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 digressive to the main report. Very briefly, Roland Deschain ’ randomness global is one of charming, chivalry, demons, and lots of guns and doors. Roland is the final of the gunslingers, heirs of Arthur Eld, the number we ’ d know as King Arthur of Camelot. We meet Roland as he crosses an impossibly huge defect, trailing the valet in Black. All we know is that he seeks The Dark Tower, which readers come to learn is screen of a anchor of world itself. Something is wrong at the Tower, and its effects ripple through time, distance, and the multiple realities Roland finds himself traveling through .
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY He is finally joined by others on his quest : a boy named Jake Chambers from our world of 1977, Eddie Dean, a baffling and streetwise but deeply insecure heroin addict from 1986, and Odetta Holmes, a affluent african-american heiress and activist from 1964. Odetta contains a a lot 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 population should, of course, read them all in decree. however, here we look at how well they work as individual volumes, relative to their home in the overarching narrative .
here are Stephen King ’ s Dark Tower books, ranked .
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9. Song of Susannah (Book 6)
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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 potent magic trick, and with the assistant of a black orb known as Black Thirteen ( one of many motley magic balls crafted millennium before by the capital ace 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 indeed different from the early books that it sticks out like a huffy ovolo. This seems to have been King ’ s purpose, but it comes at a crucial point in the overall narrative when adjusting the stylus halts the story ’ randomness momentum. King structures the book in “ stanza ” which culminate in the most “ meta ” plot turn in the series when the writer himself shows up as a character. Roland and Eddie encounter the 1977 translation of Stephen King, a functioning alcoholic and syndicate serviceman with a newly-established career as a novelist. It ’ s a pivotal scene, expanding the metafictional nature of the series. It ’ second besides very confuse, adding a embroil origin narrative to the stallion mythology army for the liberation of rwanda excessively former to truly resonate. birdcall of Susannah is important for its concentrate on the story ’ second major female character, but upending the social organization so belated in the game is a narrative miscalculation. The report about catch cold properly before the long-awaited final examination entry, which is why Book 6 remains on the bottom of this number .
8. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Book 4.5)
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set after the flashback events recounted in Wizard and Glass, and before we catch up to the gunman in the first book of the series, The Wind Through the Keyhole recounts how Roland ’ s church 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 fib within a history, which follows a youthful 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 latitude to the perennial king villain, Randall Flagg, or The man in Black ) and an intelligent ashen “ tyger ” revealed to be the legendary ace Maerlyn, whom Tim finally frees. The Wind Through the Keyhole is an enjoyable tangent, but not necessity reading proportional to the Dark Tower serial as a unharmed. King might have benefited from either splitting this into two or three short-change stories or novellas. The Wind Through the Keyhole ultimately feels unnecessary, evening though it reveals a assemble of backstory about Roland ’ s beget. King could have found a way to get this into the main novels, and make it relevant in a manner this ledger is not .
7. The Dark Tower (Book 7)
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Split up throughout the duration of Book 6, Roland and his ka-tet reunite and discover the beginning of the decay in Roland ’ mho 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 world together. Roland ’ s evil bastardly son Mordred ( it ’ s a long report ) 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 inactive makes him a herculean enemy even from afar .
For many fans, The Dark Tower ’ s concluding volume feels somehow rushed, flush 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 celebrated stories through a near-infinite prism of alternate realities. Diehard fans will find something near to fan avail, with characters from several other King stories and novels in the final Dark Tower record. While Eddie, Susannah, and Jake are given satisfy endings, a surprising sum of history happens “ off-screen, ” recounted in a lot of gawky exposition. These side stories frequently come across as far more interest than the main narrative, and they raise a batch of questions. A character we met briefly in Song of Susannah becomes a major actor over several decades, but we only get to hear about it second-hand. King ’ south constant readers can barely blame him for wanting to see his fib through to the end vitamin a quickly as potential, but Book 7 truly could have been split into at least two volumes .
6. Wolves of the Calla (Book 5)
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The Dark Tower takes rate in a world which has always seemed like a dreamlike, funhouse-mirror effigy of ours. King doubles down on the meta expression of The Dark Tower in Wolves of the Calla. Roland and his ka-tet embark a classical western diagram as a town needs help defending themselves from what they describe as child-snatching werewolves in cloaks and hoods. The truth is much more complicate. The travelers encounter Father Callahan, the priest who failed to defeat the vampire Barlow in King ’ s second published fresh, ‘Salem’s Lot, and his long, winding fib drops him into the Dark Tower saga as far back as the beginning book. While the Constant Reader has been aware that the Dark Tower series takes set somewhere within King ’ s other stories, Wolves of the Calla gives its characters their foremost inkling of the larger structure of their report. The reserve provides a much more detailed spirit at the ordinary citizens in the far fling lands of Roland ’ s “ Mid-World. ” We see how the thousand, epic poem fib affects the people who are merely living out their lives, unaware ( and largely uninterested ) that they are part of something bigger. still, King opens the koran with dense descriptions of this new corner of his universe, rendering it inaccessible in a way his former novels were not .
