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"I Kind Of Just Failed": Stephen King Adaptation Writer Reflects On Poorly Reviewed Movie 7 Years Later

10 moments from stephen king's dark tower books that must be in mike flanagan's tv series, frostpunk 2 review: the city builder that made me evil.

Stephen King is the master of literary horror and his  The Dark Tower   book series include some of his most popular stories to date, but how do they rank against each other? The series is composed of eight installments, each detailing the characters' adventures through parallel universes and various worlds as well as bizarre run-ins with the author himself. While they all feature fantastical tales of adventure, there are some books in the series that are certainly better than others.

The first installment in The Dark Tower  series released in 1982, following the success of King's earlier novels such as  Carrie , The Shining,  and  Cujo.  Its final story,  The Wind Through The Key Hole,  concluded the series in 2012. Much like his other novels, The Dark Tower  was adapted into a feature-length movie starring Idris Elba as the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick. Despite the series' incredibly captivating storyline, the movie received poor reviews. At its core,  The Dark Tower  serves as a means of connecting the Stephen King multiverse and all of its fictional characters, towns, and monsters. It is intertwined with  Insomnia, 'Salem's Lot , IT,  and several other novels.

Related:  Why The Stand Series Could Be The Best Stephen King TV Adaptation So Far

With over 200 short stories and 61 full-length novels, with number 62 set to release in 2021,  The Dark Tower  series takes up a decent portion of the author's bibliography. It is also the only true series that he has in his repertoire. King created a complex storyline that connects his entire book universe , and while this was welcomed, some of the installments suffered as a result on making by this facet a focal point. Without further ado, here's each novel in  The Dark Tower  series ranked from worst to best.

8. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

While  The Gunslinger  was the first installment in the series, it's also the worst. The Gunslinger  introduces all of the major characters that will appear throughout its entirety, but lingers too long on the fact that it's an introduction. This is not entirely necessary and, as a result, offers a somewhat boring story about Roland Deschain and the Men in Black. If it had been a fluid introduction with far more adventure and moments of the fantastical, it is likely that it would be much better when compared to other installments.

7. The Dark Tower VI: Song Of Susannah

Most of  The Dark Tower  novels are lengthy, but  Song Of Susannah  is relatively short in comparison. While this is not necessarily a contributing factor to its ranking, it does impact how the story developed or, rather, attempted to develop. As it shifts from character to character, there is very little fluidity, which leads to a rather confusing storyline.  Song Of Susannah  could've been better had it not been written as if it were intended to bridge the fifth and seventh novels in the series.

6. The Wind Through The Keyhole

The Wind Through The Keyhole  is the eighth book in the series, but its events fall between the fourth and the fifth chronologically. It's unlike the other installments, as it is more similar to an anthology with a framing story about Roland and Ka-tet waiting out a storm. The gunslinger goes on to tell several tales of adventure and wonder to his travel companion. The short stories are impeccable, but it suffers from being an unnecessary addition to  The Dark Tower  series.

Related:  Stephen King: Every Movie Monster IT Turns Into In The Book

5. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

The final novel in  The Dark Tower  series chronology offers an underwhelming conclusion to an otherwise incredible story. It falls in the middle of this ranking due to how divisive it is. While some fans and critics found that it concluded the series eloquently, others consider its ending a bit unnecessary and disappointing. The end of  The Dark Tower  series features its characters having to save the life of their creator, Stephen King, who appears as himself throughout its entirety. While King is known for including characters who represent him in his stories ,  The Dark Tower  has him as an actual character, which is a bit bizarre, especially considering his importance to the ending.

4. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

The Waste Lands  is one of the more bizarre books in The Dark Tower  series. It features several influences from other literary works and introduces the portals of the Dark Tower. It is an enthralling addition with fantastical elements, firm development of what the actual Dark Tower represents, and even a cyborg bear. There is very little wrong with the third novel, but it is still not the best one in the bunch.

3. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard And Glass

Every major book series' main character needs an origin story, and Roland finally gets his in the fourth installment.  Wizard And Glass  takes place in Topeka, Kansas, and features several elements familiar to the iconic story,  Wizard Of Oz .  The lore of  The Dark Tower was relatively mundane up until this book, where it fully embraces an entire mythos that assists in the future installment's character, location, and story building. It is one of the more exciting stories out of all eight books, which immediately sets it among the top three entries.

Related:  What Stephen King Thinks Of Every Adaptation (Movies & TV Shows)

2. The Dark Tower V: Wolves Of The Calla

As  The Dark Tower  reached its mid-point, the stories and adventures became the most bizarre.  Wolves Of The Calla  features wolves that are actually robots, and includes references to major movie franchises such as  Star Wars   and  Harry Potter.  It is also the book with the most memorable appearance of Stephen King.  Wolves Of The Calla  ranks as the second best novel in the series because of how the author chose to embrace the bizarre and utterly strange. The earlier installments have an air of King holding back, whereas the fifth novel showcases his creativity entirely unleashed to great effect.

1. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing Of The Three

Every way that the first book failed, the second installment took the time to remedy.  The Drawing Of The Three  proved that  The Dark Tower  series was worth reading through, as some readers abandoned it entirely after  The Gunslinger.  While the first installment focused on introducing Roland, the second takes the time to expand on his personality, goals, and drive. It gives the gunslinger a purpose by mixing in an exciting adventure through numerous doors that transport him across time and space.

Introductory novels traditionally provide readers with what they can expect from future installments, but  The Dark Tower's  failed to do so. Instead,  The Drawing Of The Three  gave the core elements of the series the introduction they deserved and needed in order to make the book series what it is today. Not only does it connect every Stephen King novel ,  The Dark Tower  series also showcases how not all first installments are the best and, sometimes, a sequel can do better than the original.

More:  Every Stephen King Book Character With Psychic Powers

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Is The Dark Tower Any Good? Depends How Much You've Read

Filmmakers have been trying to adapt Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series for more than a decade. But with time-jumping metanarratives and compulsive genre-switching, the eight novels proved tough to wrangle into one film-able narrative. Director Nikolaj Arcel’s version of King’s events finally hits theaters today. Written by no fewer than four writers (not including King), the movie arrives with a lean 95-minute runtime and the kind of Rotten Tomatoes score (21% and barely climbing) that studios fear .

But is it possible the critics aren’t being fair? Is it possible Arcel made a movie so faithful to King’s work that just won’t connect with all audiences? Or, conversely, did he make one that attempted to please crowds but lost sight of the story? Did he shoot with his eye, not with his mind? WIRED editors Sarah Fallon and Angela Watercutter are here to sort it out. Fallon has read the books; Watercutter hasn’t. Neither has forgotten the face of her father. Come with us through the portal. (Warning: Spoilers follow.)

Angela Watercutter: First thing first, I didn’t love The Dark Tower . Sarah, as I mentioned yesterday, I can watch Idris Elba (Roland Deschain/The Gunslinger) watching paint dry, but despite his magics I couldn’t emotionally connect with this movie. Even Matthew McConaughey channeling his best time-is-a-flat-circle vibes couldn’t sell his Man in Black dialogue.

But that’s just me. I’ve read some King, and seen quite a few movies and TV shows based on his stories, and while watching The Dark Tower something dawned on me: the less fanatical an adaptation of King’s work, the better it fares. He’s a genius who conjures wonderful premises, but his more cerebral ideas are difficult to translate onto a screen. His horror ( The Shining , Carrie , It ) and drama ( Misery , Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption , The Body , which inspired Stand by Me ) can make the jump, but the more complex (or just plain weird) stuff— Maximum Overdrive , Sleepwalkers —rarely looks right onscreen.

Sarah Fallon: I was wondering how you would react to it, and I think viewers coming to it fresh will be perplexed— Wait, what? There’s some evil guy using some kind of kid-brain-amplifier to knock down some big tower that holds the world(s) together and a psychic kid who knows it’s happening and creatures wearing human skinsuits? It doesn’t roll off the tongue, and the movie doesn’t give you much time to get used to the notions before driving the action along. (And I agree with you on which writings make the jump and which don’t.) Still, those gun battles. You liked?

Watercutter: The gun battles were my favorite part, especially in the scenes after the Gunslinger goes to New York and gets all the ammo he can handle. I will forever be awed by his ability to rapid-reload. There are names for those chamber-filling tricks he does, yes?

Fallon: Well, I call the first one he does, where he flicks the bullets into the chamber (the kid is named Jake Chambers, get it?) with his thumb The Lifesaver.

Watercutter: I’m no Stephen King, but I will co-sign that moniker. Sorry. Back to the movie. Overall, how did you feel about it as a reader/fan?

Fallon: I was afraid that the film would fail the superfans. I could see from IMDb that Susannah and Eddie weren’t there, and Oy didn’t seem to have a role. But I was completely delighted. Lots of gestures and references to the things we fans love—the filmmakers (so many filmmakers!) left some delicious breadcrumbs for us. Mystifying to people who haven’t read the series, but fun for fans looking for Easter eggs. Lots and lots of loops and references to other books in the King universe. The depiction of the Mid-World universe was pretty thin, but the depiction of the state of the universe as imagined by King himself was rich. Read Dr. Sleep if you want more background on the “shine” that Jake evinces. I mean, yes, The Shining too, but Dr. Sleep gives a horrifically chilling vision of what bad guys do with kids like that. And shades of From a Buick 8 , and The Mist , and Hearts in Atlantis , and (OK, now I’m kind of showing off), Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut . Just this notion that the world we live in is laced with low men and surrounded by sticky dino-creatures… What did you think of Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers?

