Therell be water if God wills it, says Mid-Worlds last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and the expression might refer to the creative process itself, especially when it comes to The Dark Tower, the epic fantasy saga that stands as Stephen Kings most beguiling achievement. Beginning as a trickle in 1974, gaining force in the 1980s and gushing to a conclusion when the last three novels were published in 2003-2004, it has been a lively river since — the basis first for a long-running Marvel comic series and now for an ambitious confluence of movies and television under the direction of Ron Howard.And the wellspring has not run dry, for with THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE King has written a sparkling contribution to the saga. This Russian Doll of a novel, a story within a story within a story, visits Roland and his katet as a ferocious, frigid 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 mothers 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 beasts most recent slaughter. Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from the Book of Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, The Wind through the Keyhole. A persons never too old for stories, he says to Bill. Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.
