‘Long days and pleasant nights…’
While I’ve been a Stephen King obsessive since I was a kid, I’ve always steered clear of the Dark Tower series. This is partly because I’m not really into fantasy, and partly because the epic and sprawling eight-book series is intimidatingly large. Well, now I’m at a point where I’ve read much of King’s early output, I can’t put it off any longer. Let’s dive in…
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982) – 8/10
Note: for this article, I read King’s 2003 revised edition which is widely regarded as the definitive version.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed”
As an opening line, it’s pretty flawless. It also captures the essence of the novel. The gunslinger, despite his moral complexities, represents good, while the man in black, as one would imagine, symbolises the forces of evil. The simplicity of this premise (it’s one of King’s shortest novels) lies at the heart of The Gunslinger’s success. There is no flab here. Nothing wasted. King doesn’t even spend much time on world-building. We are given an idea of where and when the action takes place and just enough backstory for the titular protagonist to help us invest in the character.
As the debut novel in a long-running fantasy franchise, The Gunslinger is pretty much perfect—an excellent starting point.
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) – 7/10
While The Gunslinger – the first book in the franchise – teases the existence of our version of Earth, The Drawing of the Three throws Roland into our world through a magic doorway within the opening chapters (albeit missing a few fingers and through the eyes of a new character – Eddie Dean). The first half of the novel, in which we are presented with Roland trying to recover from his ordeal with The Man in Black whilst also avoiding the lobstrosities (terrifying and deadly lobster-like creatures), whilst also navigating Eddie’s heroin addiction and attempted drug smuggling, sees King really firing on all cylinders. The second half of the book, however, and the introduction of Odetta Holmes and her dark half Detta Walker stumbles. I know the latter is deliberately written as a caricature, but I found her character to be so offensive, so detestable, that it actually coloured my enjoyment of the novel as a whole.
I’ve heard that The Drawing of the Three only really begins to make sense when considered in the context of the series as a whole, and while that may be true, I found it to be half a great novel that loses momentum somewhat in the final act.
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) – 9/10
Now we’re talking. Once Jake returns to Mid-World there is no more table setting required. We have our Ka-tet. Roland, Jake, Susannah and Eddie are in place. Now, things are really moving. While I enjoyed the first two entries in the series, The Waste Lands takes things up a notch. We have an incredible set piece involving an insane mechanical bear. We have a cruel and vindictive high-speed train that believes itself to be a god. And most pertinently of all we have Roland showing what it actually means to be a gunslinger.
I loved The Waste Lands. This is the moment in the saga of the Gunslinger in which everything finally clicked into place for me. I was hooked from start to finish. It’s rare as an adult to feel utterly lost in a different world, transported to a time and place so far removed from our own. This book allowed me that luxury. Some of King’s finest ever work.
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) – 8/10
Of the first four novels in The Dark Tower saga, Wizard and Glass is the moment in which King really leans into fantasy. Much of the 800+ page novel takes the form of a flashback in which we learn the truth about why Roland is the way he is. I can imagine this tale of doomed romance tested much of King’s readership, but for me, the love story between Roland and Susan Delgado is one of the most compelling that King has ever put to page. That being said… it is long. And while the characters of Cuthbert and Alain are impossible not to love, and the old witch Rhea of the Cöös makes for a fine villain, I just didn’t care enough about the town of Hambry and its inhabitants to justify spending the majority of the book there. It is also frustrating that after such a lengthy flashback, the final showdown with *huge spoiler coming up* Randall Flagg feels a little rushed.
Wizard and Glass is a true mixed bag. There are moments of majesty and moments of mundanity, but in the end, all things serve the beam anyway, so best to just go with it.
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla – 8/10 (2003)
After suffering a near-fatal car accident in 1999, King endeavoured to finish the Dark Tower series while he could still do so on his own terms. In an incredible act of compulsion, King feverishly wrote the final three books in the series one after each other with the intention of releasing them all together. While the publisher (wisely) nixed this idea, it is clear from reading Wolves of the Calla that this is King going full throttle.
