Here is a fairly complete list of books that have pretty solids tie-ins to the Dark Tower novels (and a couple that don’t, but I like the tie-ins I see there anyway). Okay, that’s completely fair enough and all opinions are valid when it comes to The Tower 🙂 So let’s see what you’re getting yourself into. The books stand beautifully on their own, and in my opinion there is no need at all to have read any other Stephen King books to thoroughly enjoy The Dark Tower. So my main advice here is not to agonise over the decision. However, I found it very satisfying to discover these tie-ins after the fact, rather than priming myself by reading some of the other works first. (Side note: as of writing, I have read 57 of King’s works). I have since read all of the main tie-in novels, and discovered some other nice subtle tie-ins in other books, some of which I may just be making up. THERE IS NO NEED TO ADD ANY BOOKS TO THE SEVEN MAIN DARK TOWER NOVELS!Ĭontroversial, I know. I felt it was a completely self-contained and thoroughly satisfying stand-alone story, and this experience is reflected in my recommendation right here, which is this: I had never read any other Stephen King (as I described here), and I went on to listen to the main Tower novels twice over again before reading any other King works.Ĭlearly I was very content with the story as-written. Why have an extended list?įor those who haven’t been keeping up, I started my Tower journey in the most mundane of ways: by reading the (then) seven main Tower books in order. With that in mind, I thought I’d put in my two cents on the idea of an extended reading list of Tower-related literature. (At the time of writing – June 2020 – it’s not entirely clear that humanity will even get to 2021, but we must live in hope!) She put out a plea to Tower Junkies everywhere to guide her in her quest for the Tower. The host, kim c, has not read the Tower novels and plans to begin her journey at the start of 2021.

I’ve recently started listening to the most excellent The Year of Underrated Stephen King Podcast, which I can highly recommend for truly insightful analyses of the lesser known Stephen King works. Some Constant Readers even insist that all of King’s works ultimately tie in to the Dark Tower!īecause of this, lots of people have come up with lots of different ideas about an extended reading list – the best order in which to read the Dark Tower novels, with the other tie-in novels slipped in between the seven (or eight) main books.

In fact, Bev Vincent’s The Road to the Dark Tower even provides synopses of the key tie-in books and how they relate to the Tower. As regular readers of the Dark Tower novels know, many of Stephen King’s other works tie in to the Tower – either directly or indirectly.

Stephen king the dark tower series