Just Finished Rereading Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

Wizard and Glass is the fourth novel in Stephen King's seven-part fantasy/science fiction series The Dark Tower, published a year before the renowned popular writer was nearly killed when he was run over by a van while walking down a country Maine road...that incident would greatly influence how he concluded this series five years later.  In Wizard and Glass, protagonist gunslinger Roland Deschain and his "ka-tet" of fellow quest travelers Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy have just survived riding on a maniacal train named Blaine, which has deposited them in an area very much like Kansas but different in various aspects.  While they recover there, Roland relates his promised story about what had earlier happened in his life at the Barony of Mejis, in which he and two friends, Cuthbert and Alain, discover evidence of insurrection by John Farson, enemy of the established order and general destroyer of civilized society.  It's all a part of the mystery surrounding the Dark Tower, which seems to hold all of reality together and which is under siege from a sinister power...this is Roland's quest, to find the Tower and restore order.  In Mejis he encounters Susan Delgado, a young woman already promised to bear an heir to the town's mayor ...Roland and she fall in love, and the story is divided between their relationship and the simmering clandestine rebellion known to many of the area's residents.  It's a tragic tale but very exciting, with the evil Rhea the Crone as a kind of witch with possession of an equally evil glass through which she can view others...very much like that globe the Wicked Witch of the West uses in The Wizard of Oz.  Wizard and Glass is the most coherent of the seven main Dark Tower novels, and this alone makes it stand out.  But you really need to read the first three in the series in order to know what's going on.  I first read this series more than a decade ago...it's fun to reacquaint myself with its remarkable characters and vistas...