The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole

The Dark Tower:
The Wind Through the Keyhole

File:The Wind Through the Keyhole Cover Grant.jpg First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Cover artist	Jae Lee
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	The Dark Tower
Genre	Fantasy, horror, science fiction, western
Publisher	Grant
Publication date	February 21, 2012
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	336
ISBN	1-880418-76-2
Preceded by	The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole is a novel by Stephen King, first published on February 21, 2012 by Grant as a limited edition, and later published by Scribner as a trade hardcover (ISBN 978-1451658903) on April 24, 2012, with ebook and audiobook editions. The audiobook is read by the author. As part of The Dark Tower series, it is the eighth Dark Tower novel, but chronologically set between volumes four and five. First mentioned by King in 2009, after the series had been proclaimed as concluded in 2004 with the publication of the seventh novel, it was announced on the author's official site on March 10, 2011. A short excerpt was released online on December 19, 2011, the day the limited edition of the novel became available for pre-order.

Background information

In an interview in March 2009, King stated, describing an idea for a new short story he recently had: "And then I thought, 'Well, why don't I find three more like this and do a book that would be almost like modern fairy tales?' Then this thing started to add on bits and pieces so I guess it will be a novel." According to King, the idea is a new Dark Tower novel. King said, regarding the Dark Tower series, "It's not really done yet. Those seven books are really sections of one long über-novel."

While promoting his novel Under the Dome, King confirmed this during his TimesTalk event at The TimesCenter in New York City on November 10, 2009, and the next day King's official site posted the information that King will begin working on this novel in about eight months, with a tentative title being The Wind Through the Keyhole.

On December 1, 2009, Stephen King posted a poll on his official website, asking visitors to vote for which book he should write next:

I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one a new Mid-World book (not directly about Roland Deschain, but yes, he and his friend Cuthbert are in it, hunting a skin-man, which are what werewolves are called in that lost kingdom) and a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn't speak).

The voting ended on December 31, 2009. The following month it was revealed that Doctor Sleep received 5,861 votes, while The Wind Through the Keyhole received 5,812.

Publication information

File:The Wind Through the Keyhole Trade.jpg

Cover of the Scribner trade edition

The book, like its predecessors in the series, contains a number of illustrations. The artwork for this volume is provided by Jae Lee, the main illustrator for Marvel Comics' adaptations of King's other work, The Dark Tower. As with the previous three volumes in the series, Grant published a limited edition of the novel, followed by a mass market edition by Scribner, which does not contain the illustrations. Grant's limited edition was published in two variants: a traycased Deluxe Edition signed by Stephen King limited to 800 copies, and a slipcased Artist's Edition signed by Jae Lee limited to 5,000.

Covers

Initially, the first cover artwork released for the book was a preliminary cover for the Scribner trade edition, which was labeled as "not final". It was available at online retailers, such as Amazon.com, in early September 2011. Later, when the Grant edition was first made available for pre-order on December 19, the cover artwork for the limited edition was revealed, followed by the final wraparound cover artwork for the Scribner edition on December 22. The design of the Scribner edition cover was done by Platinum Fmd, the creators of the cover for King's 2009 novel Under the Dome, and Rex Bonomelli, Scribner's art director and designer. The preliminary version of the cover was simpler than the final version, and, according to Bonomelli, was missing pieces like the tiger, which in the final version "give the cover a little more drama".

Plot

The novel begins with Roland and his ka-tet arriving at a river on their journey to the Dark Tower. An elderly man who operates a ferry gets them across the river, and warns them that a severe depression (starkblast) is coming, and that they can find shelter in a building a few miles ahead. They reach the shelter just in time, and while they wait out the storm, Roland tells them of an adventure in his youth to keep them occupied: "The Skin-Man."

Following the death of Roland's mother, his father sends him and his friend Jamie De Curry west to the town of Debaria on a mission to capture the Skin-Man, an apparent shape-shifter who terrorizes the town and surrounding areas by transforming into various animals at night and embarking on murderous rampages. Roland and Jamie take a train to Debaria, but it derails before arriving and they must finish their journey on horse. On their way, they pass through a town known as Serenity, a community of women where Roland's mother lived after suffering a mental breakdown following her affair with Marten. It is here that they learn of a woman attacked by the Skin-Man and hear her tale.

