by Stephen King
First published 1997
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet step off the wreckage of Blaine the Mono into a dead version of Topeka, Kansas, emptied out by a superflu that swept through this alternate world. The streets are silent. The highway stretches west toward a glass palace none of them have seen before. Somewhere nearby, a thinny moans at the edge of existence where reality has nearly worn through. That sound pulls something loose in Roland. He sits his companions down and tells them about a different thinny, and a different time. He was young then, barely past boyhood. He rode into a seaside town called Hambry in Mid-World and met a girl named Susan Delgado. He loved her. He also had a job to do. Alongside his old friends Cuthbert and Alain, Roland was sent to spy on the followers of John Farson, a warlord gathering strength to break the world. At the center of it all sat a glass sphere called Maerlyn's Grapefruit, a seeing device that showed its users terrible things and bent their minds toward ruin. The story Roland tells is one of first love, betrayal, and the war that ended Mid-World as it had always been known.
Genres: science-fiction-fantasy, adventure, fantasy, epic-fantasy, historical-fantasy
Vibes: dark, epic, introspective, melancholic, suspenseful
Tropes: coming-of-age, flashback-narrative, found-family, star-crossed-lovers
Setting: Topeka, Kansas, Mid-World, Hambry, Glass Palace
Period: Alternate World, Post-Apocalyptic
896 pages · Paperback · New English Library
Content warnings: death, violence, war