Drawing of the Three's minor characters
(Spoilers for Drawing of the Three.)
I'm slowly reading through The Dark Tower following the Kingslingers podcast (which is, yes, now three years old). I just finished Drawing of the Three. This book had a lot of great minor characters. To name a few:
- Jane the flight attendant and her veteran mentor. Jane getting ready to throw hot coffee all over Roland because she thinks he's going to hijack the plane.
- The old lady getting off the plane and dropping her stuff, "Excuse me for living!" and whatever she said about the hearse.
- The mobsters. There are too many that show up too little to remember every one by name, but they do all get names and for a lot of the guys we get some specific little detail about that guy's life.
- The mob boss's lieutenant, Jack Andolini, the guy who's ready to retire, who looks like a caveman but is actually dangerously smart.
- The squirrely dude that rides with Jack in the van.
- Also specifically the mob boss, Balazar, with his houses of cards and his mechanical precision.
- The intern, George Shavers (?), who saved Odetta's life after she lost her legs.
- Katz, the guy who owns the drug store that Roland sticks up looking for Keflex. The grumpy old man who's not actually that old, that wants to rant at the Valium addicts always calling him.
I also think of the weird hippie dude and his crow in the first book, The Gunslinger, who Roland (the Gunslinger) tells his whole murderous story.
Few of these characters needed to be as detailed as they are. The intern barely features directly in the story and he's not gonna come up again, and yet he gets many pages devoted to his life. There's I think a whole page or two about an airplane accident that is unrelated to the plot. It's great.