I don’t like horror as a genre. Even though it always intrigued me, I’m just the type of person who gets scared way too easily to read it (or maybe I’m fine with it now that I’m older, but I haven’t really tried it). And although The Dark Tower series can hardly be described as a horror, my prior statement is important in framing the impact the series had on me. Stephen King, the author of Dark Tower, is renowned as „the king of horror“ and yet I’m still considering reading his classic novels. That’s how impressive the Dark Tower has been to me.
First off, after reading the seven books in this series, I am confident in saying that King is a true master of his craft. He doesn’t use overly flowery prose, but every sentence he writes is incredibly engaging and gripping. The very first line of the first book (The Gunslinger) is a perfect example of this. „The man in black fled across the dessert and the gunslinger followed.“ What an opening line. Possibly the best I’ve ever read. It’s simple and yet it conveys so much information. It has a story hook for the reader, it contains a conflict and it looks and sounds awesome doing so.
Another one of King’s strengths as a writer is his mastery of suspense. This man can build up suspense and anticipation like no other. I’m generally a very plot focused reader and if a book gets stuck in one place for a long time, I tend to get bored, but The Dark Tower books had me on the edge of my seat the entire time even at low points in plot development, where I might have put down some other books (not to say all them are slow, some are almost blisteringly fast with their events, but I would describe books one, four and five as on the slower side and I was hooked the entire time through).
This ability to grab a reader’s attention, then allows King to spend a lot of time on developing his characters and he doesn’t waste it. All of the characters in these books are beautifully realized, multilayered, with incredibly strong character voices just jumping out of the page. I found myself both cheering for the heroes and feeling bad for the villains, who often had very understandable motivations and fascinating personalities.
The only part of a writer’s craft, I believe King isn’t an absolute masterclass at, is his pacing. He tends to meander quite a bit, making some passages needlessly long, which can ruin the incredible sense of immersion, he’s otherwise able to build up, and it can be quite disappointing to see that, when he shows you, that he can do it flawlessly right in the second book.
To get to my thoughts about the separate books, The Drawing of the Three (book 2) is my favorite. I thought The Gunslinger (book 1) kind of dragged honestly. It was clearly brimming with potential, as the world and lore was fascinating and Roland, our main character, was complex and interesting with his morbid obsession with the Dark tower and reaching it by any means necessary, but the book itself was a bit slow and more importantly, incredibly confusing. King doesn’t spend time explaining his lore and ideas. He just throws them at you and expects you to somehow figure it out by yourself. I enjoyed reading the book, but I had no idea what was actually happening. Who are the gunslingers? What is the Dark tower? Where even are we? None of these questions are answered, which stopped me from immersing myself in the story (and I’ve heard this from multiple people who had read the Dark Tower), making the first book more of a set up than anything else. Book two, that’s where the series really comes into it’s own, in my opinion. Though King doesn’t fix his information delivery issue, he just tramples over it with a tight, action-packed plot, the introduction of two great new main characters and an expansion of his weird, world-hopping universe, which tells you to throw out any preconceived notions about this type of story you might have had, because Stephen King is taking you on a wild ride, that breaks all the rules.
The Waste lands (book 3) follows up on that magnificently. Though not quite as excellent, as The Drawing of the Three, it’s still an very enjoyable read. The world gets even weirder, our main characters get solidified and we get to see their group dynamic and character development, and we finally start to understand what’s going on, at least a little bit. King’s attention to atmosphere and suspense is also very present, as he takes us through the ruined city of Lud and finishes the book on a huge cliffhanger, with our protagonists in mortal danger on the way through the titular Waste lands.
Wizard and Glass (book 4) shakes the formula up in some major ways. It puts the crazy word-hopping action on hold, in order for Roland to finally tell us a story from his past. I believe this book is absolutely crucial for Dark tower’s success. It does so much seamless worldbuilding and answers so many of the reader’s question, while allowing King to flex his writing chops with a weird western story, rooted in character struggles which makes you understand Roland much more deeply and appreciate him and his growth immensely. It feels a lot more normal and classical, almost as if King was just retelling a folk tale, which serves as a really important grounding point before the craziness that’s about to come in the final three books.
Wolves of the Calla (book 5) gets us right back on track. This one is basically a mystery novel, showing us another genre in King’s wheelhouse, but it retains the weird west feel, which makes the transition back into our chronological timeline feel smooth as butter. The end of this novel is also the place, where any of my predictions or expectations got completely and utterly crushed, when Stephen King introduces, spoiler alert, himself into the story.
And now we come to the only true low point in the series. After an amazing stretch of four terrific books, we get by far the worst entry to the series – Song of Susannah, which was a huge disappointment for me. I have a hard time pinning down what exactly didn’t I like about it though. I don’t think there’s anything technically wrong with the book, it just didn’t sit right with me. The characters split up in order to accomplish multiple tasks at once, and some of their respective plot lines just bored me to no end, so I couldn’t wait to be done with them and back to the characters I actually enjoyed reading.
Luckily, the seventh and final entry, The Dark Tower, brings the quality back up, maybe not quite as high as the excellent books two-through-five, but very close indeed. We get the most endearing and the most heart-wrenching moments in the entire series and King is able to tie almost everything up very nicely, with a truly mind blowing ending. Overall, I consider The Dark Tower a true literary masterpiece. King explores themes of time, finality, addiction, love, purpose and destiny in a atmosphere-heavy, engaging text, that takes inspiration from everywhere without ever coming close to being derivative, because of its complete disregard for typical story structure and its subversion of expected tropes. After finishing it, you’ll feel like you’ve been on a hundred year long journey and yet you’ve only scratched the surface of what’s really going on, because this story is almost cyclical. To truly understand it, you’d probably have to read King’s entire back catalog (and his future one too), a Robert Browning poem (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came) and some assortment of king Arthur legends and it still probably wouldn’t answer all of your questions, but it is a journey you‘re willing to take, because as long as Roland keeps following the man in black, you’ll keep following him.
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