Watercutter: I liked him a lot. I always have to tip my hat to kids who act in King adaptations because he often writes young people with the emotional maturity of adults. Kids who are aware. And, like the actors on Stranger Things , they always have to punch slightly above their weight. Honestly, though, I wish Taylor had more to do. In the beginning (a term that’s nebulous here, since I felt like this movie started in the second act), he really got to dig in and play a teenager burdened by knowing too much while also having everyone—including his family—think he’s troubled. After that, he kind of felt like an observer—at least until the final scenes.

Fallon: Oooh, ooh, I wanted to say, speaking of how the movie starts. You know, I walked into the theater wanting to see the Man in Black fleeing across the desert with the Gunslinger following, and the opening scene is so damn weird and not that. Oddly lit zombie kids wearing mind-control Fitbits being brain-zapped. My mind just went “Whelp, this is not The Dark Tower , but some other thing,” and then I could just go along for the ride. (Yes, I know this is a sequel to the books, but that’s not the way I would have expected the movie to start in any case.)

Watercutter: “Mind-control Fitbits” is perfect. And you’re right, that scene felt like a different movie compared to what came after. Once you were along for the ride, how did it make you feel? Did you connect with the characters the way you connected with them in the books?

Fallon: The thing I like best about Stephen King books is the relationships he sketches between people, and the relationship between Chambers and the non-Gunslinger adults in his life is nicely drawn and well-played, I thought. Completely absent from the books, but sets up some emotional drama well enough. And some of the best scenes in the books are when Roland comes into our world and interacts with the food and medicine and whatnot here. Those moments where Taylor gets to introduce him to what goes on here on Keystone Earth are very funny. But what Walter Padick (the Man in Black) is doing to the kids, honestly, it’s scary in this movie, but if you’ve read Dr. Sleep and if you have shine-y fresh kids of your own, it’s truly horrifying. So I really connected to Jake—maybe more than in the books.

Watercutter: Yeah, I found the moments of levity very necessary. (I can’t stop thinking about what I would say if I was on a bus in New York and Idris Elba told me I’d forgotten the face of my father.) And, speaking of Walter Padick (“His name is Walter ?” was another LOL-er), I feel like there were some things he said that were unintentionally funny.

Fallon: Ooh, like what?

Watercutter: Well, “Have a great apocalypse,” for one. (Though maybe he was playing that for laughs?) The other that got snickers in the screening I saw was “Looks like I got myself a stalker,” which Walter said when he saw all of Jake’s drawings of him and the Dark Tower. OK, maybe both of those were supposed to be funny, but I’m not sure—and I think it was those bits of tonal inconsistency that kept throwing me. Did you have that? Or were you maybe more prepared for the shifts?

Fallon: I’m going to regret this if Matthew McConaughey ever shows up at my house and wants me to make him a snack or something, but I didn’t like his laugh lines that much. There’s something sort of Die Hard -ish about “Have a great apocalypse,” that I didn’t think landed. (And I do think it was intended to be funny.) The scene where he’s in the kitchen cooking though, that was dark and great. The other thing that threw me was the way the portals were depicted. Too science fiction-y for this world. I wanted something a little more like the doors in Narnia in The Last Battle .

Watercutter: And see, I probably never would have picked up on that. I thought the portals were a little odd, but in a world where Matthew McConaughey goes to a stranger’s apartment and makes chicken, what’s the threshold for “odd”? Anyway, I think you’re right that the laugh lines didn’t always land. Moreover, though, I think a lot of this movie didn’t land. Watching it, I couldn’t get over the fact that it felt like a bunch of good ideas thrown in a salad spinner—a lot of cool things whirled around, but it ultimately wasn’t palatable.

Fallon: For me, it was a sort of Stephen King metanarrative pared down to its very basics, decorated with fancy bullet work. And it’s a metanarrative that does resonate: There are dark forces in the world, forces that you may intuit but not fully be able to recognize for what they are, that seek to harvest the spirit of the innocents. I mean, that’s melodramatic, of course. But if you tilt your head and look at the film out of the side of your eyes instead of staring straight at it, that’s what I see.

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THE DARK TOWER The Dark Tower VII. By Stephen King. Illustrated by Michael Whelan. 845 pp. Donald M. Grant in association with Scribner. $35.

IN 1970, when he was 22, Stephen King wrote a sentence he liked: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." It's an innocent sentence -- pulpy and suggestive -- but it grew to become a monster. As the first line in the "Dark Tower" series, it begins a story King intended to be the longest popular novel in history. With the publication of "The Dark Tower VII," the series has topped the 4,000-page mark and, mercifully, reached its conclusion. If that fact alone does not send a shiver up your spine, you're probably not a King fan. He was almost killed in a 1999 roadside accident, and, as he has written, the reaction of a Michigan reader was typical: "I was with this good friend of mine when we heard you got popped. Man, we just started shaking our heads and saying, 'There goes the Tower, it's tilting, it's falling, ahhh . . . he'll never finish it now.' "

So now, with the "Dark Tower" books stacked before us, the question can be answered: would anyone read these things if they weren't by Stephen King? It's not an idle question. King has built the series into a monument to his ambition. He has folded in characters from his non-"Dark Tower" novels, turning this into an über-narrative that, he suggests, is the keystone to his other work. To emphasize this point, the back of each volume shows a picture of King as a young man (perched over a typewriter, naturally) juxtaposed with one of him now. The message: faithful fans must make the journey to the tower if they wish to comprehend the master.

Should you decide to do this, be prepared: it won't exactly be the year of reading Proust. The "Dark Tower" series is not the longest popular novel ever written, but it's easily the one with the highest body count. In the opening chapters of "The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I," our hero, Roland Deschain, blows away an entire town. According to King, he was inspired to start writing this story after watching "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and he had the further notion to combine a western with a fantasy like J. R. R. Tolkien's. This is the sort of awkward idea most writers would not admit to having even considered. King plunged ahead, with the combustible mixture of confidence and naïveté that seems to propel his writing still. He filled the stories of "The Dark Tower I" with foreshadowing, laying the groundwork for a place called Mid-World.

The central figure throughout is Roland, who is essentially Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western antihero, except he's not afraid of the occasional hug. During the first four books, he acquires a "ka-tet" composed of three New Yorkers from different historical eras. There's Eddie, an ex-heroin addict from Brooklyn, who is meant to be the comic relief of the series, spouting a corny saying ("Roll me in sugar and call me a . . . jelly doughnut!") every three pages or so. Eddie is married to Susannah, an African-American woman who has two personalities and no legs. One of her personalities (the rude one) speaks in guttural ebonics that would be cruel to quote. Their adopted son is Jake, a boy with a gift for reading minds. He has a pet badger-like creature named Oy, who tends to save the day when you most expect it. Finally, Roland has trained all of these people to fire guns.

At this point, readers of the series will be howling at the simplification of their heroes, but the whole project eludes description -- it's a double-black-diamond ski run for fantasy nerds. There are the multiple worlds, the multiple names and characters who die and come back to life in different times and places. Even King can be overwhelmed. Here is his attempt to summarize events at the beginning of "The Dark Tower IV": "Roland rescues Jake, leaving the Tick-Tock man for dead . . . but Andrew Quick is not dead. Half blind, hideously wounded about the face, he is rescued by a man who calls himself Richard Fannin. Fannin, however, also identifies himself as the Ageless Stranger, a demon of whom Roland has been warned by Walter." It's easy to understand why these books have generally been among King's most neglected. At times, the series feels like a dumping ground for his wackier notions (a talking monorail that likes riddles) and for the further explication of ideas from his previous books (the superflu from "The Stand").

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THE DARK TOWER

Vol. iv, wizard and glass.

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 4, 1997

After a five-year lapse, King's gargantuan cowboy romance about Roland of Gilead (the Gunslinger) hits volume four, with three more planned. King's behemoth was begun in 1970 and published serially as The Gunslinger (1988), followed by The Drawing of the Three (1989) and The Waste Lands (1992). Volume one was portentously sophomoric, volume two prime King, volume three slack. Though this latest begins where The Waste Lands leaves off, with Roland and his four companions, Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Oy, a half human/half animal with limited speaking ability, in a verbal gunfight to the death with Blaine, the homicidal supercomputer that lives on riddles, the story doubles back on Roland's youth and his grand love for Susan Delgado. The roundabout narrative leads us to Wizard of Oz territory—more particularly to a horribly transformed Topeka, Kansas—which the quintet must pass through as they seek the Dark Tower, the hub of creation, where Roland will discover some knowledge that will halt the quickening destruction of his post- technological Mid-World. In 1986, Topeka and the nation are huge graveyards struck by the superflu from The Stand. Roland retells the story of his youthful adventures in Gilead and of his teacher Cort, of star-crossed Susan, and of his companions Alain and Cuthbert, while reading portents in the wizard Maerlyn's glass ball . . . . Will the Path of the Beam from the Dark Tower be from the lighthouse in King's Castle Rock film logo? In Roland's quest tale, which King calls "my Jupiter" among the solar system of his published works, the bleak cosmology of self-assurance versus wrongness is as compelling as ever. But seven rambling volumes of bemusedly wry storytelling? This will be The Ring Cycle on top of The Lord of the Rings.

Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1997

ISBN: 0-452-27917-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Plume

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen ) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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by J.D. Salinger

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Book Review: The Dark Tower, by Stephen King

And so at last we come to The Dark Tower , the final book in Stephen King’s series of the same name (the long tale he’s said is his Lord of the Rings ).

The first act is fast-paced—more so than anything else in this saga of Roland the gunslinger and his “ka-tet” of misfit warriors. After the birth of Mordred, his horrifying son by a demon mother, Roland and his companions are reunited and set about trying to save the remaining Beams that support the multiverse. Doing so involves defeating the Breakers (psychics who are destroying the Beams) and preventing King (yes, the author himself) from being killed in an automobile accident. The cost is high: several characters die, both major and minor. But Roland and the survivors succeed.

Then the pace falters. The second act becomes a drawn-out trek to the Dark Tower, the lynchpin of the multiverse and Roland’s ultimate goal. He eventually reaches it, but not before King takes us on some unnecessary tangents, including an extended session on how to make hide clothing. “I’m not ready to be there yet,” Roland says at one point about the Dark Tower (perhaps speaking for King; I got the sense he didn’t want to end the story before he absolutely had to). “Not quite ready … I need a little more time to prepare my mind and my heart. Mayhap even my soul.”

Things pick up in the last act, which features Roland defeating Mordred and the Crimson King—as close as the series has to a big baddie—and finally entering the Dark Tower. I won’t spoil what he finds inside, but I think it serves as a fitting ending, even if it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped.

So what do we make of all this?

My biggest takeaway was that, as much I appreciate how creative King is, I wish he’d followed a more traditional story structure. For Book 7, he could have clustered the big events—saving the universe and reaching the Dark Tower—for greater emotional impact. For the series as a whole, King could have given Roland a clearer goal and a more-involved antagonist. Getting to the Dark Tower isn’t that compelling; we never know what he’s supposed to do there. And the fight with the Crimson King isn’t as meaningful as it could be, because this is the first time we’re seeing the mad ruler. (Roland also defeats him with a cheap trick. I wish he’d used something he’d learned along the way, rather than resorting to an option King only introduced in the final hundred pages or so.)

I’m also still mixed about King injecting himself into the story. He does this in several ways: by creating a multiverse within his own works, by making himself a character in this one, and by commenting on the narrative as it goes along.

I’ve already talked a lot about the multiverse concept in my reviews of earlier entries in the series. In his afterword, King clarifies that, “My idea was to use the Dark Tower stories as a kind of summation, a way of unifying as many of my previous stories as possible beneath the arch of some über-tale. I never meant that to be pretentious (and I hope it isn’t), but only as a way of showing how life influences art (and vice versa).” It’s a neat idea. But for it to really sing, I would have liked the events in non- Dark Tower books to have more impact on Roland’s larger story (beyond running back favorite characters).

In my Book 6 review , I also pondered the perils of writing yourself into your story. On balance, I think it worked here, and it was fun when the characters ragged on their creator. (Roland and co. call King various forms of “lazy” and “cowardly,” and at one point an old villain dismisses him as a “shoddy quick-sketch artist.”) But having a Stephen King character in a Stephen King book makes certain scenes a bit absurd.

I haven’t said much about how King frequently breaks out his author voice, though. He mostly does this to foreshadow coming events. For example, before a major character dies, King writes, “He slipped the .40 into his docker’s clutch almost without thinking, moving us a step closer to what you will not want to hear and I will not want to tell.” Most authors couldn’t get away with this, but King knows how to set your expectations in a way that builds tension rather than sapping it. (The asides also reinforce the conceit that King-the-character met his protagonists; if the fictional King sees them as real people he created, it would certainly pain him to kill them.)

Final verdict: for all the criticisms I made above, I’m still glad I read the Dark Tower books. They’re inventive, surprising, and original, and I won’t forget them.

But The Lord of the Rings remains my standard for epic tales.

For more reviews like this one, sign up for Nick’s monthly newsletter .

Millions of visitors. Thousands of exhibits. One fiendish killer.

Neva’s goals at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago are simple. Enjoy the spectacle—perhaps the greatest the United States has ever put on. (The world’s fair to end all world’s fairs!) Perform in the exposition’s Algerian Theatre to the best of her abilities. And don’t be found out as a witch.

Easy enough … until the morning she looks up in the Theatre and sees strangely marked insects swarming a severed hand in the rafters.

"... a wild ride sure to please lovers of supernatural historical mysteries." – Publishers Weekly

Get your copy on: Amazon | Apple | Audible | Google | Kindle Unlimited | Spotify | Other Platforms

From 'Gunslinger' to 'Wizard and Glass': Stephen King's 'Dark Tower' Books, Ranked

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In an alternate universe, perhaps one just next door to ours, Amazon gave the green light to former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara ’s adaptation of Stephen King ’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower . In our (perhaps lesser) reality, Amazon passed on the project, possibly because with its Wheel of Time series and the upcoming Lord of the Rings show, a third big-budget sci-fi/fantasy series is just not feasible.

Loosely based on the Robert Browning poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, King’s epic series consists of seven main novels and two other longer narratives which are tangential to the main story. Very briefly, Roland Deschain’s world is one of magic, chivalry, demons, and lots of guns and doors. Roland is the last of the gunslingers, heirs of Arthur Eld, the figure we’d know as King Arthur of Camelot. We meet Roland as he crosses an impossibly huge desert, trailing the Man in Black. All we know is that he seeks The Dark Tower, which readers come to learn is sort of a linchpin of reality itself. Something is wrong at the Tower, and its effects ripple through time, space, and the multiple realities Roland finds himself traveling through.

He is eventually joined by others on his quest: a boy named Jake Chambers from our world of 1977, Eddie Dean, a tough and streetwise but deeply insecure heroin addict from 1986, and Odetta Holmes, a wealthy African-American heiress and activist from 1964. Odetta contains a much nastier personality named Detta Walker, and after Roland forces the two aspects of the same woman to face each other, they become a third woman: Susannah Dean, Eddie’s spiritual wife.

Anyone new to King’s Dark Tower universe should, of course, read them all in order. However, here we look at how well they work as individual volumes, relative to their place in the overarching narrative.

Here are Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, ranked.

RELATED: ‘Doctor Sleep’ Filmmaker Mike Flanagan Wants to Adapt ‘The Dark Tower’

9. Song of Susannah (Book 6)

Song of Susannah picks up seconds after the end of Book 5, Wolves of the Calla . Roland and his ka-tet have successfully defended the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis against cloaked, hooded, child-snatching creatures they call the Wolves. A nearby cave holds strong magic, and with the help of a black orb known as Black Thirteen (one of many multi-colored magic balls crafted millennia before by the great wizard Maerlyn), Roland and his band can get themselves closer to the Dark Tower. When Susannah, possessed by an entity called Mia, takes the black ball and goes through by herself, their plans are suddenly upended.

None of the Dark Tower novels are “bad,” but Song of Susannah is so different from the other books that it sticks out like a sore thumb. This seems to have been King’s intention, but it comes at a crucial point in the overall narrative when adjusting the style halts the story’s momentum. King structures the book in “stanzas” which culminate in the most “meta” plot twist in the series when the author himself shows up as a character. Roland and Eddie encounter the 1977 version of Stephen King, a functioning alcoholic and family man with a newly-established career as a novelist. It’s a pivotal scene, expanding the metafictional nature of the series. It’s also very confusing, adding a tangled origin story to the entire mythology far too late to truly resonate. Song of Susannah is important for its focus on the story’s major female character, but upending the structure so late in the game is a narrative miscalculation. The story nearly stops cold right before the long-awaited final entry, which is why Book 6 remains on the bottom of this list.

8. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Book 4.5)

Set after the flashback events recounted in Wizard and Glass , and before we catch up to the gunslinger in the first book of the series, The Wind Through the Keyhole recounts how Roland’s father, Stephen Deschain, sends him and his friend, Jamie de Curry, to deal with a shapeshifter, who has been terrorizing some outer territories. There’s a story within a story, which follows a young boy named Tim, who lives with his mother on the edge of a great and dangerous forest. What follows is a fantasy fable peppered with characters like The Covenant Man (a parallel to the perennial king villain, Randall Flagg, or The Man in Black) and an intelligent white “tyger” revealed to be the legendary wizard Maerlyn, whom Tim eventually frees. The Wind Through the Keyhole is an enjoyable tangent, but not essential reading relative to the Dark Tower series as a whole. King might have benefited from either splitting this into two or three short stories or novellas. The Wind Through the Keyhole ultimately feels unnecessary, even though it reveals a piece of backstory about Roland’s mother. King could have found a way to get this into the main novels, and make it relevant in a way this book is not.

7. The Dark Tower (Book 7)

Split up throughout the duration of Book 6, Roland and his ka-tet reunite and discover the source of the decay in Roland’s world. Powerful psychics called Breakers have been working (semi-unconsciously) to erode the Beams, energy tethers which intersect at the Dark Tower and are responsible for holding all of reality together. Roland’s evil misbegotten son Mordred (it’s a long story) is after them as they try to stop the Breakers. We learn that the major villain has always been a creature known as the Crimson King. While he has breached the Dark Tower, he is now shut out on some kind of balcony. His magic and influence still makes him a powerful enemy even from afar.

