The story picks up a few weeks after The Drawing of the Three ended.  Eddie and Susannah Dean learn to become gunslingers, which has more to do with the mind than with aiming well.  They soon have to bring those skills into practice, when a giant bear attacks Eddie and Susannah has to shoot it.  It was one of the twelve guardians, which means they are now really close to a gate that marks the beginning of a beam, a string of energy that leads straight to the tower.  When they come to that gate it's Eddie's time for a baptism of fire.

Parallel to this Jake, the boy abandoned by Roland in The Gunslinger and rescued by him in The Drawing of the Three is living with memories of both events, and this is driving him mad, and that's the truth.  Roland suffers from the same, both have two competing voices in their mind that shout for the loudest.  the only solution is to bring the two separate paths together again, and the only way to do so is to bring Jake into Roland's world.  A risky operation...

But the riskiest of all is to go to Lud, the city they have seen in the distance for a long time now.  The group has become a true ka-tet, one of many, or many in one.  The ka-tet is facing its first real challenge the moment they enter the city...

This is not the strange mystical atmosphere from The Gunslinger, nor the enchantment of getting to know the others of the ka-tet as in The Drawing of the Three.  This is more the true start of the story.  We know who's playing along, we know why, we know where they come from, let's roll!  Now it's time to find out a little more about Roland and his world.  Now it's time for Roland as well to abandon his role of the one that decides over the faith of the others, he has to adapt to them just as much as they have to adapt to him, and this strange world, a world that has moved on.

The book reads just as easy as any other book by King.  The first half gives us the time to get to know our new ka-tet, we even learn a little bit about Roland.  The second half is a combination of that mystery from The Gunslinger and a really good adventure story.  And the ending?  A perfect riddle...