I've been re-reading the various comic books based around Stephen King's The Dark Tower series recently and it has been a delightful journey through a world that has moved on. Sure, it's a series that is indeed dark and full of woe and misfortune, but re-experiencing the wonders and horrors of Mid-Gard with Roland the Gunslinger is in many ways a comforting experience. Now I get the urge to re-read all the books and see how everything squares together.
The brilliance of the Dark Tower involves a rich setting that is many things all at once. It's a dystopian setting set in a far-flung future, but one that is shaped and defined by the magic of the Tower and those of the Outer Dark that oppose it. It involves a society that is part American Wild West, part Medieval England. And at the center of it all is a boy who was forced to become a man far too son and one who lives far longer than he should in service to the Tower.
The irony is not lost on my that I read the books well afternoon my high school days when I was toying with The Gossamer Tower - my series of novels that will probably never get written. It also involved a magical tower sitting at the nexus of all realities and also having it's guardians and defenders serving it. There are a lot of parallels between the two, but I suppose you could say that of many stories involving a multiverse and an axis-mundi sort of concept sitting at the center of things. There's that saying about there being nothing new under the sun after all. And maybe the familiarity of the setting in this regard just further endeared the Dark Tower to me as I first started reading the books.
Once I finish with the comic books that I've invested in, I think I might actually try to schedule time to re-read the actual books and see how that goes. I do miss Roland and his Ka-tet.
Comments
Post a Comment