Dark Tower Comics vol. 3-4 - Robin Furth & Jae Lee

Honestly, disappointing. I'm getting sick of Jae Lee's refusal to draw backgrounds. His characters are quite good realisations of the original characters, but they act everything out in front of a big blur of smoke and colours and the occasional table. Given that these are fantasy stories set in a richly imagined and (in King's prose) deeply detailed world, Lee's style is completely wrong for this project. And the writing is underwhelming, and the story is unnecessarily different from the one established in the novel. Bit of a shame, really.

The Wind Through the Keyhole - Stephen King

Wonderful to return to Midworld. It's a good book even by King's standards and I like the story within a story within a story format. Also nice to see more of Gilead-that-was and get to know some characters from those days - like taciturn badass-in-training Jamie DeCurry. The central story dragged a bit during the quest section, I thought, and as always with fantasy some of the conceits appealed to me more than others. But good fun. Latest on the film and/or TV adaptation is that they want Russel Crowe as Roland. Please no.

The Earthsea Quartet - Ursual LeGuin

Studied the first book when I was twelve; didn't remember much about it. The writing style is very dense, but not in an unfriendly way. It just goes very deeply into things. Some great fantasy concepts here, such as the language of magic, where everything is called by its "true name" rather than words being simply signifiers, so speaking it gives you power over reality. It struck me that each book is very self-contained and different from the others, unlike many fantasy series that give the impression of really being one long book cut into manageable sections. Deep and interesting and well-written; I still prefer The Left Hand of Darkness.