Stephen King

The Dark Tower — (1982-2012) Publisher: Beginning with a short story appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1978, the publication of Stephen King's epic work of fantasy — what he considers to be a single long novel and his magnum opus — has spanned a quarter of a century. Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is King's most visionary feat of storytelling, a magical mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that may well be his crowning achievement. Filled with ominous landscapes and macabre menace, Stephen King's latest mass market novel features The Gunslinger, a haunting figure in combat with The Man in Black in an epic battle of good versus evil. A spellbinding tale that is both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike.

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Available for download at Audible.com. 

The Gunslinger: Not for me.

I’m not a Stephen King fan. I don’t like horror. Really, I can't stand it. When I was a freshman in college, some friends of mine refused to believe that I couldn't watch a horror movie. They somehow coerced me into going to the theatre to see — I'm dating myself here — Witchboard. They tried to keep me in my seat, but eventually I ended up alone and shaking in the lobby and I think I had nightmares for weeks.

The only book of Stephen King's that I ever read and liked was a book (audiobook) on the art of writing which included a lot of very humorous memoirs (see below). It was so good that I decided to try his dark fantasy series The Dark Tower (on audiobook)... Nope, not for me. I couldn’t even get through the first one. Too dark, too... freaky. The writing was excellent, but I couldn’t get into the characters or the setting. I just can't like a hero who lugs a machine gun for miles and miles across a desert wasteland and then, with the superior strength of his trigger finger, single-digitly wipes out an entire town of people who are already dead. He doesn't even have to aim. That's just not sexy.

But, if you like that kind of stuff, go for it. I have a feeling that there's a lot of literary merit here, I just can't appreciate it. —Kat Hooper

The Drawing of the Three: A Posse of New Yorkers

There is a lot to be said in praise of Stephen King, but one of his most admirable talents is his ability to vest his heroes with such unlikely and frustrating vulnerabilities. King certainly wastes no time castrating the recently victorious Roland Deschain in The Drawing of the Three, the second of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower novels.

We barely have time to blink at the mountains and the ocean before we find Roland, the last gunslinger in Mid-World, under attack from “lobstrosities.” Though he survives, Roland loses an index and middle finger to these sea monsters, a significant loss for our pistol-bearing hero. The wounds fester as Roland doggedly continues his journey, and he eventually finds three doors that carry him to New York.

On the other side of these three doors, Roland finds himself transported from the post-apocalyptic western setting of The Gunslinger into three different 20th century versions of New York. Heroin addict Eddie is smuggling cocaine, paraplegic civil rights activist Odetta Holmes is unaware of her violent alter ego Detta Walker, and Jack Mort kills random strangers. It’s a villainous and compromised world that we have entered. And yet from this world, Roland will draw three companions to help him reach the Dark Tower.

Sequels are difficult to pull off and The Drawing of the Three is a potentially polarizing extension of Roland’s story. Fans of The Gunslinger may find themselves at a loss to explain how King managed to turn his back on the radioactive Mid-World across which Roland followed the Man in Black. There are no wizards, no flashbacks to Roland’s childhood home of Gilead, and no lone wolf tale. Instead, King trades in the lonesome wanderer motif in order to recruit a posse of New Yorkers.

If The Gunslinger is an unusual novel within King’s body of work, The Drawing of the Three brings Roland’s tale into sync with the rest of King’s bizarre universe. After all, addiction, self-doubt, and petty murderers run rampant throughout King’s fiction. The Drawing of the Three ties Roland’s quest to Stephen King’s oeuvre of murderers, telekinetic children, and alcoholic writers. It is a decision that changed the life of Roland and the career of his creator. —Ryan Skardal

The Waste Lands: What Kind of Knights Are These?

The Gunslinger introduces us to Roland Deschain, the last cowboy-knight of a world that has moved on. In The Drawing of the Three, King gives Roland partners. The Waste Lands, the third novel of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower novels, focuses on fleshing out the details of Roland’s quest.

But not too many details.

