3.5 stars.

I enjoyed this a lot and flew though it, but I think its predecessor, The Gunslinger, is a better book. Stylistically it's very different from The Gunslinger, which is bleak and sparse; this one is much more action-packed and abandons the slow moving "western" feel of The Gunslinger. It's not bad, but it's different, and frankly I'm a little sad it changed because The Gunslinger felt special.

I was not thrilled with Detta/Odetta. It's nice that one of Team Roland is a woman but it's not nice when "woman" is code for crazy/unpredictable/irrational, which is this character in a nutshell; as if to ensure she stays in her place, she's confined to a wheelchair and babysat by 2 conspicuously not crazy men for the length of the book. Plus her compulsive masturbation is not sexy, interesting, relevant, or shocking; I'm all for healthy expressions of female sexuality in literature but this was just another check in the "crazy lady" column. A big event at the end of the book suggests that her character changes pretty significantly in the next installment. In this book the heroin addict cleans up and becomes useful to the mission; I'm hopeful that she stabilizes and becomes useful to the mission.

However I was sufficiently engaged in the story--I still care about Roland's quest, and I liked Eddie Dean's and Jack Mort's stories--that I want to give the next one in the series a try.