The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba A Concordance, Volume II is the definitive guide to the many worlds, argots, characters, and cross-references— within Stephen King’s bestselling epic Dark Tower series and among the rest of King's work—that appear in Books V through VII: Wolves of the Calla , Song of Susannah , and The Dark Tower . Includes: -Characters and Genealogies -Magical Objects and Forces -Mid-World and Our World Places -Portals and Magical Places -Mid-, End-, and Our World Maps -Timeline for the Dark Tower Series -Mid-World Dialects -Mid-World Rhymes, Songs, and Prayers -Political and Cultural References -References to Stephen King's Own Work "[An] invaluable aid whenever you want to puzzle out all of the references . . . or find a refresher course on who's good and who's evil." -- "The New York Times" "Furth's concordance anticipates -- and answers -- virtually every question the Constant Reader might come up with." -- "Locus" "I found this overview of In-World, Mid-World, and End-World both entertaining and invaluable. So, I am convinced, will you." -- From the foreword by Stephen King Robin Furth is perhaps the only person around who knows more about the Dark Tower mythos than Stephen King himself, and is the author of The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance . Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch , the short story collection You Like It Darker ( a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale , Billy Summers , If It Bleeds , The Institute , Elevation , The Outsider , Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch , Finders Keepers , and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower , It , Pet Sematary , Doctor Sleep , and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. INTRODUCTION: FOUR CHARACTERS (AND A BUMBLER) IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR: OR, A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY Spoiler's Warning: This Concordance keeps no secrets. Read it only after you have finished all seven of the Dark Tower books. For those of us who have traveled with Roland Deschain from the wastes of the Mohaine Desert to the Castle of the Crimson King and then beyond, to the farthest reaches of End-World, the journey has been a long one, say thankya. For many Constant Readers, it has taken over twenty years; for sai King, the travels have spanned more than thirty. And for Roland, who is able to leap over whole generations in pursuit of his quarry and his quest, the pilgrimage has lasted more than three hundred. Yet as Eddie Dean points out at the beginning of Wolves of the Calla, time is elastic. Despite what we've been told about the accuracy of clocks, no two sixty-second periods are ever identical. Although a minute may move like dried mud while we're waiting or when we're bored, it speeds to the point of invisibility when we're in the throes of change. And what is a novel but a tale of transformation and discovery? Over the course of the Dark Tower series, we witness tremendous transformation, both in our characters' natures and in the parameters of their quest. What began, in The Gunslinger, as the story of one man's obsessive pursuit of a goal becomes, in the final three books of our story, a tale of personal, and universal, redemption. By the time we reach the final page of our saga, we have witnessed so much. Roland, once a lone traveler willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to the achievement of his end, has drawn three companions to him and has trained them to be gunslingers. With his new tet-mates, Roland discovers the Bear-Turtle Beam and follows it to the haunted regions of End-World, where the Dark Tower sits. Along the Path of the Beam, the bonds of khef, which unite his new ka-tet, are tested and prove to be strong. And Roland, always an emotionally reticent man, rediscovers his ability to trust and to love. With this newfound knowledge, he can finally admit, and repent of, all of his previous betrayals. In many ways, the Dark Tower series falls into two parts: the adventures that Roland and his companions have in Mid-World (all of which
