My son Jesse and I have been reading the Stephen King Dark Tower Series over the last couple of months. Series of 7 books that starts off with one called The Gunslinger.
The first book was not really easy to get through. It was written fairly early in his career – in fact I think I read that parts of it were written as far back as 1970. It’s not a great book, but it lays the groundwork for the characters, and the further I’ve read into the series, the more I appreciate the first one. These are not short books – many are well over 1000 pages – but I’m really enjoying them! I think that the author looks at this series as his favorite group of writings, and they span from about 1980 or so for The Gunslinger, to the final (seventh) book which I think might have just been released this year.
I’ve never read anything by Stephen King before – I’ve always associated him with slasher stuff and the more macabre – but I have to say that these books are evolving into really first rate storytelling. You can see him develop and improve as a storyteller throughout the series. We’re on the 5th in the series now – The Wolves of Calla – and they continue to improve with each in the series.
Bottom line – I’d recommend this series to anyone who likes to read and loves good storytelling. For the casual reader it might not be a good choice – there’s just too much material to wade through at 7 books with many 700 pages+. And since the first book is only so-so standing on it’s own, it’s hard to recommend that as a single volume to read. Any of the subsequent books would just not be much fun (at least I don’t think) if you weren’t already wrapped up in the story and characters as they are evolving.
UPDATE (August, 2010): Jesse and I finished the series. I’m not going to spoil anything here, but have to say that we were both WAY disappointed with the way King ended the series. It was great storytelling, and he does a great job of building things up. There were probably many ways he could have ended it, and the way that he ended it was just a real disappointment…
I guess I’d still recommend the books for folks who love to read, but not nearly as highly as I would have had it not ended so poorly.
