Is anybody else excited about the new Dark Tower book that's coming out next month? And any general fans of this series? I LOVE the Dark Tower series. They're my second favorite fantasy books after LOTR. They're supposed to be making it into a series on HBO like Game of Thrones with Ron Howard producing. Ron Howard is a little too family friendly IMO, it's too bad it's not Frank Darabont.

Can't say I've read it, but I really want to.

I read the first two and got a quarter way into the third. Is this the last one of the series?

Loved Wizards of Glass (I think that was the fourth book), as well as the first two. Didn't enjoy the third or the fifth books quite as much.

Theres always that book in a series that has Middle Book Syndrome. Lol.

Nope. There are 7 total. The 8th will be in between 4 and 5.

The series is already finished, this new one takes place in between the fourth and fifth books and is kind of a side story. So far the early reviews have been really good though.

This series is really good. I love how almost all King's books tie into this one. The first book is a little tough to get through (it was the first book he ever wrote, though it was published later), but immediately starting with the second one it's awesome. The premise is like this: Everything is one small part of something larger. Our planet is just one planet in a larger solar system. Our solar system is just one of billions in a much larger galaxy. The Milky Way is just one galaxy in a much larger universe. What happens when you reach the end of the universe? Is it just emptiness or do you find out that our universe is actually just one part of something even larger still? What if the entire universe turned out to be just one tiny atom on a rose growing in a vacant lot? Every single atom on that rose contains another tiny universe. The rose is called The Dark Tower, and someone is about to pave over it and build a condo over it. As the rose dies, all the universes contained within start to die too. The barriers between worlds collapse and the worlds start to bleed into each other. Each universe is another of Stephen King's books (The Stand, Salem's Lot, It, etc.). The killer clown from It actually came from one of the other universes. The "dark man" in The Stand is actually a servant of the Dark Tower and exists in all the universes under different names. The main character in the series is a gunslinger named Roland who is on a quest to find the Dark Tower and save it before all the universes are destroyed.

How do #6 and #7 stack up against #4 and #1 (my favorites so far)?

It's hard to give a review without revealin' spoilers, but in #5 a really bad ass character is introduced and he is also in #6 and #7. One of the reasons why #6 was a better book for me was that it was considerably shorter than the rest (other than #1), so if you're a person that likes the length of #1 then #6 will be a good book. If you liked the time jumps that occurred in #2, #6 has a similar situation.

I disliked #7. It felt too rushed and like King wanted to end the series.

#4 is too unique to really compare it to the others. The lengthy flashback makes it an entirely different story.

That's how I thought of our universe. Though we will probably never reach the end of the universe (if there is one), we're just a molecule or atom, and that atom contains trillions of galaxies that contain solar systems that contain planets that contain atoms that contain universes etc. It's too much to think of sometimes.

Awww, I was getting my hopes up that maybe King was going to do an 8th book that condensed all the other 7, but basically picking up from the end of the 7th, so that Roland gets everything he did wrong, right this time around. Was such a bummer ending for me, though I still absolutely adored the entire series.

@Bootysweat: Really, 4th is your favorite? I kind of disliked the 4th one myself, it was almost entirely focused on Rolands time as a young man, and while it was fairly interesting, after a while I got a bit annoyed with it, as I am prone to do when I already know exactly how the story is going to end when the one being told is nothing but a flashback. Now, if the 4th one had been the first one, I might have enjoyed it more, because I wouldn't have known how things were inevitably going to turn out.

My favorite was the...5th one? Where Father Callahan comes into play(I love the massive interconnected storylines of Kings novels. Once you've read all of them two times, if you pick them up a third time, you REAAAAAALLLLY start to notice all sorts of little details that link the book with many others).

I haven't finished Wolves of the Calla yet, it started to drag a bit and I set it aside about halfway through. After hearing some praise for #5 in this thread I'm going to have to give it another chance and continue reading.

I really enjoyed the story of Roland as a young man in Wizards of Glass. I was hoping there would be another book in the series that would continue the story of his past picking up where this one left off.

Wow, a new Dark Tower book after the original 7? (and I guess this 8th book must be a "mid-quel" from what I'm reading)
I've been a fan of the DT series...and I didn't expect there would be an 8th book, I thought Stephen King was finished with the book series...

Tim (aka the Slipperman)

Dark Tower is a series I really really wish I could get into. I've read every single other SK book but can't get past the first DT book...I've got them all because I know one day my brain will kick into gear and I WILL enjoy them...

Emz, the first one is really the worst one. I almost couldn't get through it, and almost everyone I've recommended the books to almost put it down. But once you get through the first book (which is fortunately the shortest of all of them) it immediately gets awesome.

Bootysweat, the only other one I had trouble with was Book 5 too. It was really long, it seemed like a diversion from the main story and I wanted them to get back to the main quest, and after 50 pages I already knew it was going to end with them saving the town. Just get on with it. It does get good in the last 100 pages or so and it turns out to not be a diversion after all, and it's worth it just to get to Book 6 which is one of my favorites.

Wolf bite, I like the 7th book. I agree that certain things were rushed, like the demise of certain villains, but overall I really liked it.

Starwulf, the way I interpretted the ending ***SPOILERS*** (sorry I don't know how to do the spoiler tag thing) There is no universal meaning to everyone's lives. It's different for everyone. Whatever was the most important thing to you, that's what you find in the room at the top of the Dark Tower. For Roland, it was his quest. His quest was more important than his friends, his family, etc. and that's what he found. I think that the ending is saying that until Roland learns to value something else such as his friends, he's going to keep finding his quest and he's doomed to repeat it over and over again. I don't think he was turned back because he wasn't worthy or punished for trying to learn the secrets of the universe, as some people interpret it. I think when he finally gets everything right, he will just find something else at the top of the Tower such as his family and friends. Or, maybe he's doomed to keep repeating the cycle until he learns to just leave well enough alone and not enter the Tower after saving the world.

The DT is my favorite book series of all time...The 2nd book is probably my favorite of the 7. My least favorite were the ones going back to Roland's history, so I'm probably not as exicted about the forthcoming book as I would be if it were in the "present" time. But I'm not really sure how he could pull that off...

OP: where did you hear about the HBO thing? Ron Howard was going to produce a combination TV series (on NBC) plus movies....they were going to alternate, so one season of TV series, then a movie that picks up where it left off, then another TV season, and so on. But Universal pulled out and, from what I understand, so did Howard. But, that was a year or two ago, so I haven't been in the loop lately on what's been happening with the film/tv rights.

Edit: I found http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/10/25/dark-tower-hbo-brian-grazer/ about the show being picked up by HBO. I'm glad to hear that, as I always thought HBO would be much more suitable than a network channel. However, I'm not going to get my hopes up, because various people have been trying to do a tv/film adaptation for decades and it never seems to work out.

Don't know how I feel about this. I loved the Dark Tower books (all of them, even the first) but... I've been kind of quit of that series for a while.

From what I read, it looks like they want Javier Bardem to play ol' long, tall, and ugly himself in the show (should they every decide to make it). But I can't picture him in that role.

The Dark Tower series was my mom's favoite noval series next to the Harry Potter series...to bad she never got a chance to finish both series. I would love to see The Dark Tower series hit HBO or even the big screen---I'd watch it.

I tried to read the series years ago. I loved the first book, but it really lost me around the 3rd or 4th. Never bothered to finish whichever book I was reading. Something about a giant robo-bear. I really didn't like the other main characters he added to it.

Might give it another shot, my dad loves the series and it was a while ago that I tried reading it.

I got about halfway into The Waste Lands and stopped reading them. I read the first three in rapid succession (All in about three weeks), so I was a little overloaded and set it down for a while. After a while I never picked it back up and kinda lost interest in it.

I'll probably finish it sometime soon. Roland is still one of my favorite characters out of any book though.

EDIT: Yeah I got lost about the same time as Feral Guardian. About Shardike(sp?) or something and how the tower had a magnetic pull on everything and made these big line looking things.

I'm working through the seventh book now. It's good, but I don't really like it quite as much as the others. As others have said, some parts of it felt a little rushed, especially the way

LOLWUT?????????

To Google I must go.

I'd forgotten about the new book... now I'm VERY excited again!

Dark Tower is my favourite story / universe ever. I grew up on them - I have a picture of the tower hanging on my wall that I painted in high school

Some bits of the last book didn't sit right with me (e.g. the bit Riverstyx hid under a spoiler tag), although other parts were fantastic. I cried a little at one point while reading the last book, it felt like the end of something massive, and I kind of wanted it to carry on...

It will be interesting if he retains a bit of his Spanish accent. The "High Speech" is not exactly English, nor is the commonly spoken language of Roland's World, right?

Perhaps if the film series ever makes it to Wizards of Glass, we might see the Barony of Mejis and its vaqueros.

Stephen King is a very unpredictable writer, some of his work is absolutely brilliant while the rest is so bad it's almost painful to read.