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Title | The Little Sisters of Eluria
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Tor - 1998
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First Printing | Tor - 1998
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Title | The Gunslinger
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Author | Stephen King
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Illustrated by | Michael Whelan
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Publisher | Signet - 2003
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First Printing | 1982
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Title | The Drawing of the Three
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Signet - 2003
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First Printing | 1987
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Title | The Waste Lands
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Don Brautigan
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Publisher | Plume - 1991
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First Printing | 1991
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Title | Wizard and Glass
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Dave McKean
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Publisher | Signet - 1998
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First Printing | 1997
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Title | Wolves of the Calla
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Cliff Nielsen
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Publisher | Pocket Books - 2006
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First Printing | Donald M. Grant Publishers - 2003
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Title | Song of Susannah
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Darrel Anderson
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Publisher | Pocket Books - 2005
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First Printing | Donald M. Grant Publishers - 2004
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Title | The Dark Tower
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Michael Whelan
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Publisher | Pocket Books - 20065
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First Printing | Donald M. Grant Publishers - 2004
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Title | The Wind Through the Keyhole
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | Rex Bonomelli
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Publisher | Scribner - 2012
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First Printing | Scribner - 2012
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Title | Hearts in Atlantis ("Low Men in Yellow Coats")
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Author | Stephen King
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scribner - 1999
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First Printing | Scribner - 1999
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Category | Fantasy
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | The Gunslinger (Roland Deschain of Gilead), the Man in Black, Eddie Dean, Susannah, Jake, Oy, Susan, Cuthbert, Alain, The Crimson King
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Main Elements | Wizards, Robots, SF, Fantasy, Horror, and a little of everything else
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Website | stephenking.com
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 The Little Sisters of Eluria
Stephen King tells a tale of Roland, the Gunslinger, in the world of The Dark Tower, in "Little Sisters of Eluria".
The Gunslinger
This heroic fantasy is set in the world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations - the gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of a lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier Western legend.
The gunslinger's quest involves the pursuit of the man in black, a liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, and a friendship with the boy from New York called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger is stunning proof of Stephen King's storytelling sorcery.
The Drawing of the Three
While pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland is drawn through a mysterious door that brings him into contemporary America.
Here he links forces with defiant young Eddie Dean and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes in a savage struggles against underworld evil and otherwordly enemies.
Once again Stephen King has masterfully interwoven dark, evocative fantasy, and icy realism.
The Waste Lands
With The Waste Lands, the third masterful novel in Stephen King's epic saga The Dark Tower, we again enter the realm of the mightiest imagination of our time. King's hero, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares - as he crosses a desert of damnation in a macabre world that is a twisted mirror image of our own. With him are those he has drawn to this world, street-smart Eddie Dean and courageous wheelchair-bound Susannah. Ahead of him are mindrending revelations about who he is and what is driving him. Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of fiendish foes both more and less than human. And as the pace of action and adventure, discovery and danger pulse-poundingly quickens, the reader is inescapably drawn into a breathtaking drama that is both hauntingly dreamlie...and eerily familiar. The Waste Lands is a triumph of storytelling sorcery - and further testament to Stephen King's novelistic mastery.
Wizard and Glass
Roland, The Last Gunslinger, and his band of followers have narrowly escaped one world and slipped into the next - there Roland tells them a tale of long-ago love and adventure involving a beautiful and quixotic woman named Susan Delgado. And there they will be drawn into an ancient mystery of spellbinding magic and supreme menace...
Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with shocking plot twists, stunning visual imagery, and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you've ever read. Here is Stephen King at his most visionary, a magical mix of fantasy and horror that may be his crowning achievement.
Wolves of the Calla
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World on their quest for the Dark Tower. Their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis. But beyond the tranquil farm town, the ground rises to the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is stealing the town's soul. The wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to. Their guns, however, will not be enough...
Song of Susannah
Susannah Dean is possessed, her body a living vessel for the demon-mother Mia. Something is growing inside Susannah's belly, something terrible, and soon she will give birth to Mia's "chap". But three unlikely allies are following then from New York City to the border of End World, hoping to prevent the unthinkable. Meanwhile, Eddie and Roland have tumbled into the state of Maine - where the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot is about to meet his destiny...