For many fans, The Dark Tower ’s concluding volume feels somehow rushed, even at 845 pages. King began The Dark Tower in the late ‘70s as something close to a psychedelic, fantasy Western. It became much more over the decades, refracting and reflecting many of his most famous stories through a near-infinite prism of alternate realities. Diehard fans will find something close to fan service, with characters from several other King stories and novels in the final Dark Tower book. While Eddie, Susannah, and Jake are given satisfying endings, a surprising amount of story happens “off-screen,” recounted in a lot of clunky exposition. These side stories often come across as far more interesting than the main narrative, and they raise a lot of questions. A character we met briefly in Song of Susannah becomes a major player over several decades, but we only get to hear about it second-hand. King’s constant readers can hardly blame him for wanting to see his story through to the end as quickly as possible, but Book 7 really could have been split into at least two volumes.

6. Wolves of the Calla (Book 5)

The Dark Tower takes place in a world which has always seemed like a surreal, funhouse-mirror image of ours. King doubles down on the meta aspect of The Dark Tower in Wolves of the Calla . Roland and his ka-tet enter a classic Western plot as a town needs help defending themselves from what they describe as child-snatching werewolves in cloaks and hoods. The truth is much more complicated. The travelers encounter Father Callahan, the priest who failed to defeat the vampire Barlow in King’s second published novel, ‘Salem’s Lot , and his long, winding tale drops him into the Dark Tower saga as far back as the first book. While the Constant Reader has been aware that the Dark Tower series takes place somewhere within King’s other stories, Wolves of the Calla gives its characters their first inkling of the larger structure of their story. The book provides a much more detailed look at the ordinary citizens in the far flung lands of Roland’s “Mid-World.” We see how the grand, epic tale affects the people who are just living out their lives, unaware (and largely uninterested) that they are part of something bigger. Still, King opens the book with dense descriptions of this new corner of his universe, rendering it inaccessible in a way his previous novels were not.

5. The Waste Lands (Book 3)

Throughout the first two Dark Tower books, we don’t see much of Roland’s world beyond a desert and a dying town at its edge. The “present” state of Mid-World is a mystery until The Waste Lands . Drawing heavily on themes and imagery from T.S. Eliot ’s epic 1922 poem, The Wasteland , the third book in the Dark Tower saga builds on what we learn about the gunslinger from the first two books while adding much more nuance to his personality. Eddie and Susannah both face their tests as gunslingers, and acquit themselves honorably. The Waste Lands takes the Dark Tower narrative into more expansive territory than the first two novels. It contains a series of exciting sequences which would be at home in a big-screen blockbuster: the ka-tet pulls Jake from the maw of a monster borne from a crumbling house, they battle a bear the size of Godzilla, and must survive a mad dash through a bizarre city called Lud, which feels like a post-apocalyptic New York. The Waste Lands finds King’s imagination firing on all cylinders, conjuring a vibrant and detailed universe which rivals some of his best work.

4. The Little Sisters of Eluria (Book 0.5)

This excellent prequel novella takes place some years before the first book, when a younger (and slightly more optimistic) Roland finds himself in a seemingly abandoned town called Eluria. He finds a medallion on a dead body and is then attacked by slow mutants, creatures who are remnants of the unnamed catastrophe which King has referenced vaguely in other Dark Tower books. Roland wakes up in a hospital tended by the Sisters of Eluria, whom the gunslinger slowly realizes are actually vampires. One of the Sisters, a young woman named Jenna, tends to his wounds, and the two of them slowly fall in love. Sister Jenna is one of the two great loves of Roland’s life, adding a new dimension to the gunslinger’s past. While The Little Sisters of Eluria does not factor into the main Dark Tower narrative, King gives us a valuable look at both the narrative universe and Roland right before things begin to truly fall apart. We’ve seen glimpses of Roland’s origin story, such as his early test of manhood in The Gunslinger , but this is a mature Roland who is still vulnerable and even hopeful.

3. The Drawing of the Three (Book 2)

The end of The Gunslinger leaves Roland on a beach overlooking the great Western Sea. The Drawing of the Three picks up minutes later. Roland is attacked by giant lobster creatures and ends up with wet shells, a wet gun, two missing fingers on his right hand, and a serious fever. He picks a direction and walks up the beach, eventually encountering three free-standing doors. They bear inscriptions: “The Prisoner” (Eddie Dean), “The Lady of Shadows” (Odetta/Detta/Susannah), and “Death.” Each door leads straight into the minds of the people Roland must draw from their world into his own, whether they want to or not.

The Drawing of the Three is a remarkable novel, unlike any other by King in that same era. The metaphysical territories the author explores rank with the best of the genre, as King uses Roland, Eddie, and Odetta/Detta/Susannah’s innerscapes to explore aspects of each version of the world he visits through the doors. King shows us the New York of three different time periods through Roland’s eyes. This skewered perspective allows King to provide commentary on our society that is missing from the other books.

2. Wizard and Glass (Book 4)

The cliffhanger at the end of Book 3 resolves with Eddie Dean ingeniously out-riddling Blaine the mono. They then find themselves inside a version of King’s epic novel, The Stand . After flirting with the metafictional aspects of the story, King finally makes it explicit: The Dark Tower is part of a grander narrative universe. They have jumped dimensions, which compels Roland to tell a long story about his past. Roland falls in love for the first time, and this leads to the real beginning of his quest for the Dark Tower. Wizard and Glass is heartbreaking, with some of Stephen King’s finest prose.

As King states in Book 4’s introduction, Wizard & Glass is the work of a man who understands the mature love of a long marriage and middle age. He had to rediscover the intense teenage emotions that fuel Roland’s affair with Susan Delgado. This is King’s Romeo & Juliet , a tragic tale of two lovers whom fate will forever separate. This is also the origin of Roland’s obsession with the Tower, a metaphor for addiction. Roland will end up sacrificing nearly everything for his quest, and while Susan does not die by his hand, King strongly implies that Roland could have sacrificed her, as well. All these elements come together seamlessly in Wizard & Glass , making it one of King’s finest novels to date.

1. The Gunslinger (Book 1)

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed . ” King has never bettered the opening to 1982’s The Gunslinger , which introduces us to Roland of Gilead, son of Stephen, the last gunslinger in a world that has “moved on.” The surreal Western was nothing like King’s previous books. The later installments would be more experimental or more sophisticated, but the first one set its own unique tone. The Gunslinger presents a stripped-down, deceptively simple premise, and King follows this down the rabbit hole. There are some bravura set pieces in this book: Roland’s chilling massacre of the town called Tull, the still-compelling flashbacks to his early test for his guns, he and Jake’s terrifying trip under the mountains on a handcart while surrounded by slow mutants. The cold and pitiless killer in this book gains back more of his humanity as the series goes on. Here, the challenge for the reader is to sympathize with such an enigmatic, ruthless character as Roland of Gilead. King has revised parts of The Gunslinger to make the series’ continuity more cohesive, but this has not diminished any of its power.

• Movie Features
• The Dark Tower
• Stephen King

The Dark Tower

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With that great opening line, an obsession began for millions of readers of Stephen King ’s series of books that would eventually be known as The Dark Tower . The first book was actually called The Gunslinger , and it was a relatively small volume of brilliant sci-fi/fantasy that used iconic imagery to begin the crafting of a world that would become as rich as those created by George R. R. Martin or J.R.R Tolkien. Over the next few books— The Drawing of the Three , The Wastelands , and Wizard and Glass —King did some of his best writing (the series would actually stretch to seven books and a series of comics, but it’s the initial quartet that holds a special place in my heart). I only mention all of this to place the failure of the long-delayed “The Dark Tower” in the right perspective: this isn’t just a mediocre movie—although it is most definitely that—it is a wasted opportunity to fulfill the promise of that opening line from 35 years ago.

Plagued by reshoots and dogged by rumors of poor test screenings, “The Dark Tower” once looked like it would be one of the more notable failures of 2017. Honestly, I kind of wish it was. As is, it’s more forgettable than loathsome, the kind of movie that occasionally rubs salt in your wounds by reminding you what could have been, but mostly just dissipates from memory as it’s playing. The two leads here— Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey —work just fine in these iconic roles, and you just want to pick them up and put them in a better movie, one that doesn’t seem stuck in the valley between trying to satisfy hardcore fans of the series and the moviegoers who have never heard of Roland and Walter. By trying to do both, the movie ends up doing neither.

The problems start immediately. Someone probably thought that making Roland, the title character of the first book, the lead of the first film wouldn’t satisfy a wide enough demographic. And Hollywood is obsessed with stories of teenagers who discover their bad dreams or hidden secrets are actually the keys to the salvation of the universe. So, instead of the origin story of Roland (which will apparently now be told in a television series, also starring Elba), our protagonist here is really Jake Chambers ( Tom Taylor ), an essential character in the books reimagined here as a troubled New York teen without much of a real personality. As with almost everyone in this film, he’s a device, a way to push the exposition forward to meet a contractually-mandated running time.