Roland and Jamie arrive in Debaria, and with the help of the local Sheriff, Hugh Peavy, they determine that the Skin-Man is most likely a salt miner from a nearby village. The next morning, they discover that another brutal attack has occurred overnight on a local farm. They investigate the scene, and discover a single survivor, a small boy named Bill, who has lost his father in the attack. Roland and Jamie determine that the murderer left the scene on horseback, and Roland sends Jamie to the salt mines to round up every miner who has a horse or is able to ride one. While returning to Debaria with Bill, Roland performs his hypnotism trick (which Roland first used in his chronological life in Wizard and Glass) with one of his spare rounds of ammunition. Under hypnosis, Bill relates what he saw of the Skin-man; Bill tells Roland that he saw the Skin-Man in his human form after the attack, but only glimpsed his feet. He states that the Skin-Man had a tattoo of a blue ring around his ankle. The tattoo indicates that the man spent time in the prison at a (now abandoned) military barracks further west of Debaria. That area had fallen to the chaos of John Farson, the Good Man, within the last generation. Back in town, Roland brings Bill to a cell in Sheriff's station. He plans to walk each suspect past Bill in the hopes the young boy can identify the Skin-Man, or that the Skin-Man will reveal himself by fleeing due to fear of being identified. While Roland and Bill wait for Jamie to round up the suspects, Roland tells Bill a story from his own childhood, "The Wind Through the Keyhole."

In this story (within a story), a boy named Tim Ross lives with his mother Nell in a forgotten village that fears the annual collection of property taxes by a man named The Covenant Man. Tim recently lost his father, who was said to have been killed by a dragon while in the woods chopping trees. After the death of his father, Nell, no longer able to pay the taxes to keep their home, marries his father's best friend and business partner Bern Kells, who moves in with them. Kells is a mean man, prone to heavy drinking, who begins to abuse both Tim and Nell. One day The Covenant Man comes to collect the taxes, and he secretly tells Tim to meet him later in the woods. During this meeting, The Covenant Man reveals to Tim that it was actually Kells who killed his father, not a dragon, and with help of a scrying bowl shows Kells beating his mother, causing her to go blind. Later, The Covenant Man sends Tim a vision telling him that if Tim again visits The Covenant Man in the woods, he will give Tim magic that will allow his mother to see again. Tim, armed with a gun given to him by his school teacher, journeys into the dangerous woods, and is led into a swamp by the mischievous fairy, Armaneeta. Here, Tim almost becomes victim to a dragon and other mysterious swamp creatures, but he is saved by his gun as well as a group of friendly swamp people, who mistake him for a gunslinger. The swamp people guide him to the far side of the swamp, and equip him with a small mechanical talking device from the 'Old People' that helps guide him on his journey. Eventually, Tim arrives at a Dogan where he finds a caged 'tyger', which wears the key to the Dogan around its neck. A starkblast approaches, and Tim, realizing this is likely a trap set for him by The Covenant Man, befriends the tyger. Tim and the tyger ride out the storm under a magical protective blanket. The next morning, Tim discovers that the tyger is actually Maerlyn, a white magician, who had been trapped in the cage for years due to black magic. Maerlyn gives Tim a potion to cure his mother's blindness and sends him back to his mother on the flying magic blanket. Returning home, Tim brings sight back to his mother. Tim is attacked by Kells, who had secretly entered the home as Tim tended to his mother, but the boy is saved by his mother, who kills Kells with her late husband's ax.

As Roland finishes telling "The Wind Through the Keyhole," Jamie arrives back in Debaria with the salt mine suspects. Young Bill is able to identify the Skin-Man due to his ankle tattoo and an associated scar, at which time the Skin-Man transforms into a snake, and kills two people. Roland shoots the snake with a specially-crafted silver bullet (which he had made upon their arrival in town), killing it. Roland and Jamie travel back to Serenity, where the women agree to adopt young Bill, who is now an orphan. Roland is also given a note written long ago by his mother. In this note, his mother claims she forgives Roland for his act of accidentally killing her.

With his Skin-Man story finished, Roland and his ka-tet find that the starkblast has passed, leveling every structure in the area except for the building in which they took shelter. They soon pack their belongings and resume their journey toward the Dark Tower.

Reception

The first review of the book was written by Kevin Quigley and posted by FEARnet on February 24, 2012. This appraisal of the book was very positive: "Most importantly, it manages to retain the quest structure of the first four novels and also subtly underscores King's obsession with the nature of fiction in the latter books, providing a necessary bridge between the two halves of the series. That actually may be the most apt word to describe The Wind Though the Keyhole: necessary. The next best word to describe this book? Fun. Veritable buckets of it." Quigley elaborates on the book's thematic 'bridge' status: "the shift from the Oz fascination of Wizard & Glass to the Magnificent Seven/Harry Potter/Doctor Doom/'Salem's Lot onslaught in Wolves of the Calla needed a better bridging element. If read as King intends, in between those two books, Keyhole mentally and emotionally prepares the reader for these fictional intrusions on reality."