THE DARK TOWER SERIES -An introduction to the quest

I've had the first volume (The Gunslinger) of this epic seven book tale on my shelves for a number of years, but I wanted to get the entire set before I started reading them. And this weekend just gone, I picked up a great first hardcover edition, the volume with all the illustrations and maps, of volume 7 - The Dark Tower from a boot sale for £3. So I thought now may the time to read the series.

In his new introduction to the first volume, King tells us that he started the story when he was nineteen, and that hobbits were big back then. The genesis of the series that would become The Dark Tower was Kings desire to write something with the epic sweep of Tolkien's classic. And a lot of readers seem to think he achieved this with his epic seven book story.


A good friend of mine recently read the entire series and has been raving about it, and so I've long promised myself that I would read it. However I know that when I start the series it would completely dominate my reading for several months. The first volume is reletively slim but the books get bigger and the final three are of true Kingsian proportions, the final volume is almost The Stand X 2. And the entire series is of such a length as to make The Lord of the Rings trilogy look like a short story. Still, I figure, if the story warrants such scope then it doesn't matter if I'm reading from now until the end of time, which given the current world state will be sometime after teatime next Tuesday.

And so Apocalypse not withstanding I intend to read the entire series and give my thoughts, for what they are worth, book by book here on The Archive.

And so - The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed...