Published more than a decade after the conclusion of the Dark Tower series, this book nonetheless fits into the series between books 4 and 5, so that’s where I read it.
The book includes a nested set of stories, and follows a similar style to the campfire story central to Book 4: Wizard and Glass. In that novel, I found the extended backstory distracting, as it was a very lengthy digression from the main quest. Here, it worked better as it was the main purpose of the book – to be a digression.
At the end of book four, the group had survived a series of challenges and was back on the path to the Dark Tower. In this book 4.5, the group is forced to shelter for a few days, giving The Gunslinger time to tell them another story. Within that story, he tells a fable his mother read to him as a child. It is this fable that makes up the bulk of and gives the title to this book.
The story was interesting enough, although the derivations from other source materials (e.g., King Arthur legend, The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz) were even more obvious than in the main series. By the end of the book, the group is well rested and the reader has had a kind of palate cleanser. While entertaining, it felt overall like a throwaway, a post-series grasp at revitalizing the work and an unnecessary addition to the Dark Tower universe. I’m glad I read it when I did and not at the end as, like others who read it after the original series, I would have been irritated at the broken promise of an extension or further conclusion.
Onward to Book 5.
Fate: staying with the collected series
1 – a murder
9 – made into a film
36 – part of a series
rclr 
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