The Dark Tower Series

So, recently I read the Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King. I have finally read all seven books, and it was surely worth it. King is an amazing author, but this is unlike anything he's written so far. The series isn't even like a normal book series, but much more like one large book that needed to be divided into several smaller books because it was too big. It's a lot like a very long movie that has to be divided into two dvd's or videos because it won't all fit in one. Or at least that's how it's been so far. The quality of this book is only matched by how confusing it is. My curiousity leaves me begging for more, because even though I've finished the books, I feel as if Roland's tale has just begun.

The Dark Tower is a series of seven books by American writer Stephen King telling the tale of Roland Deschain's quest for the Dark Tower. The series incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy fiction, science fantasy, horror, and western elements. King has described the series as his magnum opus - besides the seven novels that comprise the series proper, many of his other books are related to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the series progresses.

The series was mostly inspired by the epic poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning. In the preface to the revised 2003 edition of The Gunslinger, King also identifies The Lord of the Rings and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as inspirations. He identifies Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" character as one of the major inspirations for Roland. Location names, such as Mid-World, and a unique language abstract to our own can be derived from Tolkien's work.

Roland is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers. The world he lives in is quite different from our own, yet it bears striking similarities to it. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West, as well as bearing the magical powers and relics of a highly advanced, but long vanished, society. Roland's quest is to find the Dark Tower, a mythical building said to either be, or be located at, the nexus of all universes. Roland's world is said to have "moved on", and indeed it appears to be coming apart at the seams — mighty nations are being torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish from the face of the earth without a trace, time does not flow in an orderly fashion; even the sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland's motives, goals, and even his age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries.