Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass is the fourth volume in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, following the gunslinger Roland Deschain and his companions on their quest for the Dark Tower, a structure at the nexus of all realities whose deterioration threatens every world in existence.

The novel opens where The Waste Lands ended: Roland and his ka-tet, a group bound together by destiny, are trapped aboard Blaine the Mono, a sentient and suicidal monorail hurtling toward Topeka. Blaine has agreed to spare them only if they stump him with a riddle. Roland poses dozens of traditional riddles from his youth in Gilead, the fallen city of gunslingers where he was raised. Jake Chambers, a boy from 1970s New York, exhausts the hardest riddles from a book he carries. Blaine answers every one. Then Eddie Dean, a former heroin addict drawn from New York along with his wife Susannah, realizes that Blaine's weakness lies in absurd joke-riddles that defy logic. Eddie bombards Blaine with schoolyard humor until the computer's systems collapse, and the mono crashes into the Topeka terminal.

The group emerges into a version of Topeka, Kansas, that is recognizably American but eerily wrong. A newspaper describes a superflu pandemic called "Captain Trips" that has killed millions, and small discrepancies confirm this is an alternate reality. Roland explains that thinnies, dangerous weak spots in the fabric of existence caused by the Tower's decline, have destabilized the boundaries between worlds. The group heads east along Interstate 70 toward a shimmering glass palace on the horizon. That night, Roland begins the long story that forms the novel's central narrative.

Roland recounts that at 14 he became the youngest gunslinger in Gilead's history, winning his trial of manhood after the sorcerer Marten Broadcloak goaded him into taking it early. Marten had seduced Roland's mother, Gabrielle Deschain, and wanted the boy exiled or killed. Instead, Roland's father, Steven Deschain, sent him east to the remote Barony of Mejis with two friends, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns, traveling under false names. Their official mission was to count the Barony's resources for the Affiliation, a loose alliance of baronies resisting the rebel warlord John Farson. In truth, the assignment was meant to keep them safe.

In Mejis, the boys discovered that the local power structure had secretly allied with Farson. Hired enforcers called the Big Coffin Hunters, led by the cold gunfighter Eldred Jonas, oversaw the conspiracy, quietly gathering horses, supplies, and crude oil intended to fuel Farson's ancient war machines. Roland met Susan Delgado, a 16-year-old whose dead father once managed the Barony's horses. Susan had been contracted by her Aunt Cordelia to become Mayor Hart Thorin's gilly, or kept concubine, in exchange for the return of her family's land. Before the arrangement was consummated, Rhea of the Coos, an old witch living on a nearby hill, examined Susan and planted a post-hypnotic command: After losing her virginity, Susan was to cut off her hair as an act of humiliation.

Roland and Susan fell deeply in love, and their secret affair became the story's emotional center but also Roland's greatest vulnerability. While Roland was consumed by the relationship, Cuthbert grew alarmed that his friend's distraction endangered their mission. Jonas, meanwhile, learned the boys were likely from gunslinger bloodlines, raided their bunkhouse, and killed their carrier pigeons. Rhea, who had been using the wizard's glass, a pink crystal ball from a set of powerful magical artifacts called Maerlyn's Rainbow, to spy on Susan's affair, wrote a letter to Cordelia revealing the relationship. Sheemie, a kind-hearted inn-boy with an intellectual disability whose life Cuthbert once saved, intercepted the letter and delivered it to Cuthbert instead. Cuthbert confronted Roland physically, and Roland acknowledged he had lost focus.

The ka-tet expanded to include Susan, and Roland devised a plan: Destroy the oil at Citgo, ambush Farson's forces at Hanging Rock where most tankers had been moved, and drive the survivors into Eyebolt Canyon, where a thinny would consume them. On the eve of Reaping Fair, the local harvest festival, Jonas's allies framed the boys for the murders of Thorin and Chancellor Kimba Rimer, both actually killed by Jonas's men. The boys were arrested at dawn. Susan, with Sheemie's help, broke them out of jail, killing Sheriff Herk Avery and a deputy in the process. The freed boys rode to Citgo and ignited the oilpatch. Jonas captured Susan and sent her back to town as a prisoner.

Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain ambushed Jonas's column, destroyed the tankers at Hanging Rock, and Roland killed Jonas in single combat, shooting the wizard's glass from his hand. Roland looked into the ball and was seized by a vision of the Dark Tower rising from a field of roses. A voice told him he would kill everyone he loved and the Tower would remain closed. His friends knocked him unconscious to free him from the glass's grip. They then lured Farson's soldiers into Eyebolt Canyon, sealed the entrance with fire, and drove the men into the thinny, which destroyed them.

Susan never reached safety. Rhea returned to Hambry and, with Cordelia's help, incited the townspeople to revive the ancient ritual of charyou tree, a ceremonial burning. Susan was paraded through the streets and burned alive at the Reaping bonfire, calling Roland's name. Roland saw her death in the wizard's glass and collapsed, remaining catatonic for days as Cuthbert and Alain carried him toward Gilead on a travois.

The narrative returns to the frame story. On the highway, the group finds pairs of red shoes evoking the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Clicking the heels together three times, they shatter the gate of the Green Palace, which proves to be an elaborate illusion controlled by the Tick-Tock Man, Andrew Quick, a disfigured villain from the city of Lud who was apparently rescued by a shape-shifting figure calling himself Flagg. Eddie and Susannah shoot Quick dead. Flagg urges them to abandon their quest and vanishes before Roland can kill him, leaving a warning note signed "R.F."

Roland shows his companions the wizard's glass, which draws them into a shared vision of the story's final horror: After returning to Gilead, Roland went to his mother's apartment to beg Gabrielle to renounce Marten. The glass, sitting on her vanity, cast a deceptive reflection into a mirror, making Roland see Rhea attacking him instead of his mother approaching with a peace offering. He drew and fired, killing Gabrielle with his father's guns.

When the vision ends, the ka-tet awakens in a clearing in Roland's world, back on the Path of the Beam, the trail of energy that leads to the Dark Tower. Roland tells his friends the glass forced a choice on him: a life with Susan and their unborn child, or the quest for the Tower. He chose the Tower, knowing its fall would mean the end of all worlds. He offers to release his companions, but Eddie, Susannah, and Jake refuse. They set out together along the Beam toward the Dark Tower.