The Dark Tower
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own endings and beginnings...and into a maelstrom of emotion, violence, and discovery.
The Wind Through the Keyhole
In The Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King returns to the rich landscape of Mid-World, the spectacular territory of the Dark Tower fantasy saga that stands as his most beguiling achievement.
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet - Jake, Susannah, Eddie and Oy, the billy-bumbler - encounter a ferocious storm just after crossin the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two...and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.
In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother's death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a "skin-man" preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast's most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day's trials by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother often read to him at bedtime. "A person's never too old for stories," Roland says to Bill. "Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them." And indeed, the tale that Roland unfolds, the legend of Tim Stoutheart, is a timeless treasure for all ages, a story that lives for us.
King began the Dark Tower series in 1974; it gained momentum in the 1980's; and he brought it to a thrilling conclusion when the last three novels were published in 2003 and 2004. The Wind Through the Keyhole is sure to fascinate avid fans of the Dark Tower epic. But this novel also stands on its own for all readers, an enchanting and haunting journey to Roland's world and testimony to the power of Stephen King's storytelling magic.
Hearts in Atlantis
Five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.
Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war -- and the protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts in Atlantis, King's newest fiction, is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.
In Part One, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.
In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.
In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow -- and as haunted -- as their own lives.
And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," this remarkable book's denouement, Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.
Full of danger, full of suspense, most of all full of heart, Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.
I actually read this a year ago and waited to write up the review until I had read more of the series, which ended up not happening (wanted to do it before the movie came out, but the movie got such mixed reviews I decided I wasn't in a rush after all). I did read three other related novels (The Stand, Salems' Lot, The Eye of the Dragon) since nearly all of King's books have some aspect of The Dark Tower in them, but I focused on the three key ones as I didn't want to read the really horror stuff like It which only has a passing reference.
Now to be honest, not sure what the big deal about The Gunslinger was (though I was equally befuddled by the acclaim The Stand gets so maybe King's writing just doesn't resonate with me). In the first Dark Tower installment there is this guy, the gunslinger, who is wandering through the desert. He's following a man in black who manages to stay a few days ahead of him all the way. And that's pretty much it. Sure, the gunslinger runs into a guy who has a raven that quotes "Beans, beans the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot" which made me all happy because my Dad quotes that one too, so that was pretty awesome. Then there's a village that goes all zombie (and I'm no zombie fan). Then there's the kid that...well it's a spoiler but also a bit of a letdown. Finally, in the very end of the book, as the gunslinger finally catches up with the man in black, there is a glimpse that maybe there is something more interesting in store if I keep reading. It was basically the world's longest introduction.
But as an introduction I found it lacking. I got to learn a little bit about Roland and why he's hunting the man in black, but I have absolutely no idea about the world building. Is it our world in the future? An alternate Earth? Not Earth at all? I read the revised and expanded version of the book, but apparently King took out many of the hints as to what world this actually is, in the original version apparently it's more clear that this is some version of Earth after all (which I guess it must be since we run into some Earth junk towards the end and people go around singing "Hey Jude"). Anyway, I was not impressed that in an entire 300 page book I couldn't figure out where I was. Like I said, a giant introduction but without you know, introducing the setting.
It says something when my two favorite moments is the quote from a raven, and a brief glimpse of a bird-headed man in the distance (hope we run into him again!).
This was clearly not a series to spend money on buying new but I scrounged around and found most of them used so I will eventually get around to reading the rest of this, but it's not like I'll forget what I read in this one while I wait since, well, nothing happened really. Just need to revist the last 50 pages or so when I decide to jump back in.
On the other hand, The Eye of the Dragon is an amazing introduction to the man in black and I can see how it would tie into another series given how it ends. The Stand as well, if you skip the first 600-700 pages or so (which you could probably do and have little trouble figuring out what's going on). And Salems's Lot leaves us with an unresolved thread involving the priest who should show up eventually in the Dark Tower too.
