by Stephen King
First published 2003
Roland, the last gunslinger, is walking a dark beach when he finds the first door standing alone in the sand. It opens into a life in contemporary New York, and then so does the second, and then the third. He is a man from a dying world, moving between strangers whose fates are now tangled with his own. Through these doorways he meets Eddie Dean, a young man with a defiant streak and a serious problem, and Odetta Holmes, a woman who is brilliant and fierce and carrying a secret that runs deeper than Roland expects. He needs both of them. His quest for the Dark Tower demands it. But pulling people out of their own lives and into his is not a clean transaction. The world Roland comes from distorts everything it touches, and the enemies closing in are not only the kind that bleed. King sets dark fantasy and hard realism against each other and lets them collide. What holds the story together is Roland himself, a man who does not stop moving, no matter the cost.
Genres: fiction, science-fiction-fantasy, adventure, fantasy, dark-fantasy, epic-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, haunting, intense, suspenseful
Tropes: chosen-one, fish-out-of-water, forced-proximity, found-family
Setting: New York, Dark Tower, Beach
463 pages · Paperback · Signet
Content warnings: death, drug-use, violence