Here’s what we learn about the movie version of Jake, who is basically like the kid reading “The Neverending Story” in that he constantly tries to explain to the audience what’s going on. Jake has prophetic visions of both the Gunslinger Roland (Elba) and the Man in Black Walter ( McConaughey ). He also has visions of a massive tower, which we learn is basically keeping the order of the universe. Walter wants to destroy this tower, and he knows that there’s a child out there with the power to help him do so. Of course, that child is Jake, who it turns out has the same power as the young man at the center of “ The Shining .” He can read minds and other such things that Walter will harness to blow up the tower. “The Dark Tower” is filled with references for King nuts, including, among others, a moment where Roland glances behind a pin-up poster while looking for an exit (“ The Shawshank Redemption ”) and the numbers “1408” above a portal. Did I mention the portals? I got distracted. It’s easy to do so with this movie.

Roland, Walter, and eventually Jake cross between worlds through portals. It’s not long before Jake and Roland team up, but Jake questions whether or not his new gun-toting pal is going to help him save the tower or if he just wants vengeance against the man in black. A few other characters flit around the fringe of this thin piece of storytelling, but it’s essentially a three-character piece.

And two of those characters are actually pretty well defined. Elba brings a nice gravity to Roland that fits the character well, a combination of a man haunted by the ghosts of his past and driven to do what’s right to avenge them. And McConaughey dances on the edge of hamming it up in the villain role, reining it in just enough that one can see how well he could have been utilized with a better script and vision for the project.

Because that’s where this tower crumbles. “The Dark Tower” is hollow. It is soulless. It is a film that never quite figured out what it wanted to be, and so elected to be nothing much at all. Worst of all, it’s clearly been chopped up by those reported reshoots and test screening edits. There’s a scene with a demon in a house that just ends and much of the final act material features a Jake who looks a lot closer to puberty than when the movie began. Weird humorous bits feel like they have been spliced in, trying to find as big an audience as possible. And while some may criticize Stephen King’s more populist works, that’s a charge that could never be lobbied at The Dark Tower . These books had vision. They created worlds. They used iconic imagery to explore timeless themes. “The Dark Tower” plays it so safe and takes so few risks that its greatest sin is in being the one thing those formative books never were for so many people: forgettable. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Akiva Goldsman
• Anders Thomas Jensen
• Jeff Pinkner
• Nikolaj Arcel
• Alan Edward Bell
• Dan Zimmerman

Cinematographer

• Rasmus Videbæk

Writer (based on the novels by)

• Stephen King

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Book Review

The gunslinger — “dark tower” series.

• Stephen King
• Paranormal , Supernatural Realism , Western

• Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Year Published

The Gunslinger by Stephen King has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine . It is the first book in the “Dark Tower” series.

Plot Summary

Roland Deschain, also known as the Gunslinger, lives in an Old West setting. He exists in an alternate timeframe, or perhaps a parallel universe, in a novel where time does not operate the usual way. Roland has spent many years chasing the man in black across the desert but has failed to catch him. Roland is searching for a tower where he hopes to find answers about the meaning of life and death.

He stops at the home of a farmer named Brown who has a talking bird, Zoltan. In a flashback, he tells Brown about his recent experiences in a town called Tull. During his time in Tull, Roland and a bartender named Allie became lovers. One of Allie’s other lovers tried to kill Roland. Allie told Roland the man in black had come through Tull and raised a man named Nort from the dead.

The town preacher, a large, boisterous woman named Sylvia, admitted to having had an affair with the man in black. She said she was carrying his baby. Roland put a gun between her legs and presumably aborted the child. Sylvia cried out that that he’d killed the child of the Crimson King. Sylvia turned the town against Roland. He had to shoot everyone, including Allie, in order to escape.

While Roland is with Brown, his mule dies. He continues his journey on foot. At a way station, he finds a boy named Jake Chambers who apparently died in his own time or universe. Jake doesn’t remember much, so Roland hypnotizes him to find out what he can about the boy.

Jake was the son of a TV executive who was brutally killed when a car rolled over him. They encounter a demon that warns Roland that the man in black controls his soul now that he’s with Jake.

Roland and Jake travel together, and Roland realizes that his growing love and concern for the boy have made him vulnerable. Roland flashes back to his childhood, when he studied under a hard man named Cort. Roland and his friend Cuthbert overheard a kitchen worker plotting against the kingdom and reported him. The man was hanged.

Roland’s father died, and a man named Martin was sleeping with his mother. When Roland discovered this, he was angry and wanted revenge. Before he could avenge his father, he had to fight Cort so his manhood would be official. He was only 14, but he used his trained bird to attack and defeat Cort.

Roland has a strange, drug-fueled sexual encounter with an oracle spirit in order to get information about the man in black. He learns that three is the number of his fate. He is told he will encounter the man in black soon, but Jake will not survive if Roland continues on his quest for the Dark Tower. Roland and Jake travel on, twisting through mountain tunnels for many days on train tracks using a handcar. They encounter creatures called Slow Mutants, which they must fight in order to pass through.

When the man in black appears, Jake falls and dangles from the tracks above a deep pit. Roland must choose whether to save the boy or pursue the man in black. Jake knows Roland will choose his quest over him. Jake lets go and falls.

Roland speaks with the man in black, who reads the Gunslinger’s fortune with something like Tarot cards. The man reveals that he was the one who destroyed Roland’s family and was sleeping with Roland’s mother. He imparts many cryptic pieces of information, like telling Roland he (the man in black) is only a minion of the powerful, omnipotent red king who controls the Dark Tower.

He shows Roland a vision of the vastness of the universe, trying to convince him to give up his quest. The Gunslinger refuses. The man in black finally causes Roland to sleep. Roland wakes up 10 years later with a skeleton next to him, presumably that of the man in black. He keeps the skeleton’s jawbone, speaks aloud of his love for Jake and ponders his next move toward finding the Dark Tower.

Christian Beliefs

A number of biblical references appear in the text. The narrator sometimes likens a situation to a story in the Bible. For example, he talks about the zombie-like creatures in a cave looking for Jesus to heal them and raise them from the darkness, like Lazarus. He refers to Roland’s meeting place with the man in black as Golgotha, the place of the skull. The man in black says Roland must meet and slay an Ageless Stranger whose name is Legion.

The Gunslinger attends the church in Tull. They sing hymns. The preacher, Sylvia, mentions a number of Bible stories before warning of an Interloper who came to Eve in the form of a serpent. Congregants cry out to the Lord in response to her message.

Other Belief Systems

Roland says he is not a holy man, like a Manni or the Man Jesus. He sometimes looks for ka, which is an Egyptian word for a spiritual entity living within an individual. He has encountered people who believe that devils live in fire.

Roland has the power to hypnotize people and control what they remember. He talks about God as well as gods in the plural form. Brown says he once tried to teach his bird the Lord’s Prayer, but that this wasn’t really Lord’s Prayer country. When Roland asks Brown if he believes in the afterlife, Brown says he thinks this is it.

The man in black brings a man named Nort back from the dead. Nort believes God has touched him and that he won’t ever die again. A man in Tull named Kennerly says his daughter has a devil. He rambles on about the end times when there are plagues and children don’t obey their parents. The man in black tells the Gunslinger’s future using Tarot-like cards. He tells Roland to allow this pointless ritual to calm him, like church might.

The man in black stands with Roland in a void universe. The man in black calls light, water, plants, dinosaurs and other creatures into being. He continues to command that there be light, until the light is so strong that it overwhelms the Gunslinger. The man in black later ponders the nature of God, if one exists, and wonders if there could be a stairway leading to a tower in which He exists. If so, he says, would one dare climb it? The Gunslinger suggests maybe God himself has climbed these stairs to a room above reality.

Authority Roles

The Gunslinger serves as an authority role for Jake. He protects him for a time but still allows him to die so he can continue his search for the tower. Jake recalls his parents. He says his mother sometimes goes to bed with sick friends, and his father, a network executive, sometimes uses drugs.

Profanity & Violence

The Lord’s name is used in vain. H— , d–n , s— , a– , b–ch , whore , balls , cojones , p— , b–tard , c–t , and the f-word are used.

Jake remembers a car running over him, mushing his guts and squashing his genitals. Blood spurts from every opening in his body. In a bloody scene, Roland’s bird violently tears Cort’s face apart. Blood and brains fly as the Gunslinger kills a group of townspeople. Roland violently forces his gun between Sylvia’s legs to remove the man in black’s child from her body.

Sexual Content

Kennerly fondles his own daughter’s breast. The same girl walks by Roland and pinches her nipple to get his attention. Roland initially sleeps with Allie to get information. He ends up staying with her for a while and continuing their sexual relationship. Many in her bar sing ragtime Methodist hymns while drunk and sexually aroused. Kennerly makes a lewd sexual gesture when he realizes Roland is sleeping with Allie. Although Sylvia is over 300 pounds, many men lust after her.

When Roland first sees her, his lust makes him shaky. He goes to her house to get information about the man in black. He learns she slept with the man in black and that the man told her he was an angel of God. She says the man in black told her Roland was the Antichrist and that he would want to sleep with her. Roland asks her if she ever met a man who didn’t want to sleep with her. She reveals that she is pregnant with the man in black’s child. Roland pries her legs apart and puts the barrel of his gun between them. The vague description that follows indicates he aborts the child.

