he was still considered a formidable opponent and person by anyone who encountered him, and his mind was still wickedly smart. But it’s not just a bad-ass outlaw character King has conjured up here. Roland is dealing with the fact of his own “addiction,” what he is a “prisoner” to, and the “shadow” that likewise hangs over him: the Dark Tower and the need to get there, a need so great, he was willing to sacrifice Jake in the prior book, and is aware that he would be willing to do the same thing to Eddie and Susannah (the name Odetta takes at the end as a stronger merging of her two personalities). But he also loves them, and he tries to reckon with the fact that if he lets go of love, what’s all this for? What does it matter to get to the Tower if he’s bereft of everything that makes him human?
I look forward to seeing how this all plays out in the next book in the series, but again, those who love this series were correct. If you didn’t like the first book and it made you not want to continue with the series, try giving The Drawing of the Three a shot. Any King fan would recognize it as a King book worthy of their time, with his hallmark dark humor, violence, deeply drawn characters, and plotting that is can’t-put-down.
Milam's Musings 
The first book is the best in the series. I’ve never heard anyone say it was a slog before, especially since it’s also the shortest book in the series.
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