I’m of course talking about the novels written by Stephen King. RC picked them up and told me about the gunslinger and his quest to catch the man in black. Somehow this intrigued me.
I wound up getting the first 4 novels for Christmas and I just finished <i>The Gunslinger</i> about an hour ago. Will begin reading <i>The Drawing of the Three</i> sometime tomorrow. Does anyone else read the series? If so, what do you think of it?
I was kind of disappointed by Jake’s death, but at the same time I really wanted it so that Roland could move forward without worrying about him. The book started out fine enough but what really drew me in was Walter telling Roland about the past and showing him the Universe.
Read it. More than once. It’s a damn fine series of books and it pretty much gets better with each one. Which is probably because his writing style improved in the long interims between most of the books.
Not really a spoiler, just a comment that while a lot of people thought it was a cop-out, I found it quite an appropriate ending and I liked it.
I’ve read this series only once, and I’ll probably pick it up again after I finish a couple of books on my list. I enjoyed it thoroughly. If you’re already a fan of King’s and are reasonably familiar with several of his works, it’s also interesting and fun to see how he’s linked so many of them with this series.
I used to be crazy about those books. Got distracted midway through Wizard and Glass and never got the fervor back for it.
I loved The Drawing of The Three. Now this is a spoiler: Having the gunslinger’s mortality being thrown in your face from the beginning and losing your some of his fingers was an interesting development to me. Eddie’s drawing was heartbreaking and effective. How Roland helps Eddie hide the drugs, his view on our time/world (?), the shootout. I don’t know I just loved it. Then there was the fact that Roland, basically, just told the third person he had to draw “Screw you” and got Jake instead. Not without consequence of course.
[I’ve read this series only once, and I’ll probably pick it up again after I finish a couple of books on my list. I enjoyed it thoroughly. If you’re already a fan of King’s and are reasonably familiar with several of his works, it’s also interesting and fun to see how he’s linked so many of them with this series.
Yeah, I first started reading them because I heard it explained Randall Flagg’s origins, but I didn’t far enough to find out.
there are several more books you will have to read if you want to read the ENTIRE Dark Tower story, they are usually listed in bold in the list of Stephen King books in Dark Tower books if there not there heres a list in chronological order
Novels:
Salem’s Lot
The Stand
The Talisman
It
The Eyes of The Dragon
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
Bag of Bones
Black House
From a Buick 8
Richard Bachman:
The Regulators
Short stories Collections:
Skeleton Crew(only one story)
Hearts in Atlantis(entire book)
Everything’s Eventual(entire book)
now not all of these are important, some just involve important characters from The Dark Tower but a few are crucial to the series these are Insomnia, Black House(The sequel to The Talisman), Hearts in Atlantis and Everything’s Eventual, you must read these five books.
others prominently involve The Dark Man these are The Stand and Eyes of The Dragon.
I also think that IT is very important because of The Turtle.
I hope this helps you if you are willing to read all of that.
I have the first book but I never got into the series; I was surprised to learn later how they tied King’s novels into a single (multi)verse. I need to check Wikipedia to find out more. Just a quick question: is it true that the Dark Man is Nyarlatothep, from the Cthulhu mythos, or is that just a fan theory?
note that this would not be the same Nyarlatothep from the Persona games I used in some of my stories here in RPGC
I loved The Dark Tower series to death, which is strange, 'cause to me, King’s usually unreadable, but I just picked up The Gunslinger one day and was hooked, even though it was several years between that and the rest of the series. I can’t imagine it must have been like to wait twenty-three years for all seven books.
The man’s a friggin’ genius, that’s all I gotta say. I loved it through and through and is one of my most-recommended reads to others. It’s really his only work I’ve read, and I thought it was awesome - I knew of the allusions and inclusions of his other works, but I think the story is told well enough on its own that it’s a damned fine series on its own merit.
Whoooo, boy this is a hell of a necropost. But its my thread and I felt I should just raise this one as opposed to making a brand new one with the same name and context.
Anyway, I finished the series yesterday. Definitely one of the best stories to have ever been written. And while some probably found the ending disappointing, I found it delightfully unexpected and fitting. <i>Loved</i> it. Time to get my hands on the comics and wait for the TV series or movies that they’re planning on making.
Now that Roland has the Horn of Eld, do you think that he’ll ever truly break the cycle and find some form of rest? Is ka a wheel that truly continues to spin forever? Or is ka like the wind (as Susan Delgado said) and able to change direction ever so slightly? Perhaps its both - the force of the wind moving the wheel?
This a series I’ll undoubtedly end up reading again.
I just didn’t understand how anything would change with that single factor in play.
Granted, I didn’t finish the series. I ended with Wolves of Calla and just didn’t have the time to finish the series, so I ruined the ending for myself just because I wanted to know what happened.
[SPOILER]Poor Eddie, I loved all the characters but…just, poor Eddie
His section in the Drawing of the Three was my favorite. That gunfight was excellent.[/SPOILER]
[spoiler]The point of him having the horn at the end of the book is it’s symbology - things can change, things can improve (he kepts his word instead of leaving it behind him), that if we try long enough it’ll be okay.
And yeah, I thought the ending was pretty much the perfect one for the series. Really fitting. :)[/spoiler]
Y’know, now that a movie/series is in the works, I wonder if they’ll change the story to correspond with him having the Horn of Eld with him. Maybe see how things go on his way to true salvation. Part of me thinks that would be awesome as hell, while part of me thinks that it would ruin it. What do you think?
I think that the Horn symbolizes change. I think the major change that happened in the iteration we saw was the saving of Jake, even though it took until the second time around.
