Hi everyone, Robbie here. I'm excited to announce my debut horror novel, Conquest, is out and available now, both in e-book and physical format. Here's a short description. Tensions are running high in the small mountain town of Conquest, Idaho.
Newly elected Sheriff Heather Hill is on one side, toxic and corrupt Mayor J.H. Beater on the other, a standoff in a culture war. With a wildfire approaching, battle lines begin to form. As the Cold War heats up, Heather and J.H.
are at each other's throats, but they have more to worry about than the fire. The pack has arrived in Conquest. Around this gang of bestial shapeshifters, they are hungry and eager to show their dominance. Conquest makes a perfect target.
Now Heather, J.H., and the people of Conquest must fight for survival as blood and ash fill the streets. It's a great book for fans of Stephen King or bloody werewolf stories, and I encourage any fans of horror to check it out. The link to purchase it is in the show notes or can be found on my website, Robnorman.com. I've worked very hard on it and I'd love for you to check it out.
Hello everyone, I'm Roby Norman, and this is Serial Finances, the podcast for fans of everything. Welcome. Today I am joined by Matt Hame to talk about The Gunslinger by Stephen King, the first book of the Dark Tower series. We talk about if we like Roland as a person, whether the book satisfies us on its own rather than as a piece of a longer series, and whether we're bothered by the 2003 revisions that changed some of the finer details of the novel.
We plan on working our way through the whole series, and we'd love for you to read along with us. It was a great time talking to Matt, as always, onto the discussion. Hello everyone, I'm here once again with Matt Hame to talk about some extraordinarily long book series. That's the series is long, but this particular book is not.
This book is not, but don't worry, it will get there very quickly. Zero to 100 real fast. We are talking about the Dark Tower series, starting our journey with Roland, the last gunslinger, in book one, which is the last gunslinger, or the gunslinger, just the gunslinger, but it is the last gunslinger. But whatever, we're gonna get all the 50 different names for Roland as we go.
Dark Tower series, Stephen King, probably the least read Stephen King thing, I would guess. Probably, because Stephen King generally does one-off books, so it's not unusual for him to... People have read those and they're like, I'm done, this is good, I don't need any more. Whereas this series, one of the things we're gonna get into in this book is this book is very much not a whole book.
I mean, it is, it is, it's the beginning. It is the first step of a journey, and I think that's, I mean, even then, it is still not, it's a very atypical Stephen King story. It is not, it is not even, it doesn't even adhere to a single genre, and the Dark Tower series in general doesn't. It flits about, it's strange, it has, it doesn't really, it's aimless in a certain way, because Roland is aimless.
He doesn't, like this, the arc of this book is really just Roland knowing how to get, like learning how to get to the Dark Tower. Like that's, like, it is, you know, it has the sentence, it has the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. And, you know, it is, I think that that's starting line of any Stephen King novel, and one of my favorites of any novels, but the man in black isn't, the man in black is not, he is, I think it is, it is what Roland is pursuing, he is what Roland is pursuing in this book, but in the long run, the man in black is not that important. He is just a pawn, like all these characters are pawns.
They're all, none of them are important. I think that's what we really are learning, you know, that nothing, none of these people that Roland is dealing with are essential. None of them matter. Roland barely matters.
Like Roland really doesn't. You know, I think that that meeting at the end with the man in black, with Flagg, with whatever name you wanna call him, that is what he's... I call him Walter because it reminds me of the Big Lebowski. Yeah.
I mean, he has, again, like Roland has a bunch of names, the man in black, Flagg, has, I don't know, how many, how much Stephen King have you read in general, Matt? Not a lot. I think I've read a couple books before this, and they were the shorter ones. I've seen a lot of movies based on his work, but I've actually read this book and the next book before, and then I got distracted and never finished the actual series.
Yeah, they're, I mean, they're not, they're not easy, I would say. No. Yeah, well, it's not that the language is particularly complex. I wouldn't say, oh yeah, this is a college level reading thing.
In some cases it is, but a lot of it is one of the fantasy tropes, a lot of made up words, because for those of you who have not read the book, this takes place on a world that is similar to ours, but apparently far in the future. For example, one of their classic melodies is Hey Jude, which I guess Stephen King had a thing for. They talk about that a lot. And a lot of what's happened, it's basically gone from, at one point, Roland, we found out grew up in what I call a feudal society where there are like lords and, you know, justice is swift and, you know, everyone's pledging fealty to one another.