In various moments of pleasure and pain throughout the story, the author describes how Roland’s genitals feel or react. Roland confronts an oracle for information on how to find the man in black. They have a strange sexual encounter in which Roland allows the oracle to take him sexually once he’s received the direction he needs. One scene suggests Roland is going to the roof to masturbate. The preacher in Tull warns against sexual sin, including masturbation. Roland vows to forget Jake by sleeping with many women and killing people.

Discussion Topics

Additional comments.

Drugs/Alcohol: Many characters smoke marijuana to get high. People at the bar where Alice works are often drunk or high. Roland takes a pill before he faces a demon, and Jake likens it to LSD. The oracle warns Roland of a demon named Heroin.

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The Dark Tower by Stephen King (The Dark Tower series: Book 7)

When it gets to the last book in a series there is very little left unsaid. I hold the Dark Tower series in the very highest regard. Yes, I have slight reservations but when taken as a whole it is the magnum opus that its author, Stephen King, hoped it would be. Over thirty years in the writing, it is a vast, sprawling tale of one man's quest, some may say obsession, and the story is excellent, the characters that populate it amongst that special type that remain with the reader forever.

So when I reach the final review I like to look at what others say, what the majority have loved or detested about the seven books. My thoughts can be read in the preceding six reviews but I will try to recap my reading experience in one paragraph:

The first three Dark Tower books are amongst the best I have read in the genre. I found books four and five tough going on first read but wonderfully enjoyable on re-read. I did not particularly like book six, for many reasons, and although I have warmed to it during re-reads it still remains, in my opinion, a weakness, but luckily book seven, this book, provides the series with the fitting denouement it deserves.

Here is the seventh book's synopsis:

Roland's band of pilgrims remains united, though scattered. Susannah-Mia has been carried off to New York to give birth, Terrified of what may happen, Jake, Father Callahan and Oy follow.

Roland and Eddie are in Maine, looking for the site which will lead them to Susannah. As he finally closes in on the tower, Roland's every step is shadowed by a terrible and sinister creation. And finally, he realises, he may have to walk the last dark strait alone...

First, let’s take a look at the positive reviews:

"It's one of those series of books that are quite hard to *like*, because they are full of such pain and darkness and sadness, but they are absorbing in a way that very few series can hope to achieve. Perhaps the most fitting evidence that King succeeded with me is that, despite working my way through all seven books, I am still eager to read more about Roland and his background." Dr. Michael Heron

"Bravo Mr King. It's a series destined to go down as one of the greats of modern fantasy. Let's hope the rumoured TV serialisation and movies turn out half so good, if they turn up at all!" Hippy Sal

And now for the negative:

"Am I the only person to feel cheated and let down by this book, the final chapter of the Dark Tower series which I have been following for over 30 years? My overall impression was that in some ways these books were almost 'writing themselves' and evolving a deep and meaningful story with a life of its own. However it seems that, in the end, King could not find a fitting way to wrap things up and took an easy way out. Given that people followed these works for years (I remember reading of a letter sent to King by a woman diagnosed with terminal cancer asking to be told the end of the story because she would not live to read it herself) it's a crying shame that he couldn't come up with anything more convincing than what he has done. In my opinion it's dreadful. I feel I have been taken advantage of by Mr King and wasted all those years." Nivek

"When you strip away all the excess fat in the DT series (King's allusions to his other novels, the copious number of various minor coincidences scattered throughout the series explained away as "ka", characters which shouldn't even be in the series in the first place, basically everything that is "19") what's left after all is said and done is an extremely weak, unfinished and poorly written story. I completely fell in love with The Gunslinger when I first read it and subsequently picked up the next 3 volumes. Wizard and Glass is by far my favourite installment to the series because of the absolute quality with which Roland's sojourn to Mejis with his friends was written. This was probably King at his pinnacle. You can actually see the duality of the quality of the story in this novel, the sheer scope and quality of Roland's no bull**** recounted tale in Mejis versus the bland and ludicrous weirdness of the story of the Ka-tet of the Nineteen and Ninety and Nine. The contrast between what the story had become at this point and what it should have been (Mejis and "The Gunslinger" will forever be captured in my imagination) is all too evident at this point in the series and with the following volume, Wolves of the Calla, it was all but blatant that King had lost the plot. And by that I mean, yes, he is telling a story... its just no longer the one we were reading." Jason

"I couldn't believe it when I got to the end of this book. I'd been following this series for years as they were coming out and I was loving every page. It was such a clever idea, to weave this story into the other seemingly unrelated stories to create one greater picture that doesn't become apparent if you just read the odd king novel here or there. But to have all that work culminate with just the most last minute, scrapped together, half arsed, hack, first year creative writing class ending sequence is tantamount to a direct insult towards me." M

And finally on to the mixed opinions, which most closely mirror my own thoughts:

"I enjoyed the first 4 books, and thought the 5th was okay. Unfortunately it all went south after that - I kept on going in the hope that it would be redeemed at the end. Sadly not. Stephen King spoils this completely by inserting himself into the story - way too narcissistic and just annoyed me. If you can draw the line after the 4th book - you will be doing the right thing." Flash

"I couldn't help feeling that at the end Stephen King was literally just making it up as he went along. It was a shame because if you get to this last book, you've spent a lot of time getting there. At times the whole Dark Tower saga had me gripped, but at other times it was so disjointed and so made up on the fly that for me it lost its coherence. What a shame." SimonSpear

"Let's begin at the end. I thought the ending was superb. It won't please everyone I know, but for me it was inspired and just, so I have no problem with that. My problem with the saga as a whole is that it wasn't consistent, and the last 3 books especially felt very very laboured, in particular the Wolves of Calla which was clearly twice as long as it needed to be. Song of Susannah was ok, and I thought the final book ramped it up a bit. Of the first four novels, The Wasteland was dire (I know I'm in a minority here) and dragged and dragged.... the first two novels were fine, but the real gem is Wizard and Glass, a story within a story, which was superbly written and plotted, and of all things it was a love story, and I'm not in the habit of reading love stories I can assure you!" Andy C

"I just finished the final book in the magnificent series - it was truly an awesome ending, and with hindsight the only possible one, although I certainly didn't see it coming until the final page! I spent most of the book wondering how it could possibly end, and there was really only this way (don't want to spoil it for you!) I nearly gave up when Stephen King introduced himself as a character. it seemed ludicrous at the time, but luckily he didn't appear very much, and it was a stroke of genius making King's real-life accident a crucial point of the saga. The later books lacked the haunting other-worldly quality of the early works, but I was happy to see that the story ended in Roland's own world, and not in the real New York, as I had feared it might. A great ending to King's towering vision, and one of those books that you're truly sorry you've finished. I'll really miss Roland and his ka-tet!" Frostycat

As always the best way to see if a series is for you is to read the first book in it, in this case The Gunslinger. If it grips you like it did me then you have found a brilliant but occasionally flawed series that stands up to repeat reading better than any other series I have read. If the first book doesn’t work for you then it’s probably best to move on to something else.

A special mention should be made of the Dark Tower audio books, which are read masterfully by George Guidall and the late, great, Frank Muller. They are up there with the best fantasy books available.

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Review by Floresiensis

1 positive reader review(s) for The Dark Tower

16 positive reader review(s) in total for the The Dark Tower series series

Stephen King biography

The Dark Tower series

• The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower series: Book 1)
• The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower series: Book 2)
• The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower series: Book 3)
• Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower series: Book 4)
• The Wind Through The Keyhole (The Dark Tower series: Book 4.5)
• Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower series: Book 5)
• Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower series: Book 6)
• The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower series: Book 7)

Makkarii from U.S.

This entire series is unlike anything I have ever read before. It was simply amazing and had me yearning for more once I finished this last book. Luckily though, King graced us with one last follow up, "The Wind through the Key Hole" and gave me one last piece to satiate me. You can read the rest of my review here: http://wordymadness.blogspot.com/2014/01/by-stephen-king-genre-fantasy-horror.html

9.4 /10 from 2 reviews

All Stephen King Reviews

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• Under the Dome
• The Talisman: Road of Trials
• The Eyes of the Dragon
• Needful Things
• Rose Madder
• Desperation
• The Long Walk
• Gerald's Game
• Bag of Bones
• Salem's Lot
• Firestarter
• The Shining
• Pet Sematary
• The Talisman (Talisman: Book 2)
• Black House (Talisman: Book 2)

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Book review: the dark tower (the dark tower, #7) by stephen king, june 15, 2022 celeste comments 3 comments.

The Dark Tower is the pentacle of Stephen King’s magnum opus, and I’ve been terrified to get to it. King isn’t known for nailing his landings, and this one is especially controversial. I was afraid that, after reading 8,781 pages, or 3,951,408 words, on my long road to the Tower, I would be left feeling woefully disappointed, and as if I had wasted my time. I’m here to tell you that, thankfully, that isn’t the case. After reading the final pages of The Dark Tower I can safely say that this is my favorite completed series of all time. I’ve never read anything else like it. The only series that I think will eventually surpass it is Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives , but it will be well over a decade before that is completed. In the meantime, The Dark Tower stands alone among completed series for me . As it should.

“The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.”

There will be some vague spoilers here, though I’ll not mention any name save Roland’s. I simply don’t know how else to discuss a final book in a series so large. Skip to the end or turn back now if you wish to go into or continue this series knowing as little as possible.

“Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years.”

