The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

The four gunslingers and

At the beginning of the story-within-the-story, Roland (age fourteen) discovers his mother's affair with their counselor, wizard Marten Broadcloak. Roland fights his mentor Cort to earn his guns and get revenge, when his father, Steven, reveals to have already known of the affair. His father sends Roland and his best friends Alain Johns and Cuthbert Allgood east to deal with other matters. The three arrive in the Barony of Mejis, in the town of Hambry, where they meet Mayor Thorin and Chancellor Rimer, among other high officials. Roland befriends Susan Delgado, the Mayor's promised concubine, come Reaping Day, this world's analogue to New Years. The three friends act under the pretense of gathering information on livestock for Gilead, their hometown, but secretly try to discover a plot by John Farson, the Good Man, who plans to invade Gilead.

Roland, Alain and Cuthbert butt heads with the Big Coffin Hunters, a trio of failed gunslingers who have marked the three for dead after an altercation in a bar. The Hunters are actually working with Farson, alongside the Mayor and Chancellor. Farson is using the believed defunct oil tankers in the nearby Citgo oil plant to fuel his war machines. Roland and Susan engage in sexual intercourse on several occasions, clouding Roland’s mind and making him nearly forget about the reason he was sent to Hambry. The relationship nearly results in a permanent split between the three friends. Meanwhile, Eldred Jonas, one of the Hunters, has entrusted Rhea of the Cöös with Maerlyn’s Grapefruit, the pink Wizards Glass, which can show the future to the user.

Infatuated with the Glass, Rhea uses it for extended periods of time, starving herself and her pets. With it, she is able to learn of Roland and Susan’s affair and nearly hypnotize Susan to cut off her hair. Mayor Thorin and Chancellor Rimer are killed by Clay Reynolds, another one of the Hunters and frames the apprentice gunslingers for their deaths. Susan breaks them out of jail and they go into hiding as the Hunters prepare Farson for invasion. The four, alongside a mentally disabled boy named Sheemie, get ready to ambush the party. Roland plans to draw the party into Eyebolt Canyon and draw them into the thinny hiding inside the caves. Rhea uses the glass to tell Reynolds the location of Susan, and he captures her.

Susan is taken back to the Mayor’s home, where she is guarded by his wife Olive. Sheemie breaks into the home, and rescues Susan with Olive’s help. She orders Sheemie to return to town to ward off anyone attempting to find the two, who are later found by Reynolds again. He kills Olive and captures Susan again. Meanwhile, Roland, Alain and Cuthbert launch an attack on Farson’s henchmen, killing them all, including two Hunters: Roy Depape and Jonas. Roland takes the Wizard’s Glass from the latter and uses it on himself. The glass tells him his future and starts his obsession with the Dark Tower; Finding it becomes his top priority.

The three then assault George Latigo, another one of Farson’s employees, encampment, blowing up the oil tankers. They ran off towards Eyebolt Canyon, tricking Latigo’s men to follow them. Roland traps them by setting fire to the brush at the entrance of the canyon, killing them by sending them straight to the thinny. Roland’s tale ends with the glass showing Roland a vision and of Susan's death (burned at the stake as a harvest sacrifice for colluding with Roland) and of his future. The visions send him into a stupor, from which he eventually recovers—at which point the glass torments him with further visions, this time of events that he was not present for but nonetheless shaped his fate and Susan's.

In the morning, Roland's new ka-tet comes to a suspiciously familiar

Connections with other books

In this novel, the ka-tet appear in version of Topeka, Kansas, in the 1980s. The city is deserted, as this

References