Mid-World is a dangerous place.
Just ask the ka-tet of Roland Deschain, last gunslinger and knight-errant questing to find the Dark Tower.
The Wind Through the Keyhole is the eighth novel in Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga. It is a series of novels that took King twenty-three years to complete, the doorway to Roland’s world closed to the horror author more often than not. That said, last year, the door opened up despite his opus being complete, leading King to write one more tale that takes place between Wizard & Glass and Wolves of the Calla.
For me, I’m excited for The Wind Through the Keyhole. I always felt there was an overly large gap between Wizard & Glass and Wolves of the Calla, a gap that would serve as a good place for another story. Apparently, King was reading my mind!
Here is a bit more about the new novel, due in stores April 24:
We join Roland and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. As they shelter from the screaming wind and snapping trees, Roland tells them not just one strange tale, but two – and in doing so sheds fascinating light on his own troubled past.
In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother’s death, Roland is sent by his father to a ranch to investigate a recent slaughter. Here Roland discovers a bloody churn of bootprints, clawed animal tracks and terrible carnage – evidence that the ’skin-man’, a shape shifter, is at work. There is only one surviving witness: a brave but terrified boy called Bill Streeter.
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 person’s never too old for stories,’ he says to Bill. ‘Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.’
Grant Books recently released a new illustration—featured above—from their edition of The Wind Through the Keyhole. What is this an illustration of? We don’t know yet. It can’t be one of the ka-tet; I doubt Jake would survive losing his head! Therefore it must either be a character from Roland’s past when he is young and investigating the ranch massacre, or a character from the story that Roland is telling to the terrified survivor of the massacre, Bill Streeter.
Either way, I love the illustration. It looks like it has been colored by Richard Isanove, the same person who worked on the Marvel Comics Dark Tower adaptation. Jae Lee’s artwork always has a sense of movement and this piece is no different; what appears to be a mutant creature of Mid-World is killing some unsuspecting soul in one horrendous bite. I can’t wait to see the other full-color inserts that will appear in the novel and what King and Jae come up with.
To order an Artist Edition of The Wind Through the Keyhole signed by Jae Lee, visit the Grant Books website at www.grantbooks.com! And if you can’t wait for the book to be released but need a taste of it, click HERE to read an excerpt, the forward by Stephen King and the opening chapter!
Ka is a Wheel…