A sense of foreboding permeated so much of this novel. And the foreshadowing King kept dropping did nothing but further whet my appetite to know what was actually going to happen. As things finally wrapped up and came to a head, he made sure to tell readers, again and again, that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending, and that very few of the characters I had so grown to love would make it to the end of the line. Even with all of the warnings, I was still enraged and devastated repeatedly. But isn’t it the mark of a good story, when you’ve become so attached to characters that you rage and mourn when you lose them?

“Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead.”

I’ll not mention any character by name, save the Gunslinger himself, by King wrung out a surprising amount of emotion from me over the course of this book. There was a Communion scene, a Last Supper of the Ka-tet, if you will, that I found incredibly poignant and wonderfully moving. The religious imagery was beautiful and somehow appropriate. The foretold breaking of the Tet was unspeakably devastating, but I found myself so proud of each character and how they faced down their deaths. I was reminded of the movie Young Guns ; they all went out in a blaze of glory, as gunslingers should. They stood, and were true, and no more could possibly have been asked of them.

“You needn’t die happy when your time comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from the beginning to the end and ka is always served.”

The character development of Roland since his first appearance in The Gunslinger is astounding . And that’s not something that I really noticed as the series progressed. It hit me all at once, a little over halfway through this novel, in a moment that echoed and answered and recast a moment from that first installment. This was one of the moments were King’s storytelling shone the brightest, even in the midst of devastation. We so often view him as a pulpy writer, because of the types of stories he tells and the frequency of his publication. But he is truly gifted in his craft, and this entire book really displays his brilliance. The ways in which he was able to tie together so many little details from so early on in the series proves how deft a writer he is, in my opinion. There were still issues, of course: his villains remain wholly evil instead of multifaceted; his pop culture references and slang become quickly outdated. And I’m still on the fence about how he portrays women and people of color. But overall, King is an incredibly gifted storyteller who has worked hard to develop his craft, and The Dark Tower is a perfect example of exactly what the man can accomplish with words. I’m in awe.

“Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.”

I love King’s voice, especially when the narrator makes himself known, and that was done with especially great aplomb in this book. It gave a Dickensian feel to the novel, reminiscent of the voice I so enjoyed in Black House , which King co-authored with Peter Straub. But in The Dark Tower , that voice is distinctly and only King’s own, which was made doubly fascinating to me by the fact that King himself is a side character in the story. I know this was a controversial decision, but I felt that it leant an incredible power and reality to the story. Since the idea of the Tower has so dominated King’s mind and writing for so many decades, it only makes sense that he would include himself in the narrative, if only to explain his obsession.

“Because talent won’t be quiet, doesn’t know how to be quiet,” he said. “Whether it’s a talent for safe-cracking, thought-reading, or dividing ten-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It never shuts up. It’ll wake you in the middle of your tiredest night, screaming, ‘Use me, use me, use me! I’m tired of just sitting here! Use me, fuckhead, use me!”

The Dark Tower itself didn’t disappoint. It was distressingly atmospheric, if that description makes sense. It felt so tangible that I found myself more than a little creeped out. And I have a new appreciation for roses after having read this series and witnessed their power in the story. It will be a long time before I can look at a rose without seeing it as potentially magic. Actually, I hope that never changes. Anything that causes you to see magic in reality is worth holding onto. But I digress. The Tower was beautifully disturbing, repellently compelling, and utterly mysterious. I better understand Roland’s drive after having laid eyes upon it.

“and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love’s ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.”

It still completely blows my mind that King got this entire world and series from spaghetti Westerns and a narrative poem written in 1855. I’ve read and reread Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” multiple times throughout my journey with this series, and I’m baffled by how King got this massive story from a poem that is 204 lines, or around 1,700 words, long. And I’m not sure I’ll ever look at Clint Eastwood or watch a Western the same way again. They will forever embody the Gunslinger who so grew on me over the course of his long, arduous journey.

“And will I tell you that these … lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.”

If you’ve been skipping ahead to avoid spoilers, you’re safe now. Here is where I wrap up my thoughts and bid goodbye (for now) to the Tower.

I can’t believe that I’ve finally reached the Dark Tower. It’s been a pretty incredible journey, and is certainly one that I’ll never forget. There are characters I grew to love along the way who I truly believe will always stay with me. This last installment in the series ran me through the gamut of emotions. I was amused, frightened, moved, enraged and devastated. I know the ending is highly controversial, and that many people despise it, but as I neared the final line I broke out in chills so strong they were painful. Was it a perfect ending? Of course not. But I do strongly believe that it was the right one. Ka is a wheel, after all, and so the story goes on. The Tower abides, and so will this story, forever, in my heart.

Long days and pleasant nights, friends.

You can purchase this book from: Blackwell’s  | Bookshop.org (Support independent bookstores!) |  Amazon US | Amazon UK | Audible | Libro.fm (Another way to support independent bookstores!) | Book Depository (Free shipping worldwide!)

View all my reviews

3 thoughts on “ Book Review: The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7) by Stephen King ”

I remember reading this series for the first time and being SO MAD at the ending. Until I slept on it. I woke up the next day realizing what a perfect ending it really is. I’ve read the whole series a number of times since then (I have a tattoo of the first line of the series). Your review makes me want to do another reread. 🙂

I can totally see why the ending infuriated you orginally. But I’m glad it grew on you. I thought it was so apt. And that’s such an excellent line. If I ever got a tattoo, I would want the line “Go then, there are other worlds than these.” I love it so much! And one from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. “The world was hers for the reading.” Those two would be neck-and-neck for my first tattoo choice.

I wanted that tattoo, too (“go then…”)! I also LOVE that line. It still makes me sob every time I read it. Heh. I chose the one I have because it seemed like fewer people had that one. I might still try to incorporate it into a larger tattoo some day. Maybe.

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Unlock the Secrets: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series Book Order

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” So begins The Gunslinger : the first installment of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower book order is pretty straightforward, but a mid-series prequel novel — not to mention the interquel published five years after the series officially ended — may muddy the waters a bit for newcomers. Not to worry, though, because we’ve got you covered here.

Stephen King’s fans, the Constant Readers, widely consider The Dark Tower to be his magnum opus. Although the eight Dark Tower books aren’t as famous as King’s more well-known works, the foundational myth that drives hero Roland Deschain — that of a mysterious Dark Tower containing all possible universes — acts as a lynchpin, turning the “standalone” novels in King’s catalog into a giant web.

So how should you approach The Dark Tower ? Surprisingly, the answer to that question doesn’t change based on how many King books you’ve already read. You don’t need to have read every Stephen King book to understand and appreciate The Dark Tower. Likewise, it’s not necessary to read The Dark Tower before King’s other works. As long as you read the Dark Tower books themselves in order, you’ll be golden.

Keep reading to learn more about The Dark Tower and get the definitive series order. Reader beware: minor spoilers lie ahead.

About The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Written in 1977, The Gunslinger finally landed in stores in 1982. King would publish six more books in the series over the next quarter-century, each of which brought the eponymous gunslinger, Roland Deschain, closer to his Tower. (An eighth book, the interquel The Wind Through the Keyhole , arrived in 2012.) 

The eight books in this series follow the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, on his quest to save the Dark Tower. Located in End-World, on the edge of Roland’s homeland, this massive structure contains all possible realities, stacked on top of each other. The gunslinger’s world is the only place from which the Tower may be reached, and, paradoxically, is also a level of the Tower in and of itself.

The Dark Tower is under attack from the Crimson King: a demonic entity that shares some history with Roland and the House of Deschain. As the Crimson King’s assault begins to crumble the Tower, the boundaries between worlds become thin. Not only does this allow monsters to escape from the abyss and cross into the physical realm, but it also causes space and time to break down in each affected universe. If he can destroy the Dark Tower completely, the Crimson King could potentially make himself into a god lording over the multiverse.

As the last in the line of Arthur Eld, a legendary king who fought for peace and eventually unified the land under a single banner, Roland may be the only man capable of saving the Dark Tower. At the start of the series, he has outlived almost everyone he’s ever known — with the exception of the Man in Black, Walter O’Dim. 

If he’s going to reach the Tower, though, Roland needs allies in the fight. As the series progresses, he pulls together his ka-tet — the people he’s fated to fight alongside — often crossing spacetime over and over again to reach them.

Keep reading to learn more about Roland’s adventures and the order in which you should read the Dark Tower books.

The Dark Tower Books In Order

The gunslinger.

Roland’s friends are all dead, but the Man in Black lives, and the gunslinger aims to take him down. Too bad he’s always one step behind the crafty old magician.

The first and shortest of the original Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger follows Roland on his adventures across the Mohaine Desert. Along the way, he meets Jake Chambers: a preteen boy who becomes the first member of his second ka-tet. 

Someone pushed Jake into traffic in New York City. He died in the street, only to wake up in Mid-World. Roland takes him under his wing, but pressures soon mount in the gunslinger’s pursuit of the Tower, forcing him to make a terrible choice.

The Drawing of the Three

Five years after he published The Gunslinger , King returned to Roland’s story in The Drawing of the Three . 

Here, Roland draws two new members of his ka-tet into Mid-World. Eddie Dean is a New Yorker with a major substance abuse problem, who has fallen on the wrong side of a drug lord’s good graces. Civil rights activist Odetta Holmes’ mild-mannered nature belies her other self — a violent persona who goes by the name of Detta Walker. They’ll become key players in Roland’s quest for the Tower, but they have some personal issues to work out first.

