I have just finished The Road to The Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King’s Magnum Opus or as I want to call it, The Dark Tower 8. Let me explain.

The Road to the Dark Tower is not a continuation to the 7 books King has written but it’s still the thing to read after you have finished The Dark Tower 7. Bev Vincent has done a tremendous job in reading all 7 books and all books and short stories that are connected to The Dark Tower series. He has then put all the info in this book. First you get a summary about all 7 books. No, summary isn’t the right word for it. A summary is something that you can find on the back of a book but what we get there are so much more. Bev has gone through all the books and besides a summary he has also put down he’s own thoughts to connections and other important things that he has noticed while reading the books. Some of it you go “Yeah, I saw that” to and other you are totally clueless to until he spells them out to you. King himself has commented the books with these words “opens doors to Roland’s world that not even I know existed” and it really can’t be said better!

But there’s more. As I mentioned earlier Bev has taken a look at all the connections to other books by King. Each of the books with connections has it’s own chapter in the book and the connections are explained and put in perspective. Some are more vague then others though.

All the main characters are documented extremely well in a chapter where we get all the info we possible need and some about all the main characters.

There is also a time line for both the fictional and real world connected to The Dark Tower. In the time line for the real world we get the history of everything that is connected to The Dark Tower. When King wrote what and when it was published and so on. In the fictional time line we get the history of Roland’s ka-tet and all the event that took place during the saga listed in chronological order.

Along with other info we also get a Mid-World glossary where a lot of strange words are explained as well as a list of important web sites. I was very pleased to se my own listed there.

All in all The Road to The Dark Tower has everything you possible need to know about The Dark Tower series. It’s very similar to Robin Furth’s book The Dark Tower Concordance with the difference that where Robin’s book is more like a dictionary Bev’s book is more like a discussion (or a friendly talk) with the reader. It’s a very easy and relaxed read.

So, as you might have guessed by my alternative title to the book at the beginning of the review I think that The Road to The Dark Tower is a book that you have to read after you have finished the 7 books in the series. But please don’t read it before you have finished all 7 parts. It’s crawling with spoilers.

If you loved the series you’ll find some new events of connections that you didn’t know about (I can promise you that you didn’t catch all that Bev did) and if you didn’t like the series I bet you’ll appreciate it more after you have gotten a little inside info about the story.

There is only one thing that that I didn’t like about The Road to The Dark Tower. It’s the endnotes. They are placed at the end of each chapter and that results in a lot of flipping back and forward. If I get to decide they would have been placed at the bottom of each page.

OK, I’m done. Go out and get the book if you haven’t already!

If you want to comment or discuss this review, please mail me.