Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

"The Wind Through the Keyhole" is a novel in the Dark Tower series that many of Stephen King fans never thought we would see. It arrived in 2012, much to my surprise, and fits between book four and book five. Most of the novel is a recollection of Roland's containing both his first job as a gunslinger and a story his mother used to tell him when he was a child. If you are anything like me, you think these types of moments in the series are the best. "The Wind Through the Keyhole" keeps up this belief for me. I was hooked into each story within a story, of which there are three.

The first layer of this story within a story within a story is that of Roland, Susannah, Eddie, Jake and Oy. They meet an old man who drops hints to Roland that something is coming their way. Roland eventually catches on. I would rather not give away what happens, so let it suffice to say that the ka-tet winds up holed up in a deserted town together. It is here that the two other stories fold into the first.

Roland first begins telling a tale about an early experience in his gunslinger life where he went up against a skin walker. In this story, he tells a small boy another story and this is the heart of the novel and the eponymous story -- "The Wind Through the Keyhole." While this story is an ostensibly fictional tale from Roland's childhood, it also has familiar figures, one of whom signs his name "RF." If you know who this is, you should already be reading "The Wind Through the Keyhole." If not, start with the Dark Tower series up until at least book four. If you really want to do it right, read "The Stand" as well.

Bottom line: I loved "The Wind Through the Keyhole." It was a wholly unexpected treat with both the horror that makes King so skin crawling and the touching moments that make his work so approachable. I know I sing his praises a lot, but there are definitely novels by Stephen King of which I was not a fan. It's just that I really love the ones I enjoy by him, and this is undoubtedly one of them.

Shelly Barclay