Read: Wizard and Glass–“Susan” chapters 1-3
In which during an extended flashback, Roland’s first love Susan visits a witch…with sexy results! Yep, the second you saw your first reference to “a familiar heat in her belly” you knew you were in for some of King’s idiosyncratic, yet no less steamy for that, take on sex. That’s really the whole point of this section: how Susan ends up promised as some sort of sexual chattel/surrogate mother to the horndog mayor of her town, how Rhea the witch gets turned on by a magical glass (title character!) she’s been given as payment by the mayor’s goons and subsequently diddles poor Susan’s skittle during the course of examining her to ensure her virginity, how Susan and Mr. Underhill “Will Dearborn” meet and feel instant heat, mentally and physically. I found this last bit particularly convincing in its depiction of young love/lust, reminiscent of how I met my wife in fact, albeit with more horses.
In terms of the larger story, we discover that revolutionary warlord the Good Man, John Farson, is conducting his assault on the land of the gunslingers in the name of democracy and equality. Susan and “Will” treat this like lip service, and perhaps it is, but we’ve seen how deeply ingrained the aristocratic ways of this world are in its inhabitants. Maybe there’s more to the Good Man than his seeming status as another flunkie of the Beast that supposedly commands Marten, Walter, and Flagg. Or maybe democracy and equality as values have as little to do with The Dark Tower‘s conception of goodness as they do with The Lord of the Rings‘.