Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
Eerie, dreamlike, set in a world that is weirdly related to our own, The Gunslinger introduces Roland Deschain of Gilead, of In-World that was, as he pursues his enigmatic antagonist to the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea. Roland is a solitary figure, perhaps accursed, who with a strange single-mindedness traverses an exhausted, almost timeless landscape. The people he encounters are left behind, or worse—left dead. At a way station, however, he meets Jake, a boy from a particular time (1977) and a particular place New York City), and soon the two are joined—khef, ka, and ka-tet. The mountains lie before them. So does the man in black and, somewhere far beyond...the Dark Tower.

Sian says...

There aren’t many books that have killer first lines and you can be fairly sure that when you find one, what follows is going to be a heck of a ride.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Not bad huh? It gives me goosebumps every time.

The Gunslinger is the first book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and I can say without a doubt, this series is his biggest undertaking. As the fifth book in this series is due in November I decided it was time to revisit Roland and his ka-tet and apparently so has King. Recently a revised and expanded edition of The Gunslinger was released with an extra 35 pages to help tie it a little more closely to the later books and fix any discrepancies (it has been over 30 years since King started writing this).

Roland of Gilead is the last gunslinger; a knight in jeans, armed with his fathers sandalwood guns. His world is moving on, dying, and his only hope is to complete his quest which ends at the Dark Tower. To do this Roland needs information from the man in black, Walter, who he is trailing slowly across the desert. Along the way he recounts the terrible events at the town of Tull, meets Jake, a boy who has died in our world but lives in Roland’s, and tricks a demon to tell his future. Roland eventually does catch up with the man in black but not without making a sacrifice and in the end, Walter’s words are not what he expected to hear.

This is great dark fantasy. Roland has to be one of the best darn heroes ever- cool, controlled, deadly and determined yet a bit of a romantic, chivalrous and flawed enough to be human. In the new introduction King states his influences for The Dark Tower to be The Lord of the Rings and the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but he has definitely made this his own, using his trademark blend of the mundane meeting the unbelievable. With the fifth, sixth and seventh (and final) books due over the next 14 months, now is the perfect time to start reading this brilliant series, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
After his confrontation with the man in black at the end of The Gunslinger, Roland awakes to find three doors on the beach of Mid-World's Western Sea-each leading to New York City but at three different moments in time. Through these doors, Roland must "draw" three figures crucial to his quest for the Dark Tower. In 1987, he finds Eddie Dean, The Prisoner, a heroin addict. In 1964, he meets Odetta Holmes, the Lady of Shadows, a young African-American heiress who lost her lower legs in a subway accident and gained a second personality that rages within her. And in 1977, he encounters Jack mort, Death, a pusher responsible for cruelties beyond imagining. Has Roland found new companions to form the ka-tet of his quest? Or has he unleashed something else entirely?

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
Roland continues his quest for the Dark Tower, but he is no longer alone. He has trained Eddie and Susannah-who entered Mid-World from their separate whens in New York City in The Drawing of the Three-in the old ways of the gunslingers. But their ka-tet is not yet complete. Another must be drawn from New York into Mid-World, someone who has been there before, a boy who has died not once but twice, and yet still lives. The ka-tet, four who are bound together by fate, must travel far in this novel encountering not only the poisonous waste lands and the ravaged city of Lud that lies beyond, but also the rage of a train that might be their only means of escape.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
Roland and his band have narrowly escaped the city of Lud and boarded Blaine, a train that will take them to, of all places, Kansas, where the ghost city of Topeka has been depopulated by a superflu and where, alongside Interstate 70, an emerald palace rises enchantingly. Before Roland and the companions of his ka-tet continue along the Path of the Bean, Roland must tell his companions the tale that defines him both as a man and hero, a long-ago romance of witchery and evil, of the beautiful, unforgettable Susan Delgado, of the Big Coffin Hunters and Reah of the Coos. And when his tale is finished, Roland confronts a man who goes by many names, a man who "darkles and tincts" and who holds perhaps the key to the Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet are bearing southeast through the forests of Mid-World, the almost timeless landscape that seems to stretch from the wreckage of civility that defined Roland's youth to the crimson chaos that seems the future's only promise. In this long-awaited fifth novel in the saga, their path takes them to the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a tranquil valley community of farmers and ranchers on Mid-World's borderlands. Beyond the town, the rocky ground rises toward the hulking darkness of Thunderclap, the source of a terrible affliction that is slowly stealing the community's soul. One of the town's residents is Pere Callahan, a ruined priest who, like Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, passed through one of the portals that lead both into and out of Roland's world.

As Father Callahan tells the ka-tet the astonishing story of what happened following his shamed departure from Maine in 1977, his connection to the Dark Tower becomes clear, as does the danger facing a single red rose in a vacant lot off Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan. For Calla Bryn Sturgis, danger gathers in the east like a storm cloud. The Wolves of Thunderclap and their unspeakable depredation are coming. To resist them is to risk all, but these are odds the gunslingers are used to, and they can give the Calla-folken both courage and cunning. Their guns, however, will not be enough.