On My Way To The Dark Tower
I am on my way to The Dark Tower. Wanna join the party? I might need some help. ... But, be warned: it might be a bloody rough ride.
The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
Adam Shah: This installment tells the story of Roland's search for a mysterious stranger who may be able to help Roland find the Dark Tower. It is long on atmosphere and short on action. Therefore, fans of Steven King's horror works will find this book a distinct change of pace. However, the book will not disappoint you if you try it, especially if you are a fan of fantasy series such as the Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, you will find in later books that elements of King's horror world also exist in Roland's world, and therefore, to have a full understanding of King's horror villains, you have to read this series.
The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, Book 2)
A Customer: Wow, fantastic. if you've read "The Gunslinger" and then gave up, then i encourage you to read this, the second volume. It is SO much better than the first! With "The Gunslinger" you could tell it was written while King was still in college because it was pretty rough around the edges and (forgive me for saying this about a SK story), a little boring. But "The Drawing Of The Three", in which Roland must pass through three doorways to 1980's America, is riveting, fast-paced,emotional, and yes, humorous. Some parts where Roland is trying to get used to our world are very funny (the "tooter-fish popkin" incident springs to mind). The 450 pages just fly past, but it gives some indication of the epic saga that King is creating, since even at the end of Volume II, we are still near the start of the journey.
The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)
Patrick Shepherd: There is a nice variant on the old time-travel paradox. In The Gunslinger, the boy Jake is sacrificed to Roland's determination to catch the 'man in black'. In this story, we find Jake alive and well and still living in (our) New York, due to an action by Roland in The Drawing of the Three that caused the previous history to never occur. But both Roland and Jake have memories of the 'other' past, and this duality is slowly driving both to the edge of insanity. The resolution of this problem requires that Jake be brought back to Roland's world, and how this is accomplished forms the major portion of one of the 'episodes'...
Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, Book 4)
Jana L. Perskie: I think this is Stephen King's best book ever, and certainly one of the best novels I have read in a long time. One of the high points, for me, is the way the author brings in characters and themes from his other books, pointing out to the reader that the figures of evil in all his work are the same throughout - no matter what their names. Whatever the storyline, the purpose of total destruction remains consistent. It may have taken the author a long time to get this book out, but it is sure worth it.
Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5)
Volume 5--this book--moves it, despite not getting Roland the Gunslinger much nearer the Dark Tower, taking another big backward glance, and continuing to mine an open pit of oater conceits. Roland's ka-tet--himself and three twentieth-century New Yorkers, all of them now fellow gunslingers--approach a ranching and farming community anticipating a recurrent pestilence. After 23 years, the Wolves are coming from the evil-darkened East to abduct one of every pair of prepubescent twins older than three. The children will be returned, but nearly witless and sterile, doomed to grow immensely and enormously painfully in their middle teens, serve (if not too stupid) as workhorses, and suddenly, painfully wither and die in their early thirties. An erstwhile priest in the community knows what Roland and company are, and he persuades a community to send a committee to ask for their help...
Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, Book 6)
King's epical Dark Tower hastens to a close, and its penultimate volume is one of the speediest. The gunslingers of Mid-World and other alternate Earths have defeated The Wolves of the Calla (2003) but lost one of their number. Susannah Dean, nee Odetta Holmes, lacking her lower legs after a minion of the Satan of Mid-World, the Crimson King, pushed her in front of a subway train, and whose personality is sometimes split between black bourgeoise Odetta and viciously paranoiac Detta Walker, has been taken over by the spirit Mia to be the body in which Mia will gestate a boy who will eventually kill head gunslinger Roland. The child is to be born in New York in 1999, which is where Susannah-Mia repairs through one of the doors between worlds...
The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
In King's memoir On Writing, he tells of an old woman who wrote him after reading the early books in the Dark Tower series. She was dying, she said, and didn't expect to see the end of Roland's quest. Could King tell her? Does he reach the Tower? Does he save it? Sadly, King said he did not know himself, that the story was creating itself as it went along. Wherever that woman is now (the clearing at the end of the path, perhaps?), let's hope she has a copy of The Dark Tower. Surely she would agree it's been worth the wait.
