Four Reasons Why I Love Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series (and You Might, Too)

Sometime in the last couple years a strange thing happened to me.  I became a serious fan of a series I had set aside 25 years ago and had always assumed was not my thing.  If you had told me three years ago that I would be writing a post proselytizing the Dark Tower series (see above!), I may not have believed you.  Alas, the wheel of ka turns in unexpected ways.

I read the first two books many years ago in my teens.  The first book is very weird.  I thought it was some kind of fantasy-Western hybrid, which is true but there are oh, so many more layers than these. The second book is less weird, but for whatever reason didn't grab me at the time, although I did remember certain scenes far more clearly than I remember most things I read last week.

Having rekindled my relationship with Stephen King in recent years, having heard from people whose opinions I respect how great the series is, and with the 2017 Dark Tower movie coming out (yeah, I know... but I kinda liked it, anyway), I thought it might be time to give these books another try.  I re-read The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three in the summer of 2017 (see what I thought here!), but I wasn't quite hooked.  I wasn't yet, in the common term of palaver, a "Tower junkie."

That happened sometime in The Wastelands or Wizard and Glass, which led me to Wolves of the Calla.  Somehow I waited a few months for the most mind-bending last two books, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower.  And then I had to read the stand alone The Wind Through the Keyhole.  I put off writing this post for awhile, but now that I've read a few more of King's books with Dark Tower connections (Insomnia and Hearts in Atlantis), it seemed that now is the time.

So, here are four reasons why I love Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and you might, too.




1. The Multiverse

Long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe dominated Hollywood, Stephen King was putting little connections between his books to give his fans and, presumably, himself a little extra something (I imagine his publishers think this is an excellent marketing strategy as well).  This occurs throughout a lot of King's works, but the Dark Tower series sits at the center of a vast web of interconnected characters, ideas, and plots.  And because the Dark Tower series literally takes place in a multiverse (that is, "there are other worlds than these..."), it really all makes sense.  Kinda.  King doesn't always feel the need to explain himself, which just gives fans even more fun.  Part of what's so fun about these connections is that you feel like you've stumbled onto a secret between you and the author.  Sometimes it just provides a little extra flavor; sometimes it drives the plot and makes deeper points (more on that later).

The title of my review of Wolves of the Calla is "Weird Conections," and little did I realize the connections were going to get even weirder and more fun from there.  Here's a pretty good list of King's works with explicit connections to the Dark Tower.  I've read all of these except The Talisman and Black House, although I haven't read The Stand or Eyes of the Dragon since my teenage period of Stephen King fandom so I may be due to re-read these soon.  And now that I've read all the Dark Tower books, I will no doubt notice even more little connections when I do.

So, if you delight in finding little connections between things, you, too, might like the Dark Tower series.


2. Delightful Weirdness

One of my favorite things about the series is how utterly bizarre it can be, but in a good way.  It's a delightful weirdness.  A lot of this is achieved through King's genre-blending.  The series is often categorized as fantasy, which is true but hardly the whole story.  It's also Western, horror, science fiction, and all sorts of uncategorizable.

The first book, The Gunslinger, is probably the weirdest.  Honestly, it's maybe a little too weird for most people.  I completely understand why some people give up their quest right there.  I admit I didn't completely get it even on a second read, but there are hints of the depth of world-building (or technically, worlds-building) that show you this series is a lot deeper than the drug-induced coma of Western-fantasy mash up it appears to be on the surface.

Some of my favorite weirdness is in the third book, The Wastelands, where there's a cyborg bear, bizarre townsfolk, inter-dimensional travel (via demon-summoning), a maniacal train, and a ZZ Top song playing for awhile, because, well, why not?  There's plenty of weirdness in the book four, but book five is where the most mind-bending weirdness begins and continues for books six and seven, which are probably my favorite (much like Frank Herbert's Dune books, I tend to like the weirder, less popular later books).

So, if like me you're delighted by unexpected weirdness, you'll probably enjoy the Dark Tower, too.


3. Characters

Say what you want about Stephen King, the guy knows how to make characters interesting despite (or because of?) their faults.  Roland Deschain is probably not a person I'd want to hang out with at the bar, but I love reading about him.  He's hyper-serious, gruff, single-minded, non-communicative, and willing to kill innocents for his cause, but... you kind of love the guy, anyway.  Weird.  But Roland has layers, as we find out in the fourth book, Wizard and Glass.  At one point in the series he dances a jig, showing that he can party if he wants to.

The rest of his companions (or ka-tet, do it please ya) are also a pretty interesting lot: Jake, Susannah,  Eddie, and everybody's favorite, the dog-like creature Oy.  Honestly I'm not entirely sure what to think about how King handles Susannah, a disabled black woman with mental illness as written by an able-bodied white man; King puts her through a lot, but then he puts everyone through a lot.

Along the way we also meet mutant giant lobsters, a psychotic robot train, a demon, a witch, a wizard, Roland's boyhood friends, his first love, giants, a retired vampire hunter, a company keeping part of New York City undeveloped for mysterious reasons, an obsessive book dealer, creepy people known as "low men," a colorful king, a boy whose drawings become reality, a tribe of swamp mutants, a strange tiger, and lots, lots more.

So, if you like interesting characters and lots of them, you might enjoy the Dark Tower series, too.


4. Philosophical Bits

One reason I decided to try for the Tower again was that some philosopher friends told me they enjoyed it.  I even found a great book, Stephen King and Philosophy!

There's quite a bit going on in these books philosophically: multiple worlds, freedom and determinism, personal identity, and more.  Two major issues are the meaning of life (no joke!) and paradoxes for fun and (narrative) profit.

Roland is single-minded in his quest for the Tower.  Is the meaning of life the pursuit of one big thing?  Or is it, as Oy might counsel us, the pursuit of a list of smaller things?  What can or should you do to work toward your quest for meaning?  What happens when you reach your goal?  Does the search for meaning ever really end?  Would we want it to?  And perhaps deepest of them all, despite its having become a cliché: is it about the journey or the destination?  Which attitude will actually make you happier?  I found a lot of food for thought on these questions as I read the series (see, for example, here and here).

Another major topic has to do with the delight of mind-bending self-referential paradoxes and the nature of the creative process itself.  These points involve some of the most brilliant and controversial parts of the last few books.  Saying too much more about that would require major spoilers, so I'll avoid that for now, although if you do want spoilers with appropriate warnings and more discussion, see here and here.

So, if you like some philosophical depth while your'e being entertained, then you might like the Dark Tower series, too.


So, there you have it!  Someday soon I hope to make another quest for the Dark Tower... and then maybe another, and another...