Complete Dark Tower series by Stephen King: “It’s fun to play with a world where feelings of mysticism and wonder are taken for granted.”
Author photo by Shane Leonard
Find out all about Stephen King’s multiverse fantasy western series The Dark Tower.
The Man In Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed…
“I was interested in postulating a world where there is magic,” King says.
The Dark Tower series tells the story of Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, who is traveling southeast across Mid-World’s post-apocalyptic landscape, searching for the powerful but elusive magical edifice known as The Dark Tower. Located in the fey region of End-World, amid a sea of singing red roses, the Dark Tower is the nexus point of the time-space continuum. It is the heart of all worlds, but it is also under threat. Someone, or something, is using the evil technology of the Great Old Ones to destroy it.
“It’s fun to play with a world where feelings of mysticism and wonder are taken for granted,” author Stephen King told Castle Rock News in 1989. “I was interested in postulating a world where there is magic. One of the liberating things about fantasy is that you can create that kind of a world. If we talk about ghosts or demons or even flying saucers in our world, the skepticism comes built in. But if you create an entirely new, fictional world, readers or people who participate in the creation of that world say, ‘Fine. Let it exist according to its own laws.’ That’s wonderful.”
Inspired in equal parts by Robert Browning’s poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western classics, The Dark Tower series is an epic of Arthurian proportions. It is Stephen King’s magnum opus, and is the center of his amazing creative universe.
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Complete Dark Tower series by Stephen King
1 The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower #1 (1982)
2 The Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower #2 (1987)
3 The Waste Lands: The Dark Tower #3 (1991)
4 Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower #4 (1997)
INSERT: The Wind Through the Keyhole: The Dark Tower Interlude (2012)
5 Wolves of the Calla: The Dark Tower #5 (2003)
6 Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower #6 (2004)
7 The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower #7 (2004)
BONUS
The Dark Tower Concordance (2012)
Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of Dark Tower (2016)
Below, find more info about the series and the individual books.
About the author
Stephen King made his first professional short story sale in 1967 to Startling Mystery Stories. In the fall of 1971, he began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co., accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. King has since published more than 50 books and become one of the world’s most successful writers. In addition to The Dark Tower fantasy series, his acclaimed fiction also includes Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Misery and 11.22.63. Many of his books have been turned into celebrated films, including It, Stand by Me, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption.
King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to the American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts.
He lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.
Find Stephen King online
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The Dark Tower as part of Stephen King’s multiverse
Much of the fiction written (or co-written) by Stephen King take place in a multiverse created by the author. Among that fiction is his epic Dark Tower series—a multiverse saga that includes our world, and any of the many parallel earths that Stephen King writes about in his stories and novels.
With Dark Tower as the nexus point of the time/space continuum within the context of the novels, the Dark Tower books are the pillar of Stephen King’s creative multiverse. The Dark Tower—which includes eight novels, one short story, and a children’s book—contains themes from multiple genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western fiction.
Following a gunslinger—and his journey toward a tower (which is both physical and metaphorical)—the Dark Tower series expands upon King’s multiverse. And, as such, links together much of his other fiction.
The Castle Rock article explored the fact that the Dark Tower saga includes more biblical imagery and religious implications than usually seen in the author’s other works.
“I’m very interested in God, religion and the afterlife, ethics, morals, and the part they all play, how much of God and the devil come from inside us and how much of them are their own creatures,” King explained. “Above all else, I’m interested in good and evil, whether or not there are powers of good and powers of evil that exist outside ourselves. I think that the concepts of good and evil are in the human heart, but because I was raised in a fairly strict religious home, I tend to coalesce those concepts around God symbols and devil symbols, and I put them in my work.
“I’m impressed by something C.S. Lewis said about Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy: ‘As good as Tolkien was at depicting good, he was much more effective at depicting evil.’ I think that’s true, and I think that it’s easier for all of us to grasp evil, because it’s a simpler concept, and good is layered and many-faceted. I’ve always tried to contrast that bright, white light of real goodness or Godliness against evil.”
Find the Dark Tower series at Amazon
We talked about the “multiverse” aspects of Dark Tower as part of this larger article here: Multiverse Fiction: 22 Diverting Examples of Parallel Universe Stories
Scroll down to read more info about the series and about each book below.
Complete Dark Tower series by Stephen King
The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower #1 (1982)
“An impressive work of mythic magnitude that may turn out to be Stephen King’s greatest literary achievement” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), The Gunslinger is the first volume in the epic Dark Tower Series.
