I spent all day reading the second book of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series The Drawing of the Three and I am so furious I could spit nails.
The second book picks up hours from when the last one ended. Roland, the Gunslinger, has reached the sea, having sacrificed his young companion and confronted the man in black. Before he knows what’s happening, he is attacked by a lobster-like sea monster whose eyes perch on stalks. He is badly injured, which leads to a growing infection that he battles throughout the rest of the book.
In the first book, three companions to the Gunslinger were foretold. The second book is his quest to draw in the three companions, who are vital to his reaching the Dark Tower that haunts him.
This book was a fast-paced, fantastic adventure that made me want to read the next in the series. This book also disgusted me so much in parts that I almost abandoned it half-way through.
Anyone who reads Stephen King knows cringe is an understatement when it comes to his characterizations of people of color, particularly Black people. You can sense the naive intentions towards verisimilitude and egalitarianism. And he almost always misses the mark. It’s just embarrassing, and ruins a good read. Well, he outdoes himself in The Drawing of the Three. One of the main characters the Gunslinger inhabits (literally going through magical doors and entering the body and brain of his sought for companions) is a Black woman. I flinched as soon as I picked up her race, and it went way, way, way off the rails in short order.
The character has a split personality, one who is wise and kind and fighting for civil rights in the sixties when the Gunslinger comes upon her, and one who is a grotesque, evil virago who sounds like Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind, only much more profane. King rains down the n-word in some severely misguided attempt to both show the racism the character deals with and the racism she’s internalized. Reading her dialogue was like having my fingernails pulled out. I could scarcely take it, and at one point, honestly thought I wasn’t going to finish the book.
This blight is all the more infuriating because the character not only ends up in a moving place, but the story leading up to the excellent ending is exciting and well written. I’ve loved King my whole life, but this book pushed my love to the borderlands. Ugh, I have no idea if I dare read the third book, lest he disappoint me further.