It turns out that a Crimson King is doing everything in his power to destroy the universe from atop the Dark Tower. After centuries of searching, Roland has begun to make real progress in his quest to find the Dark Tower because he and his heroes have come across one of the beams that control the world. Like most of King’s creations, it reads better in the book than in summary.

King forces a healthy dose of the bizarre upon his heroes, including a scene where Susannah has sex with a demon to distract him from stopping Roland. Her sacrifice is important because Roland is using a jawbone and a whittled key to enter another universe in order to rescue Jake Chambers. Some readers may be turned off by these moments, but they are probably already not Stephen King fans.

A more significant complaint may be that The Waste Lands does not showcase King’s talent with villains. Roland and his gang face off against a deranged train obsessed with riddles and a tick-tock man behind a curtain. If these sound like rather obvious allusions, they’re meant to be. Still, a good villain often serves as an anchor for the plot, and The Waste Lands could use a stronger antagonist to help define its place in the road to The Dark Tower.

For the time being, readers will have to make do with the villainous shades of our heroes, particularly relentless Roland. What kind of knights are these?

Ultimately, The Waste Lands is as essential for Stephen King fans as any of the other novels associated with The Dark Tower. However, its crafting is comparatively loose, leaving it one of the weaker novels in this series. —Ryan Skardal

The Wizard and the Glass

The Wizard and the Glass, the fourth of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower novels, returns to the Mid-World of Roland’s youth. Having recently bested his teacher in combat, Roland is now a gunslinger, one of the cowboy-knights of Gilead. However, Roland is young, and his father sends him away from his court — and away from the villainous sorcerer Marten Broadcloak. With his two companions — clever Cuthbert and the steady, cerebral Alain — by his side, what’s the worst that can happen?

Unfortunately, there are no safe places for Roland in Mid-World. “Good Man” John Farson’s rebellion against Gilead has reached the distant Barony of Mejis. Worse, Marten Broadcloak has charged The Big Coffin Hunters, exiled gunslingers that failed their final test, to hunt down and kill Roland and his friends. Roland’s in danger, but that doesn’t stop him from falling in love with Susan Delgado, a ranger’s daughter promised to Mejis’ aging mayor. It’s a volatile mix and a plot that could fall apart, but King’s instincts pull everything together.

Always allusive, King invites his readers to link Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower with Frodo’s attempt to destroy the One Ring. In The Wizard and the Glass, King invites both the reader and Roland’s new “ka-tet” to question whether Roland will reach the Dark Tower with his soul intact. Or has he already been consumed by his quest? What does it mean that Roland, who is surrounded by villains, consistently commits the most villainous deeds of all?

The Wizard and the Glass stands out among King’s Dark Tower novels for its tight plot, its western setting, and its fantastic villains. —Ryan Skardal

Wolves of the Calla

In Wolves of the Calla, the fifth novel in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, Roland and his posse defend a village from monsters. King borrows the great ideas of a variety of favorite stories, yet his final product is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Calla is a farming village preyed upon by the Wolves of the Thunderclap. The Wolves come once per generation, take children, and return them “roont,” mentally handicapped and destined to grow gigantic before dying young. Should the village continue to live with this curse, or should they stand and fight? Enter Roland and his band of gunslingers, the last of Mid-World’s heroes.

King’s focus is divided between the primary Calla storyline and advancing the overall quest to reach the Dark Tower. It turns out that there’s a rose in 1977 New York that needs to be saved, and we quickly learn that Susannah is pregnant with a demon child. As if the Crimson King destroying the universe wasn’t enough of a challenge! How can Roland keep up?

King steps in to rescue his heroes. The Dark Tower novels form a hub around which Stephen King’s universe revolves. We have already seen a few glimpses of King’s infamous villain, Randall Flagg. Here, Father Callaghan, last seen in King’s vampire novel Salem’s Lot, shows up. Thank goodness, Callaghan has a magic ball that might just be enough to help our gunslingers save the day.

