"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
It has been more than thirty years since Stephen King penned those words on a ream of bright green paper to begin his epic fantasy—and the crowning achievement of his literary career—The Dark Tower. Inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone, King’s seven-volume saga follows Roland, the last gunslinger, on his quest to reach the Dark Tower and not only save the world, but save every world across countless dimensions, all threatened by the Crimson King. With the full cooperation of Stephen King himself, The Road to the Dark Tower examines the epic journey of the author, a quest that undoubtedly mirrors Roland’s, to complete a story that threatened to overwhelm him. From a series of short stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Dark Tower evolved over time to encompass King’s entire fictional universe. In this indispensable companion, Bev Vincent presents a book-by-book analysis of each volume in the series, tracing The Dark Tower’s connections to King’s other titles, including The Stand, Insomnia, and Hearts in Atlantis, and offering insights from the author about the creative process involved in crafting his lifelong work—a work that consumed not only Stephen King, but his legion of constant readers.
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