April 2020
Several years have now passed, I finally scrounged up all the books in used bookstores, the challenge was kind of fun and was also interesting to see how many different editions I could collect in the process. At least it wasn't as many years as King wrote in the fourth book, sixteen hours passed between Roland becoming a gunslinger and when his father found him in the whorehouse the next morning, but twenty-six years passed for the author (and here I thought George R.R. Martin takes a long time writing his books!). I decide to read the first book again, since I felt it had a lot of hints and teasers for what would come next (not so much as they would get re-iterated as needed but the first book is by far the shortest, even when it's the extended edition). I then in short order followed up with the other three, as well as reading the original poem!
King has the ability to come up with a weird, weird world. There are strange elements of science fiction (a bear with a satelite dish on it's head), and references to our world (the bear was called Sharduk, which is a book by the author of Watership Down, Richard Adams, which I now must read), and horror (the bear was sick with madness and worms were coming out of all its orifices). And yet the world and the characters in it are compelling, and the reader cares about them and also wants to know what his happening to this world that has moved on, why is time not longer stable, how does this world touch and interact with all the others, including ours...multiple versions of ours. And what is the Dark Tower. I could write a long review for every book in so far because each one has something strange or interesting to discuss. The second book has the doors and lobstrosities, the third has the riddles and an evil train, the fourth a 600-page flashback as to how everything began. I was never interesting cowboys but King made them cool. Now, by the fourth book, King had already written a lot of his other books and it was starting to show. It was long...very, very long. I struggled a bit to get through it. Unlike The Stand, it actually had fairly consistent action and advancement (it wasn't just a bunch of people wandering aimless for three quarters of the books, stuff happend, mysteries unfolded, characters were defined) but one felt that still somehow one could cut one third of the book and lose nothing except the feeling of needing to force oneself to keep reading.
And talking of ka, or destiny/fate, is it weird that here I am, reading the entire Wizard of Oz series, almost done book 12, and the characters find themselves in the Emerald City in the world of The Stand? Off to see the wizard indeed! Though this one is no humbug. And this is where I realized that not only is King scaring me with his horror, he's able to sneak in things that make me laugh, like the Oz newspaper "blah blah blah yak yak yak (see related story page 6)", or Oy with his little red booties. It was also a bit shocking to land back in the world of The Stand, empty and desolate, as we ourselves are isolating and hiding in our homes from the coronavirus pandemic.
And Oy...my favorite character by far. And where else are you going to find a fantasy epic where one of the characters needs to travel across a dangerous world...in a wheelchair?
Think I'll take a month or so break now, the books only get longer after all so I'll need to build up some energy to get through them.
September 2020
Now that I'm finished I can say this, while I was not impressed by the start, I was drawn into this world, it became real, it was bizarre, and wonderful, and unpredictable, and while I was decently sure at least someone would make it to the Tower, I had absolutely no idea what they would find there. And I really, really didn't want it to end. And that was the great pleasure of this book, the moment you didn't think the book could get any stranger, or that King couldn't surprise you again, he'd toss in some reference (*cough* sneetches *cough*) or storyline twist and turn everything upside down. There were times I could laugh, some where I would cry. It is a series that cannot be categorized. There are robots so it's SF. There is magic so it's Fantasy. There's alternate history and a multi-verse. It's a Western, or it's Arthurian (knights and gunslingers are kind of the same thing only the latter wear jeans). And of course there is Horror. And there is the idea of what if we are all just characters in a book, or maybe our world is not the real world, just a strange, slightly off version triggered by probability but there is only one true world from which all the other branch off of. And villains are defeated in ways you don't expect. Sure there are moments of deus ex machina which is usually a big no-no...except when it is literally and explicitly deus ex machina which is an entirely different and wonderful thing. And I love the language/dialect that grew as the story progressed, it too felt very real and I found myself thinking I should start using some of the greetings myself they flowed so naturally.