The Waste Lands

Roland is not having a good time for most of The Waste Lands . Jake’s absence has left the gunslinger with conflicting sets of memories. He now remembers the events of The Gunslinger in two ways: one in which Jake was present, the other in which he was never there at all. Meanwhile, in New York, Jake faces a similar problem, as he’s haunted by his journey across the Mohaine Desert with Roland — a journey that could not possibly have happened.

Wizard and Glass

Now accompanied by their new animal friend, a billy-bumbler named Oy, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Susannah — formerly known as Odetta and Detta — have survived their first trials as a united ka-tet. As they approach the strange Emerald City hovering over the Interstate, Roland shares his coming-of-age story with his new compatriots, explaining how he became a gunslinger and why he’s questing toward the Dark Tower. That story makes up the bulk of Wizard and Glass .

Optional: The Wind Through the Keyhole

The Wind Through the Keyhole was the eighth Dark Tower book to be published, but it takes place between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla . Here, the ka-tet are forced to take shelter from an oncoming storm. As they hunker down for the evening, Roland regales his friends with another story from his adolescence and introduces them to “The Wind Through the Keyhole”: a fairy tale from his childhood.

Optional: ‘Salem’s Lot

Let’s be clear: ‘Salem’s Lot is not technically a Dark Tower book. Stephen King’s second novel follows a handful of people who must take up arms when a vampire infestation strikes the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. Among them is Donald Callahan, the local Catholic priest, who will go on to play a major role in the last three Dark Tower novels.

Wolves of the Calla

Roland’s ka-tet make their way to the small town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, whose residents beg for their assistance in fighting off the eponymous Wolves. Every pregnancy in Calla Bryn Sturgis results in twins, and the Wolves ransack the town every 23 years to steal away one child from each pair. Although the children always return, they do not live for very long. It’s up to Roland and his band of gunslingers to put a stop to the attacks, once and for all, in Wolves of the Calla .

Song of Susannah

Song of Susannah sees the stakes of Roland’s quest rise to new heights. A demon has taken possession of Susannah’s body and escaped Mid-World. Accompanied by Father Callahan, Roland and his ka-tet follow her to a version of 1999 New York, where the Crimson King dispatches a heavy retinue of guards to stop them.

The Dark Tower

It ends here. The events of the previous books have all led up to this: The Dark Tower . Roland is closer to the Tower than ever before, but the Crimson King still awaits.

Final Thoughts

We’ve tried to keep this list as spoiler-free as possible so that you can experience The Dark Tower for yourself. Hopefully, it has whetted your appetite for King’s fantasy-western series.

Is the Dark Tower book series finished?

Yes, the Dark Tower book series is finished and Stephen King has repeatedly said so.

In what order should I read the Dark Tower books?

We recommend reading the books in the order listed above. Although the bulk of Wizard and Glass concerns Roland’s adventures as an adolescent, its framing story takes place after the events of The Waste Lands , so we do not recommend reading it before the other books.

The Wind Through the Keyhole , which takes place between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla , was published in 2012 — five years after The Dark Tower landed in stores. It can be read between the fourth and fifth books, or after you’ve finished reading the original series.

Finally, ‘Salem’s Lot is an optional book that provides background information on Father Callahan, who joins Roland’s ka-tet after the events of Wolves of the Calla .

How many books are connected to the Dark Tower series?

Constant Readers have discovered connections to The Dark Tower in 31 of Stephen King’s books. King’s 1992 film, Sleepwalkers , and his 2004 TV series, Kingdom Hospital , also contain references to The Dark Tower .

Are all of Stephen King’s books connected?

Not all Stephen King books contain references to The Dark Tower . The vast majority of his works connect to one another in small ways, however. The fictional cities of Derry and Castle Rock, both in Maine, appear frequently throughout King’s body of work. Constant Readers may also spot references to Carrie , Misery , Cujo , and other books peppered throughout King’s catalog.

Is Pennywise in The Dark Tower series?

No, Stephen King’s character  Pennywise does never appear in any of the Dark Tower books throughout the entire series. Pennywise is a character from Stephen King’s beloved novel It , and is not connected to the Dark Tower series, though alternative fan theories run rampant.

Is Pet Sematary connected to The Dark Tower?

No, Pet Sematary is not connected to The Dark Tower series. It’s a standalone book and Stephen King has made it clear in interviews that there is no connection between the two worlds.

Who is Stephen King?

Stephen King is the bestselling American author of many horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy books. His series and standalone books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide and many have been adapted into feature films, TV shows, and comic books. He has written over 60 novels and 200 short stories, many of which have been international bestsellers. 

King is known for his ability to create instantly compelling and truly frightening stories and complex characters, as well as his deep exploration of the human condition and complex psychology. He has won numerous awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the O. Henry Award. 

He’s one of our all-time favorite writers and we’re not alone in that opinion, King is beloved the world over. He continues to write and publish new works to this day from his home in New England and is considered one of the most influential authors of the horror and fantasy genres. Hence, the millions and millions of Stephen King fans.

We hope this article about the Dark Tower book order serves as a great into for you to dive into the amazing books of this maste, including Stephen King’s magnum opus and amazing story arcs across series and multiple genres. If you like fantasy and science fiction plus horror, these books will hit the right spot. Enjoy the Dark Tower saga!

Bonus: Here are 20 other fantasy books you will love if you’re a fan of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series

1. Good Omens (1990, Fantasy) by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 2. The Way of Kings (2010, Fantasy) by Brandon Sanderson 3. The Name of the Wind (2007, Fantasy) by Patrick Rothfuss  4. The Dispossessed (1974, Science Fiction) by Ursula K. Le Guin 5. Mistborn (2006, Fantasy) by Brandon Sanderson  6. The Eye of the World (1990, Fantasy) by Robert Jordan  7. The Blade Itself (2006, Fantasy) by Joe Abercrombie  8. The Hero of Ages (2008, Fantasy) by Brandon Sanderson  9. The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013, Fantasy) by Neil Gaiman  10. American Gods (2001, Fantasy) by Neil Gaiman  11. The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006, Fantasy) by Scott Lynch 12. Little, Big (1981, Fantasy) by John Crowley  13. A Game of Thrones (1996, Fantasy) by George R. R. Martin  14. The Wise Man’s Fear (2011, Fantasy) by Patrick Rothfuss  15. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever (1977, Fantasy) by Stephen R. Donaldson  16. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979, Science Fiction) by Douglas Adams

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Stephen King and Mike Flanagan Share Status Updates on ‘The Dark Tower’ TV Series: “I’m revving myself up!” [Exclusive]

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It’s already been one of the most exhilarating TIFF seasons in recent memory. This year’s festival has unveiled some of the finest horror films, including the much-anticipated The Substance (review forthcoming), the brilliantly savage Nightbitch , Dead Talents Society , and the spine-chilling Heretic .

Adding to the excitement, two of Dread Central’s favorites appeared in Toronto for the debut of their intriguingly heartwarming inter-dimensional apocalypse drama, The Life of Chuck . Legendary author Stephen King, who penned the 2020 novella the film adapts, and visionary director Mike Flanagan ( Midnight Mass ) walked the red carpet at its TIFF world premiere. That’s where we caught up with them about their poignant new movie and on the status of The Dark Tower , their next likely collaboration.

I pestered both men about the long-delayed series adaptation of The Dark Tower , a topic that I recently covered last month on the DREAD podcast Development Hell . Interestingly enough, King has been consistently posting about the epic book series online recently, leading us fans to speculate that there could be some sort of news on the horizon. King and Flanagan had some interesting—albeit coy—comments on the topic.

Check out what Stephen King and Mike Flanagan had to say about their upcoming series here:

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When I asked King, of all his adaptations still stuck in development hell that he’d want to see the most he had a quick answer. “ The Dark Tower ,” he told me with a smirk.

“I’m trying to rev myself up,” King insisted when asked if his recent Twitter posts on the topic are a possible tease of an upcoming announcement. Flanagan was also coy about the question.

“Who knows,” he told me with a similar grin. “I think with The Dark Tower, for anybody who is familiar with it, when you’re on the path of the beam it’s an incredibly long journey. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going forward with it. It just means it takes time.”

Given Mike Flanagan’s stellar adaptation of King’s Gerald’s Game , a novella once deemed impossible to translate to the screen, I also questioned the iconic author on what makes Flanagan uniquely adept at bringing his stories to life.

“He’s able to take the story flat and develop it in a way that doesn’t fix it,” King remarked on Flanagan’s approach. He further praised the director’s discipline, saying, “He’s able to respect the material in a way that keeps him from getting too cute with it. And he’s great at what he does; he’s a real craftsman, he’s really creative.”

King admires Flanagan partly because he appreciates his adept nac for storytelling and his meticulous attention to detail.

What Stephen King really thinks:

Well, it seems like we won’t be pulling much more information out of these two for the time being. But, I’ve gotta believe these responses are indicative of good news still yet to come. Ka is a wheel, I suppose…

Are you as excited about the idea of a Mike Flanagan-helmed TV adaptation of The Dark Tower as I am? Let me know on Twitter/X via @joshkorngut. I am always around to chat about anything Dark Tower !

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