The Dark Tower series

[Odin88]

There are a couple Stephen King threads here, thought I would add another.

One day in 1989 when I was 12 I was walking down the hallway in junior high.
I accidentally kicked a book that was laying on the floor. I looked down and it was a novel entitled "The Gunslinger". I had never heard of it, or read any of King's books up to that time. I took it home and was immediately hooked.

Later that year the 2nd book came out, and in 1993 the 3rd was released.
The shitty part- at the end of the 3rd novel in the series all the characters were stuck on that fucking train which was about to derail itself and kill them all. I didn't get to read the 4th installment and find out what the hell happened until 1999.

In 2005 I finally got to read the last 3 books in the series. I realized, just as I finished reading the 7th and last book, that I had been following this story for 16 GODDAMN YEARS....

Thats a long time to wait to get to the last page. Worth it though- great damn series.

[SST]

I was a little disappointed at the end. There were so many characters and events from other SK books in the Dark Tower series, I really thought he was going to tie it all together as his own alternate universe. Those are some of my favorite SK books.

[Aunt Jemima]

I've only read the 1st three books. I hope to get around to reading the 4th some day. It's called the wizard in the glass or something right? Anyway it's a good series except for the oil driller (Eddie?) and the nigger.

[Odin88]

I was a little disappointed at the end. There were so many characters and events from other SK books in the Dark Tower series, I really thought he was going to tie it all together as his own alternate universe. Those are some of my favorite SK books.

Actually, all of his other books do in some way tie into the Dark Tower series. Over the course of his career he cleverly built his own literary "universe" and all of these tales and different realities in some way all come back to this series- even if only loosely related. The series has been called his "Magnum Opus".

You'll notice that in the 4th book, they emerge into the world that was in the aftermath of the plague in "The Stand". In "Insomnia", the Dark Tower is touched upon briefly, as well as in Black House with Peter Straub.
There are dozens of examples of this in the great majority of his work. I think the reason why this is not evident in the Tower series is because it is uneccesary as this is his "original" universe so to speak and all lines lead back there.

[Mr. Drummond]

I have the series. I thought Wizard and Glass was the most engaging of all the books.

The ending of the last book was, I thought, a copout. The biggest problem I had was when Randall Flagg got so easily killed in the last book, that was a joke! The Dark Man from The Stand would not have gone down so easily.