The Dark Tower Books in Order

The Dark Tower Series is the magnum opus of Stephen King — the vast, genre-defying work that King himself has described as his most important and that connects, through a web of references and crossovers, to virtually every other major work in his catalogue. The series follows Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger of a world that has "moved on" — a quasi-Western landscape in terminal decay — as he pursues a mysterious figure called the Man in Black across a desert that seems to stretch forever, in quest of the Dark Tower, an axis point that holds all realities in existence and that is now under threat from a force that would unmake everything.

King synthesises an extraordinary range of influences — the mythology of the American West (particularly Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"), Arthurian legend, horror, science fiction, high fantasy, and postmodern metafiction — into a single vast narrative that evolves dramatically in tone and scope across its eight volumes. The early books are spare and haunting; the middle books expand the ensemble and the world-building; the later books grow increasingly self-referential and metafictional. It is an uneven but genuinely ambitious work that rewards patient, committed readers.

Comprising 8 novels published from The Gunslinger (1982) through The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012), with the main series reaching its controversial conclusion in The Dark Tower (2004), this is essential King for any serious reader of his work. Must be read in order from The Gunslinger.