A #1 national bestseller, The Gunslinger introduces readers to one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations, Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.
Inspired in part by the Robert Browning narrative poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” The Gunslinger is “a compelling whirlpool of a story that draws one irretrievable to its center” (Milwaukee Sentinel). It is “brilliant and fresh…and will leave you panting for more” (Booklist).
Review:
“The first book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is strange, scary and utterly gripping—the perfect start to an unforgettable journey.”
The Drawing of the Three: The Dark Tower #2 (1987)
The second volume in Stephen King’s #1 bestselling Dark Tower Series, The Drawing of the Three is an “epic in the making” (Kirkus Reviews) about a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.
Beginning just less than seven hours after The Gunslinger ends, in the second installment to the thrilling Dark Tower Series, Roland encounters three mysterious doorways on a deserted beach along the Western Sea. Each one enters into a different person’s life in New York—here, he joins forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean, and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, to save the Dark Tower.
It is a science fiction odyssey that is unlike any tale that Stephen King has ever written.
Review:
“Perhaps one of the strongest aspects of this book is its integration of average American lives into an otherwise bleakly romantic fantasy. The most notable effect of these comes not from the generic details, but the way in which King makes the generic poignant, the ordinary arresting.”
(SF Site)
The Waste Lands: The Dark Tower #3 (1991)
The third volume in the #1 nationally bestselling Dark Tower Series, involving the enigmatic Roland (the last gunfighter) and his ongoing quest for the Dark Tower, is “Stephen King at his best” (School Library Journal).
Several months have passed since The Drawing of the Three, and in The Waste Lands, Roland’s two new tet-mates have become trained gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean.
But Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s world—has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World and then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower.
There are new evils…new dangers to threaten Roland’s little band in the devastated city of Lud and the surrounding wastelands, as well as horrific confrontations with Blaine the Mono, the piratical Gasher, and the frightening Tick-Tock Man.
The Dark Tower Series continues to show Stephen King as a master of his craft. What lands, what peoples has he visited that are so unreachable to us except in the pages of his incredible books? Now Roland’s strange odyssey continues.
The Waste Lands follows The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three as the third volume in what may be the most extraordinary and imaginative cycle of tales in the English language
Review:
“Now this is where it gets awesome. I feel justified in recommending this series already, after having read only the first three books (and half of number four) as one of the best fantasy series I know. Go out and read it. And never mind that the first book feels a little slow. It gets better. And better. And better.”
Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower #4 (1997)
The fourth volume in the brilliant Dark Tower Series is “splendidly tense…rip-roaring” (Publishers Weekly)—a #1 national bestseller about an epic quest to save the universe.
In Wizard and Glass, Stephen King is “at his most ebullient…sweeping readers up in…swells of passion” (Publishers Weekly) as Roland the Gunslinger, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, that has been ravaged by the superflu virus.
While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, Roland recounts his tragic story about a seaside town called Hambry, where he fell in love with a girl named Susan Delgado, and where he and his old tet-mates Alain and Cuthbert battled the forces of John Farson, the harrier who—with a little help from a seeing sphere called Maerlyn’s Grapefruit—ignited Mid-World’s final war.
Filled with “blazing action” (Booklist), the fourth installment in the Dark Tower Series “whets the appetite for more” (Bangor Daily News). Wizard and Glass is a thrilling read from “the reigning King of American popular literature” (Los Angeles Daily News).
INSERT: The Wind Through the Keyhole—The Dark Tower Insert (2012)
In his New York Times bestselling The Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King returns to the spectacular territory of the Dark Tower fantasy saga to tell a story about gunslinger Roland Deschain in his early days.
The Wind Through the Keyhole is a sparkling contribution to the series that can be placed between Dark Tower IV and Dark Tower V. This Russian doll of a novel, a story within a story within a story, visits Roland and his ka-tet as a ferocious, frigid storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death.
Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from the Book of Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, “The Wind through the Keyhole.”
“A person’s never too old for stories,” he says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.”
And stories like The Wind Through the Keyhole live for us with Stephen King’s fantastical magic that “creates the kind of fully imagined fictional landscapes a reader can inhabit for days at a stretch” (The Washington Post).
Wolves of the Calla: The Dark Tower #5 (2003)
Wolves of the Calla is the thrilling fifth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series—a unique bestselling epic fantasy quest inspired many years ago by The Lord of the Rings.
In the extraordinary fifth novel in Stephen King’s remarkable fantasy epic, Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World. Their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World’s borderlands.
Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community’s soul. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.
Review:
“At this point, I have a good idea what I’m getting into when I pick up one of Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. The story will wander. It will take longer than it needs to. But it will also be chock full of originality. And in places, it will be nearly impossible to put down. Wolves of the Calla, the fifth book in the series, lives up to all these expectations—and then some.”
Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower #6 (2004)
The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, a #1 New York Times bestseller, is a pivotal installment in the epic saga.
Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, the Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. Here is the penultimate installment.
Review:
“This book came at a very significant time in the author’s own life: In 1999, King has been walking down a road near his home when he was hit by a reckless driver. Left very seriously injured the writing of book six and book seven were done at a time when the author was in serious pain, which had an impact on his concentration and endurance. I also think the book was in a way a cathartic experience in which King came to terms with his own mortality and looked to recover from his horrific injuries.
“Writing this review is very difficult as the book caused real conflict within me. There are interesting developments and we learn more of the Prim, Discordia and Fedic but I am always glad to reach its end so that I can get to the final book, in which King, in my eyes, recovers to give the series a fitting and moving denouement.”
The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower #7 (2004)
Creating “true narrative magic” (The Washington Post) at every revelatory turn, Stephen King surpasses all expectation in the stunning final volume of his seven-part epic masterwork.
Entwining stories and worlds from a vast and complex canvas, here is the conclusion readers have long awaited—breathtakingly imaginative, boldly visionary, and wholly entertaining.
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.
“Overall, it’s a satisfying conclusion to a tale well told and a benchmark in a career we’re willing to bet is far from over.”
BONUS BOOKS
Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance, Revised and Updated (2012)
The Complete Concordance is an entertaining and incredibly useful guide to Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series by Robin Furth and features a foreword by Stephen King himself.
The Dark Tower series is the backbone of Stephen King’s legendary career. Eight books and more than three thousand pages make up this bestselling fantasy epic. The Complete Concordance covers books I-VII and The Wind Through the Keyhole and is the definitive encyclopedic reference book that provides readers with everything they need to navigate their way through the series. With hundreds of characters, Mid-World geography, High Speech lexicon, and extensive cross-references, this comprehensive handbook is essential for any Dark Tower fan.
Includes:
A Foreword from Stephen King
Characters and Genealogies
Magical Objects and Forces
Mid-World and Our World Places
Portals and Magical Places
Mid-, End-, and Our World Maps
Timeline for the Dark Tower Series
Mid-World Dialects
Mid-World Rhymes, Songs, and Prayers
Political and Cultural References
References to Stephen King’s Own Work
The Dark Tower Boxed Set
For the first time ever as a complete ebook series, all of Stephen King’s eight Dark Tower novels—one of the most acclaimed and popular series of all time. Special bonus: The ebook boxed set now includes The Complete Concordance, a user’s guide to the Dark Tower world.
Set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace, The Dark Tower series features one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations—The Gunslinger—a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier Western legend. As Roland crosses a desert of damnation in a treacherous world that is a twisted image of our own, he moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams—and nightmares.
This stunning, must-have collection includes: The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger; The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three; The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands; The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass; The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole; The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla; The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah; and The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower.
The perfect keepsake for Stephen King fans, The Dark Tower 8-Book Boxed Set is the most extraordinary and imaginative cycle of tales in the English language from “the reigning King of American popular literature” (Los Angeles Daily News).
Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of Dark Tower (2016)
Fans of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will definitely want this picture book about a train engine and his devoted engineer.
Engineer Bob has a secret: His train engine, Charlie the Choo-Choo, is alive…and also his best friend. From celebrated author Beryl Evans and illustrator Ned Dameron comes a story about friendship, loyalty, and hard work.
Of course, “Beryl Evans” is actually the pseudonym adopted by Stephen King for his picture book Charlie the Choo-Choo. King has written more than 50 worldwide bestsellers. In addition to The Dark Tower fantasy series, his acclaimed works also include Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Misery and 11.22.63. Many of his books have been turned into celebrated films, including It, Stand by Me, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption.
Ned Dameron has done illustrations for Dungeons and Dragons, as well as some for reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works. He has produced cover artwork for many popular novels, including The Waste Lands by Stephen King and The Second Generation by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman.
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