THE DARK TOWER
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger (1982)
The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Waste Lands (1991)
Wizard and Glass (1997)
These novels, using thematic elements from Robert Browning's poem 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'. tell the saga of Roland, last of the gunslingers, who embarks on a quest to find the Dark Tower for reasons that the author has yet to reveal. Along the way, Roland encounters the remains of what was once a thriving society, feudal in nature but technologically quite advanced, that now has fallen into decay and ruin. King combines elements of fantasy with science fiction into a surreal blend of past and future.
The first book, The Gunslinger, introduces Roland, who is chasing the Dark Man, an enigmatic sorcerer figure, across a vast desert. Through flashbacks, the reader learns that Roland was a member of a noble family in the Dark Tower world, and that that world may or may not have been destroyed with help from the Dark Man. Along the way, Roland encounters strange inhabitants of this unnamed world, including Jake, a young boy who, even though he is killed by the end of the first book, will figure prominently in later volumes. Roland does catch up with the Dark Man, and learns that he must seek out the Dark Tower to find the answers to the questions of why he must embark on this quest and what is contained in the Tower.
The next book, The Drawing of the Three, shows Roland recruiting three people from present-day Earth to join him on his way to the Dark Tower. They are Eddie, a junkie 'mule' working for the Mafia; Suzannah, a paraplegic with multiple personalities; and Jake, whose arrival is startling to Roland, who sacrificed Jake in his own world during his pursuit of the Dark Man. Roland saves Jake's life on Earth, but the resulting schism nearly drives him insane. Roland must also help the other two battle their own demons, Eddie's being his heroin addiction and guilt over not being able to save his brother's life, and Suzannah's the war between her different personalities, one a kind and gentle woman, the other a racist psychopath. Each of the three deals with their problems with the help of the others, and together the quartet set out on the journey to the Tower.
The third book, The Waste Lands, chronicles the first leg of that journey, examining the background of the three Earth-born characters in detail. The book reaches its climax when Jake is kidnapped by a cult thriving in the ruins of a crumbling city, led by a man known only as Flagg (a character who has appeared in several of King's other novels as the embodiment of pure evil). Roland rescues Jake and the group escapes the city on a monorail system whose artificial intelligence program has achieved sentience at the cost of its sanity. The monorail challenges them to a riddle-contest, with their lives as the prize if they can stump the machine, who claims to know every riddle ever created.
Wizard and Glass,
the fourth volume in the series, finds Roland, Jake, Eddie and Suzannah continuing their journey towards the Dark Tower, moving through a deserted part of Mid-World that is eerily reminiscent of twentieth-century Earth. During their travels they encounter a
thinny,
a dangerous weakening of the barrier between different times and places. Roland recognizes it and realizes that his world is breaking down faster than he had thought. The
thinny
prompts him to recall the first time he encountered it, many years before on a trip out west with his friends Cuthbert and Alain, when Roland had just earned his gunslinger status. It is this story - of the three boys uncovering a plot against the ruling government and of Roland's first love, a girl named Susan Delgado - that is the central focus of the book. While the three manage to destroy the conspirators, Susan is killed during the fight by the townspeople of Hambry. The story gives Jake, Eddie and Suzannah new insight into Roland's background and why he may sacrifice them to attain his ultimate goal of saving his world. The book ends with the foursome moving onward once more towards the Tower.
THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA
BY STEPHEN KING