And then Roland, throughout the rest of the book, is in a very Wild West kind of area, but it's also fantasy because there's magic and spirits and those sorts of things. So it's a very strange universe. So it does really transcend genre. It's not something that you can put your mind in one phase.
Like, oh, I'm reading a fantasy book. I'm prepared for it. Blank. It's like, no, no, this this is gonna be a lot of different things thrown together.
But the biggest issue I have with it stems out of that is that everything we hear is from Roland's perspective. It's either something that's happening to him right now or a memory or part of a story he's telling somebody else. And that can lead to things being very confusing. I know a lot of authors and books and movies will have a character that knows nothing, so that another character will have to explain things to them, and then we as the audience get that explained to us.
And that does not happen very often. You go through a lot of this book just being blind and having to pick out things here and there that you're like, oh, okay, that explains this. Yeah, it's not, it's not particularly concerned with making sure you understand what everything means. It doesn't really care.
And I don't like it, that changes a little, I think as we go on, but it's still never the primary concern of, of the Dark Tower series because you know, you learn, you learn through context clues, what a lot of the like the words and the vocab, the language that Roland uses, like cotets and like the, the, the, the lingo of this world, the world that has moved on. But it's never spell stuff out for you. Like, yeah, Jake shows up and Roland tells him a couple stories because Jake's from our world or at least an approximation of our world. And you learn a little bit that way, but Roland does know most of this, like Roland is very knowledgeable, not because he's smart, but because he's been around for a long time.
Yeah, he has wisdom, not intelligence. That's one thing they go into, especially when they flashback on Roland's youth is that he is not the smart one. He is just the stubborn one. Right.
He is just the one who's, who has the most will. He has the, the, the, the will to, to push through anything. And that's largely, I think I even took that, where's that quote I had, Morals may always be beyond you. You are not quick, like Huth murder Benesh boy.
That's all right though. It will make you formidable. And it's, they talk a lot about, he's not the quick one. And it's, and, you know, the only reason he becomes a gunslinger in the first place, he challenges a court because he's angry.
He's angry. He just found out that his mom is now mistress to this sorcerer guy that, so basically he's like, oh, you're not gonna get to my dad. I'm gonna become a gunslinger and put a stop to this. I can, I need the power.
I need the guns. I need, I need authority to take care of this problem. My father won't. So I'll, I'll throw a hawk at a dude until I win a fight.
Yeah, that seems like a really cheap way to win and also really mean to the hawk. But, you know, I guess that's just the world they live in. That was, it's not a nice world, Matt. I don't know if you've picked up on that.
If you've picked up on this, uh, this world. I mean it's this book started out as, I mean, I think I don't know if you've read, I don't know if your edition has the foreword or the introduction, the numerous multiple It's desolate. You know, people are... it's subsistence living.
It is just making enough to keep going. And I think this is just the place in the world where it is... the end is plain. It is very clear where, that the world is ended.
They are just hanging on. And I think there is an order of a type in that town. I think there is largely a kind of communal agreement to follow, to, like, Hey, here, we have, they have economy. They have a church.
They have, they have a certain type of order, but I think it is very fragile, because it's not... there's not very many people, probably because a lot of people have died over... there's probably been attrition, and people have just kind of either died or tried to go somewhere else, looking for, you know, it is sort of an old west ghost town. People are looking for, left looking for something more than, you know, nothing, which is what is there.
Well, I was just going to say, I wonder if King's thought here was that, oh, we need to show how Roland is moving outward from civilization. Like, he came from a fairly civilized place. It was kind of backwards, socially and technologically, but it was better than here. So as Roland is tracking the man in black out to wherever he is going, he has to move out of civilization to this place where, you know, things...
it's barely even a town anymore. And then he has to move out to where there's just a waystation. He's very slowly, completely leaving civilization, and going past an area that could be considered civilization. I mean, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be somewhere out in the, in the southwest, at the mission Joshua trees.
So I think that's the idea of where he was in King's mind. Yeah, and it, it's not, yeah, and they talk about the fall of Gilead, which is where he, he was the feudal society. So the king, does that the same name as the place in, um, yes, in Mayseville, I believe. I believe it is.
