Great book! Great way to open the series. Roland of Gilead is a very fascinating character.

Well, we knew we were in for a weird story by about ten pages in! We’d had enough background to start thinking of the gunslinger’s world as either wild western type or perhaps a fantasy not-Earth-at-all world, and suddenly there’s a piano playing “Hey Jude”!

An interesting ‘not important to the plot but perhaps tells us a bit about the author’s own thoughts’ passing mention – Roland’s vision of himself moving out into our solar system reveals a tenth planet beyond Pluto.

"The man in black fled west across the desert;The gunslinger followed."

And so begins the best set of books I have ever read.Gotta admit, this book didn't grab me the first time around and I gave up after a few pages. But then readin the Green Mile put me back in a King kinda mood, so I went back to it.And I am rather glad......
One thing I grew to love about these books was that subtle sense of "not-quite-right-ness" that King manages to create. Like above, it's clear that this is not our world, but then Roland hears Hey Jude.Or how Jake remembers dying in New York before he came here. I cannot wait for The Crawling Shadow.........

Okay, it ain't the Crawling Shadow no more, apparently, the next DT book will be called Wolves Of The Calla. Which in a way sounds cooler, and the prolouge that's available over on the official Stephen King Web Prescence bodes very well indeed.BUT, according to imdb.com, King had announced plans to write five more books then retire.Now, we can only hope that the final planned three DT books will be included in this five........

Cableface, could you provide a link to the prologue, please? Many thanks.

soitanly, it's over at
http://www.stephenking.com/DT5Prologue.html
Personally I think it's a pain in the arse reading it all off a computer screen, but this IS the Dark Tower, so hey, it's worth it.......

Stand And Be True

Thank you for that. Me, I printed it off!

It's really whetted my appetite for the whole book's release. Anyone know when it's coming out?

Nuts - I just found that it probably won't be released until next year!!

Fancy teasing us with the prologue when we've got to wait so long for the whole thing!

True, but I was over at the official Stephen King Web Prescence, and apparently he has Wolves of the Calla and the next book, Song of Susannah already written, and he's about halfway through the final chapter, simply called The Dark Tower. So there is hope........

My god, it's already over a year since I read the Wolves of the Calla prologue, and we're still waiting. I'm going mad here.....

The Gunslinger is being re-released in June with new material. Details here.