From California. Currently reading all the DT related novels. Just finished IT this evening...pretty intense. I have no idea how Stephen King comes up with this stuff and can so vividly put pen to paper.
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Welcome to the site, Andrew.
(I've just moved your thread into the General Discussion & Questions area of the Dark Tower forum.)
Thank you very much
I dunno...I guess if you try hard enough, you connect the puzzle pieces anyway you like to try to make connections. I guess the one disadvantage of reading the DT books first before any other is you realize that the main characters and their respective plots from other books, are just sub characters and sub plots to Roland's journey. And you learn that what Roland does or doesn't do sometimes has a ripple effect throughout other levels. I know when I finished the dark tower I had a lot of questions. Such as if guys like Randall Flagg are aware that Roland has been caught in this wheel for a while, is he always going to encounter the same hurdles in his journey or do those change too? Has the Crimson King always been imprisoned in the tower? Based on his palaver with Randall on the western sea, its understood that when he goes through the tarrot cards, that might dictate who Roland does his journey with.
I just know when I read the plane crash scene in Insomnia, that the connections with Patrick Danville drawing a picture of Roland, the plane crash, then all the sudden Roland being back in the desert stood out to me like a sore thumb...that maybe somehow these events signify something bigger that is going on in other worlds. Maybe Roland's triumphs and failures in his own quest depend sometimes on the heroics of "small" characters like Ralph Roberts from Insomnia. I also couldn't help but see similarities in the characters from IT and DT. Big Bill was like Roland....tall, lanky, resourceful, the voice of reason and practicality....always knew what to do. Richie Tozier was a lot like Eddie Dean. Beverly was a lot like Susannah...especially in the sense how she was the best with the slingshot just like Susannah was the best with the orizas. Jake was a lot like Ben. The cast from IT started forgetting about what they had done just like the events started fading to Susannah at the end of DT. I think SK is unbelievably brilliant and even though I know a lot of my theories are far fetched, I can't help but wonder what SK is thinking when he drafts these stories and characters from thin air
When I read the series, a few years ago, I came away with an astonishment that the series seemed to link ALL his books together. I won't say I loved the DT series, because I didn't, but even I fall into the "essential read" camp now. Stick around on here and you will see so many links in so many of his works it makes you look at all he's ever written in a whole new light