As the series progresses, he pulls together his ka-tet - the people he’s fated to fight alongside - often crossing spacetime over and over again to reach them. If he’s going to reach the Tower, though, Roland needs allies in the fight.

At the start of the series, he has outlived almost everyone he’s ever known - with the exception of the Man in Black, Walter O’Dim. If he can destroy the Dark Tower completely, the Crimson King could potentially make himself into a god lording over the multiverse.Īs the last in the line of Arthur Eld, a legendary king who fought for peace and eventually unified the land under a single banner, Roland may be the only man capable of saving the Dark Tower. Not only does this allow monsters to escape from the abyss and cross into the physical realm, but it also causes space and time to break down in each affected universe. As the Crimson King’s assault begins to crumble the Tower, the boundaries between worlds become thin. The Dark Tower is under attack from the Crimson King: a demonic entity that shares some history with Roland and the House of Deschain. The gunslinger’s world is the only place from which the Tower may be reached, and, paradoxically, is also a level of the Tower in and of itself.

Located in End-World, on the edge of Roland’s homeland, this massive structure contains all possible realities, stacked on top of each other. The eight books in this series follow the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, on his quest to save the Dark Tower. (An eighth book, the interquel The Wind Through the Keyhole, arrived in 2012.) King would publish six more books in the series over the next quarter-century, each of which brought the eponymous gunslinger, Roland Deschain, closer to his Tower. Written in 1977, The Gunslinger finally landed in stores in 1982. Keep reading to learn more about The Dark Tower and get the definitive series order. As long as you read the Dark Tower books themselves in order, you’ll be golden. Likewise, it’s not necessary to read The Dark Tower before King’s other works. You don’t need to have read every Stephen King book to understand and appreciate The Dark Tower.

So how should you approach The Dark Tower? Surprisingly, the answer to that question doesn’t change based on how many King books you’ve already read. Although the eight Dark Tower books aren’t as famous as King’s more well-known works, the foundational myth that drives hero Roland Deschain - that of a mysterious Dark Tower containing all possible universes - acts as a lynchpin, turning the “standalone” novels in King’s catalog into a giant web. Stephen King’s fans, the Constant Readers, widely consider The Dark Tower to be his magnum opus.

The dark tower books in order