Honestly, I can't talk too much about it other because each little "cool" bit I'm feeling the urge to point out would be a spoiler. But see, I went out and bought the books used, didn't care if they were beaten up or didn't match editions (I've got paperbacks, trade paperbacks, harcovers, and at least 4 different sets of cover styles) because I figured I would probably get rid of them afterwards...but instead, I'm hanging on to them as this series deserves a re-read, especially knowing where some things go a second read would be completely different than the first. And I now think my seriously mismatched set is kind of cool, kind of how the series itself is a patchwork of all kinds of ideas that normally wouldn't work together.
Some may not like the ending...in fact there were two. I actually thought the first was pretty good in it's own open-ended way, but since it was written, I read the second one King felt readers would want...well sort of, he in fact he felt they wouldn't want it, but it was the "right" ending...and given how the rest of the series worked, I have to agree it was definitely the right ending, depressing though it was (no, it's not all doom and gloom but still...is it possible for an author to torture his characters more?). In fact now that I've read it I can't imagine it being any other way.
BTW, the "children's tale" in Keyhole? I think that explained how Roland turned out, if that's the kind of thing his mother told him before bed, tales of swamp men with postules that burst with spiders and then men eat the puss that comes out...yeah...good thing Roland doesn't have an imagination, it might have been killed off by stories like that because what came to my imagination wasn't something I wanted to go to sleep to.
That said, I know there are a lot of question as to the order in which to read the books and which other King books are absolutely required reading. Since I myself didn't want to read every single book King wrote (I'm not that into horror after all, and they tend to lean towards doorstopper size) here is what someone having read the series, and thus knows what actually gets referenced directly:
- 'Salem's Lot - 100% required reading you CANNOT skip this one
- The Stand - could skip it but there are a few chapters better appreciated for having read it, can grab the abridged version if you can find it, King would be disappointed but this book is LONG, and that's coming from someone who read the abridged version
- The Low Men in Yellow Suits - part of Hearts of Atlantis...I found out the hard way, running into a character that clearly had more background to be found in this story, it's not critical, the character isn't major, but I just felt I had to fill that in, at 200 or so pages, why not, I put that last quarter of the last book to squeeze it in. I'll finish Hearts of Atlantis later probably, seeing as I started it, but only the one story matters.
- Insomnia - I had 200 pages of the last book to go and 5 people in line at the library to borrow the 600+ page tome, but there is a character in the last book from Insomnia, and Insomnia is supposed to have more about the Crimson King so I might still follow up on it someday.
Of course virtually EVERY book has some connection. For example IT is a creature from the Dark Tower world...but other than that, nothing more. The Eyes of the Dragon has a wizard who is almost certainly The Man in Black, and apparently characters from Dragon are mentioned in the series but I totally missed it, plus it was a mention, they didn't actually show up. So while I enjoyed Dragon, it's certainly not required reading.
And finally, the big questions...to read Little Sisters of Eluria and The Wind Through the Keyhole based on chronology or publishing order? I can tell you it is safe to read Sisters any time after the first book (though it takes place before, you probably want to be familiar with Roland first). As for Keyhole, though it takes place before Wolves of the Calla I would read it just after because there is one big spoiler dropped which as a reader would annoy me knowing but the characters blithely going on not being aware of it.
So thankee-sai, long days and pleasant nights, Dad-a-chum, Ded-a-chek...
November 2020
Since it was a short story, I looked up "Low Men in Yellow Coats", after all it wasn't just vaguely mentioned but was referenced very clearly from the last book in the series, a character there referenced a character here. And I felt it was worth the read and I would recommend reading it before the final book just so you're not sitting there scratching your head wondering who "Bobby" is (not that it is important, but still). Now, once I started the book I figured I might as well finish it, even though I had to read it online through OpenLibrary (with Covid regular libraries were to be avoided). It took me a LONG time to get through the rest of the book, several months. It was mainly due to the second story, Hearts in Atlantis, because it was so darn long, and the characters so darn stupid (sorry, I can't sympathize someone who plays cards all day long instead of studying while in university and not only at risk at being expelled, but would get sent to Vietnam, like that wasn't deterred enough to put your big boy panties on and do what you're supposed to do). The other stories got better (and shorter) about what happened to other characters we encountered along the way, with the last one tying everything right back to the first (so if you really want all the Dark Tower bits, you need to make it to the very end).
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