The Dark Tower Series Stephen King

[Canyouforgiveher]

looking for reassurance here. I only discovered Stephen King in the last few years - I always thought I would dislike him because of the horror element but I read The Shining and was hooked. I haven't read any of the Dark Tower series but read on here that they were brilliant. So I've started with the Gunslinger and am finding it pretty hard going.

Do I absolutely need to read it to make sense of the others?

Do the others get better?

I've just finished The Dark Tower. I loved them, but I did struggle with The Gunslinger. It's different - considerably - to the other books but really worth persisting with. You do need to read it to make sense of what follows, I think, as book 2 picks up right where it finishes. And Roland is so central to the series and who and what he is is so important that the book is really important to setting it all up. The vaguely Western theme persists to a greater or lesser extent in the other books but mixed up with vampires, steampunk, fantasy, real world, and all sorts of other things. I was hooked from the start of Book 2, and couldn't stop. And the last book, and particularly the ending, is extraordinary.

And if you carry on all sorts of other aspects from his other books start to come into focus, and the whole of his universe starts to make sense.

So keep going - so worth it (and The Gunslinger is quite short!).

Thank you Pepe! I'm listening to it in the car while I drive so will keep going. Am so excited to have a whole SK series ahead of me. I think he is so underrated (although I think that is changing) - first to admit, I didn't read him as a teen because I thought he was just horror schlock but I am glad I was snobbish back then because I am having so much fun reading him now.

my dd is doing a class in school on monsters in literature - reading Dracula, Frankenstein, Day of the Triffids among others...and IT!

It's not the first one that's the problem.

The Dark Tower series took me a while to get into but I loved it by the end of the Gunslinger and read the next 2 books straight away and the rest as soon as they were published. I think it might have been better to wait and read them all consecutively as I did forget parts that were relevant in subsequent books but I have always read ever SK book as soon as it was released (for the last 25 years) I couldn't wait.

You definitely need to get through the first one, and I agree it's not the easiest to get through - he was very, very young when he wrote it. The 2nd and third are brilliant, the fourth is a bit dull, fifth superb, 6th a bit dull, 7th great. Overall though, I love them, although I skip big chunks of the fourth now, if re-reading.

The Dark Tower series is amazing. There's also a series of comic books that are prequels that will lead you to the beginning of the gunslinger. The Stand is also awesome :)