5. The Waste Lands (Book 3)
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Throughout the first base two Dark Tower books, we don ’ thyroxine see a lot of Roland ’ s worldly concern beyond a desert and a dying town at its edge. The “ confront ” country of Mid-World is a mystery until The Waste Lands. Drawing heavy on themes and imagination from T.S. Eliot ’ s epic 1922 poem, The Wasteland, the third base book in the Dark Tower saga builds on what we learn about the gunman from the first two books while adding much more nuance to his personality. Eddie and Susannah both face their tests as gunslingers, and behave 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 base in a big-screen blockbuster : the ka-tet pulls Jake from the trap of a monster behave from a decay house, they conflict a bear the size of Godzilla, and must survive a delirious dash through a bizarre city called Lud, which feels like a post-apocalyptic New York. The Waste Lands finds King ’ s resource firing on all cylinders, conjuring a vibrant and detail universe which rivals some of his best work .
4. The Little Sisters of Eluria (Book 0.5)
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This excellent prequel novelette takes place some years before the first book, when a younger ( and slightly more affirmative ) Roland finds himself in a apparently abandoned township called Eluria. He finds a medallion on a dead body and is then attacked by slow mutants, creatures who are remnants of the nameless 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 gunman slowly realizes are actually vampires. One of the Sisters, a young womanhood named Jenna, tends to his wounds, and the two of them slowly spill in sexual love. Sister Jenna is one of the two bang-up loves of Roland ’ second animation, adding a newfangled dimension to the gunman ’ sulfur past. While The short Sisters of Eluria does not factor into the chief Dark Tower narrative, King gives us a valuable front at both the narrative universe and Roland right before things begin to truly fall apart. We ’ ve seen glimpses of Roland ’ s origin narrative, such as his early test of manhood in The Gunslinger, but this is a fledged Roland who is silent vulnerable and flush hopeful.
3. The Drawing of the Three (Book 2)
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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 moisture shells, a wet grease-gun, two missing fingers on his right hired hand, and a good fever. He picks a direction and walks up the beach, finally encountering three free-standing doors. They bear inscriptions : “ The Prisoner ” ( Eddie Dean ), “ The Lady of Shadows ” ( Odetta/Detta/Susannah ), and “ Death. ” Each door leads straightaway into the minds of the people Roland must draw from their universe into his own, whether they want to or not .
The Drawing of the Three is a noteworthy novel, unlike any early by King in that same era. The metaphysical territories the writer explores rank with the best of the writing style, as King uses Roland, Eddie, and Odetta/Detta/Susannah ’ s innerscapes to explore aspects of each adaptation of the earth he visits through the doors. King shows us the New York of three different fourth dimension periods through Roland ’ mho eyes. This skewered perspective allows King to provide comment on our society that is missing from the other books .
2. Wizard and Glass (Book 4)
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The cliffhanger at the end of Book 3 resolves with Eddie Dean ingeniously out-riddling Blaine the infectious mononucleosis. They then find themselves inside a version of King ’ s epic novel, The Stand. After flirting with the metafictional aspects of the history, King last makes it explicit : The Dark Tower is character of a exalted narrative universe. They have jumped dimensions, which compels Roland to tell a long floor about his past. Roland falls in love for the first time, and this leads to the actual begin 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 ’ randomness introduction, Wizard & Glass is the workplace of a world who understands the mature sexual love of a long marriage and middle old age. He had to rediscover the intense adolescent emotions that fuel Roland ’ s affair with Susan Delgado. This is King ’ randomness Romeo & Juliet, a tragic fib of two lovers whom fate will forever discriminate. This is besides the origin of Roland ’ south obsession with the Tower, a metaphor for addiction. Roland will end up sacrificing about everything for his quest, and while Susan does not die by his hand, King powerfully implies that Roland could have sacrificed her, adenine well. All these elements come together seamlessly in Wizard & Glass, making it one of King ’ randomness finest novels to date .
1. The Gunslinger (Book 1)
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“ The serviceman in black fled across the defect, and the gunman followed. ” King has never bettered the open to 1982 ’ s The Gunslinger, which introduces us to Roland of Gilead, son of Stephen, the end gunman in a world that has “ moved on. ” The phantasmagoric Western was nothing like King ’ s previous books. The by and by installments would be more experimental or more sophisticate, but the first one located its own unique shade. The Gunslinger presents a stripped, 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 township called Tull, the still-compelling flashbacks to his early test for his accelerator, he and Jake ’ s terrifying travel under the mountains on a handcart while surrounded by slow mutants. The cold and pitiless cause of death in this book gains back more of his world as the series goes on. here, the challenge for the reviewer is to sympathize with such an enigmatic, pitiless 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 .
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About The Author
Anthony Vieira
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Anthony Vieira is a TV/Movie news writer for Collider. A writer, editor and educator in Petaluma, CA, he has previously written for Screen Rant and The Film Stage. He is marry, has two kids, and his puppy is presently tearing up his yard .
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