If King has been restrained in his homage up to this point in the series, he really lets loose in Wolves of the Calla. In addition to drawing upon his own novels, King borrows liberally from Marvel’s comics, Asimov’s robots, Star Wars’ light sabers, and J.K. Rowling’s snitches (which are explosive). However, these are all minor allusions compared to the plot itself. Wolves of the Calla is based on the classic western film, The Magnificent Seven, which was in turn based on Kurosawa’s film, Seven Samurai. Both films feature a slow burning plot that ends with a climactic showdown. The same holds true for Wolves the Calla, and readers will have to deliberate whether the final fight warranted so many turned pages.

Although Wolves of the Calla is a mid-range story from Mid-World, few readers will turn their back on Roland’s quest to reach The Dark Tower at this point. —Ryan Skardal

Song of Susannah

In his famous series, The Dark Tower, Stephen King has so far divided his time between assembling a posse of unlikely gunslingers and paying homage to his literary heroes like Tolkien and Sergio Leone. In Song of Susannah, King shifts gears and instead begins to wrap up Roland’s quest to find the Dark Tower.

Susannah is pregnant. Her child’s, or “chap’s,” father is at once Roland and a demon. Both the Crimson King and the Man in Black have made plans — and deals — regarding the possession of the chap after it’s born. Unfortunately, Susannah is largely unaware of these arrangements because Mia, a new personality, has taken over their mind. Mia takes both Susannah’s body and their chap to another dimension, away from Roland and the gunslingers.

The ka-tet try to pursue Mia, but the magic of Mid-World exerts a will of its own. Jake, Father Callaghan, and Oy are sent after Mia, who is guarded by the Crimson King’s “low men.” Meanwhile, heavy hitters Roland and Eddie are sent to Maine. The year is 1977 and author Stephen King, who is thinking about writing a novel about a gunslinger, is in trouble. However, first Roland and Eddie will have to face off against Eddie’s old foes, the drug dealer Enrico Balazar and his henchmen.

Song of Susannah is arguably the weakest of King’s Dark Tower novels. If The Waste Lands expanded Roland’s quest to nigh-impossible-to-overcome levels, King does his best in Song of Susannah to show that even the most daunting of problems can be overcome with the help of incredible providence, authorial intervention, and uncanny gunslinger instincts. It’s a strategy that dominates King’s later work, and one that some readers will feel betrays the originality of earlier novels like The Gunslinger and The Wizard and the Glass.

However, as with Wolves of the Calla, even the strongest critics should take note that few readers will turn their back on the Dark Tower. It draws both the energy and the readers of the universe toward it. What will Roland find there? —Ryan Skardal

The Dark Tower: Does the Destination Justify the Journey?

Stephen King’s concluding volume of The Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower, is nothing if not surprising. Since its release, fans have squabbled over whether King hits a homerun or hits the ditch in the final volume of what has been described as his masterwork.

Without giving away the ending, I think the resolution of The Dark Tower is fantastic.

When The Dark Tower opens, Roland and his posse of gunslingers have divided their forces. Susannah/ Mia is about to give birth to a chap, an entity somehow fathered by both Roland and The Crimson King. Randall Flagg is lurking in the shadows and character/ author Stephen King is about to be run down by a van. Both a rose and the Dark Tower itself need to be saved, not to mention the universe. It’s a pretty exciting set up for a concluding novel — one that King wastes no time resolving.

Instead, the majority of The Dark Tower surprisingly leaves most of these old concerns behind to focus on a new stage in Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower. After six books, Roland is at last about to reach the Dark Tower. Ruthless and relentless, Roland has vowed to reach the tower for the friends and lovers that he has lost, sacrificed, and murdered. Nothing will stop him: not vampires, not gigantic worms that chase him through mountain tunnels, and certainly not a humanoid spider. If any of his friends die, will Roland stop to mourn for them? Probably not.

Like us, Roland is intent on reaching the Dark Tower.

However, what will it mean to finish this quest? What makes The Dark Tower novels impressive is the romance that King has lent to Roland’s quest. Only the broadest details of what the Dark Tower is have been given. Instead, King has built his Dark Tower almost entirely out of allusions and recollections. Readers, like Roland, simply trust that the destination will justify the journey. —Ryan Skardal