The fifth entry in the Dark Tower franchise goes full side quest. Our Ka-Tet arrive in the village of Calla Bryn Sturgis, where they encounter an evil robot, some obstinate villagers and Father Callahan from Salem’s Lot (last seen wandering the earth as a cursed man having been forced to drink vampire’s blood). Despite having their own obligations to fulfil, Roland and his fellow gunslingers are persuaded to stay in the Calla and help the villagers fight against the titular wolves – an insidious group of masked lunatics that arrive every 27 years to kidnap many of the village children, only to return them having made them feeble and useless.
Wolves of the Calla is the most self-contained of the Dark Tower books – it could be read and enjoyed as a standalone story – and it also blows the series wide open in the final reveal in which Father Callahan is presented with… a copy of Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. What this means for the final showdown, I don’t yet know as I write this, but it’s an intriguing and seemingly risky development. Time will tell.
The Dark Tower VI: Songs of Susanna – 5/10 (2004)
Hmm…. Songs of Susanna. Oh dear. As I’m writing these reviews in real time (rather than finishing the series and writing all of them retrospectively, which would be more sensible, but also much harder work), I’ve no idea how this sixth entry into The Dark Tower series was initially received, but I… did not like this book. I’ve long found Susanna and her split personalities a little tiresome, so to centre that character was probably always going to be a problem for me, but that is far from the only issue here. The cliffhanger ending feels forced, cheap even, and the decision for King to insert himself into his own story, not just as an abstract concept, but as an actual character, is misguided at best, and a pretty insidious example of hubris at worst. Put simply, the moment in which Roland and Eddie meet the ‘real life’ Stephen King contains some of King’s most cringeworthy writing.
Songs of Susanna doesn’t have enough of Jake or Callahan, and it’s concerning that so close to the end, it feels like we’re going out with a whimper. I hope to God (or Ka) that the final book is an improvement on this one.
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower – 9/10 (2004)
I needn’t have worried. While the middle part of this final book in the Dark Tower saga sags a little in the middle (I could have done without spending so much time with Thunderclap and the Breakers), the beginning, in which we learn the fate of Pere Callahan and Mia, is sensational (the birth of Mordred is described in particularly gruesome detail), and the conclusion, controversial among Constant Readers by all accounts, I found to be genuinely perfect. I gasped when I realised the fate that awaited Roland at the top of the tower, and this is a rare example for me of an epic piece of writing in which the destination justifies the journey.
Elsewhere, the section devoted to Dandelo and his curious house on the outskirts of the Tower is excellent, and I loved the characterisation of the Crimson King (another aspect of the book that has proven to be controversial elsewhere) as a screeching, tragic lunatic.
It has taken me 13 months to read the seven books in the Dark Tower series, and in that time I have come to love Roland and his ka-tet. When I finished the spectacular coda of this final entry, I was left feeling bereft. Not just because of the nature of the ending itself (although that was part of it), but mostly because I knew my time in Mid-World was coming to an end. However if Ka really is a wheel then it won’t be long before I’m back in the world of the Dark Tower again.
Long days… and pleasant nights.
Bonus – The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) – 9/10
King returned to Mid-World in 2012 for The Wind Through the Keyhole. The book takes place between the events of Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, (although it is very much a standalone tale).
The novel begins with our Ka-tet finding shelter from a terrible storm (or starkblast to use Roland’s parlance) in an abandoned building in a desolate part of Mid-World. To pass the time, Roland amuses Jake, Susanna and Eddie with a tale from his past about the capture of a Skin-Man (shapeshifter) presided over by Roland and his childhood friend Jamie De Curry. The bulk of the novel, however, is taken up by the story-within-a-story, told by a young Roland to an even younger child, about a boy who goes on a quest to find Maerlyn – a powerful wizard. Freed from the entanglements of the wider Dark Tower universe, King is able to deliver a classic fairytale with magic and dragons and an enchanted forest, and all the other things that sound so plausible when the wind is howling and the fire is burning. It’s a wonderful tale, one of King’s best, and I would welcome any future diversions that take place in Mid-World, but are unencumbered by Roland and his neverending quest for the Tower, with open arms. When we return to young Roland and his Skin-Man, that story is also wrapped up in a way that is satisfying and true to the character, and in many ways, The Wind Through the Keyhole is probably the most outright enjoyable novel in the whole series. I adored it.