Wizard & Glass. Book 4 of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King 

Illustrated by Dave McKean
Published by Plume, 1997. 

 

Completed in 2025. 

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Private collection. 

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Design Statement

I focused on the relationship between Roland and Susan and how this book is where we learn why Roland is so obsessed with the Dark Tower. I chose to show the moon phases because Roland and Susan’s time together is measured by the moon, most importantly, the blood-red Demon Moon.

The gold lines represent Susan’s hair and the braid she often wore. The black thread is the third piece of the braid and represents Roland since they are forever entwined. His line and thread are thicker, coarser, and jagged to depict how he started to lose his way and the teenage emotional crisis he was going through with Susan. The shape of the lines are also a contrast between the masculine and the feminine. 

If you open the book so you can see both covers at the same time, you’ll see a debossed shape of the Dark Tower. In this book we get to see how the Tower came to consume Roland and where his quest started. Here is where it begins to loom over his life.  
With the decoration on the page edges, the endband, and the end paper, I wanted to represent the thinnes that are present in Mejis and Alternate Topeka as they are described as looking like an oil slick and grey-green smoke. The pinkish part of the end paper is also a nod to Maerlyn’s Grapefruit, without which, the story would have ended up very differently. 
 

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