I mean, it's an old name. It is an old Arthurian kind of mythological feudal name. Um, but yeah, Gilead fell. So, and we don't know, we know it's vaguely alluded to like rebels and, you know, his, his father was the leader.
Uh, I don't know if he, he wasn't necessarily a king, but he was the, the. He's the lord. He's probably a minor noble. Yeah.
I assume the people rose up. Yeah, we don't really know, but Gilead fell. So that place, whatever is there is not, is not what, you know, what the gunslinger knew as a child, um, even though we don't know how long it's been, you know, we don't know how old Roland is, you know, he's an adult. He says it's been about 12 years.
He's been tracking the man in black, so it's at least that long. Yeah, but the King has erased a lot of, in the revised edition, he erased a lot of the time, you know, a lot of the how old is Roland? When was he a kid? A lot of those things.
It's very much like he is, he's erased a lot of the concrete numbers and made it much more vague. And because as the series goes on, you know, it is, Roland could be, you know, he might, he might be hundreds of years old. It's hard to say at some point, like they allude to him being like this immortal, always figure that isn't that is like almost cursed to do this. Um, but it's the side of the world it's in civilizations.
I think still exist somewhere in this world. Um, but they are, I think they are all away. Everyone is kind of aware that the world has moved on and even at, even the civilizations of, you know, whatever they are, are still affected by it because the world itself is just not what it was there. And we don't really, again, the novel doesn't tell us what that means.
You know, it doesn't say, oh, the world's moved on. And, but what does that mean? Does it mean like plants don't grow anymore? Animals are dead?
The world is falling apart or, or, you know, people are just like, it, it doesn't mean anything. It just means the world, like it gets a little bit more, I think solid as we move through the series. But in this first book, it's just kind of an ominous thing that hangs over everything else. There's not, they talk about true threads a couple of times.
And, uh, and in true threads, like implying like genetics, like, like, because they talk about what is it, an animal or something? They talk about the animal. That's what it is. It's the, uh, the donkey, right.
That Roland has, and he's taking the first guy he meets in the desert, the farmer. Oh yeah. Because he's talking about, yeah, it has a true thread running through it. And the farmer is kind of impressed that it's not, which means basically it's not inbred.
It is, it is, it is a relatively, uh, sound animal. It doesn't have two heads or five legs or something. And they imply they talk about that a couple of times. And I think they're even like, I want to say that there's some degradation of technology is also part of the fact the world's gone is like, they, you know, we have the guns that Roland carries are passed down from his father and they're incredibly ancient and yet somehow still work.
I mean, uh, metal fatigue is like anything else. I mean, they're magic. Yeah. Basically they're magic.
Um, but I think that's the thing is part of the world moving on is the fact that I think that this world is built upon our technology. It is built upon technology of our world that is now degraded. And I think there is some kind there. I think there is some sort of fear of radiation built in here.
It feels and fear of old. And, and the, like, I feel like that is implied in some, especially with the slow mutants. Yeah, I think they are, you know, they go down in these weird subway tunnels and mine carts and stuff. And I think it is implied.
We're supposed to have this fear of, of radiation, of nuclear nuclear technology, of any of that. That's probably how the world ended. Some kind of nuclear meltdown. Yeah, exactly.
We don't really know. Um, do you like Roland? I don't know. I feel like it's hard to like someone who has grown up in an environment so different from our own because there are times, uh, actually he makes a really good point at one time.
Uh, he's, uh, is, he's talking to his dad, I think. And the difference between something that is moral and something that is, he doesn't say ethical. He says something else or it's right. Uh, he's asking whether he wants to see the cook that he turned in for, uh, treason, uh, you know, be executed.
And he basically says that Roland, your job will be as a gunslinger to mete out. He didn't call it justice, but do what you have to do. So it's almost as if, uh, Roland is not, you know, a lawbringer. He is, I don't know what code the gunslinger supposedly adhere to.
I mean, he straight up murders that entire town, uh, at all when they come after him, which, you know, it's probably self-defense, but maybe he could have just left earlier. I mean, he's an okay guy, but he's obviously suffering from, uh, basically the addiction. He's got this quest he's on. He's willing to destroy everything in his way, which is not a great way to live.
So I can't say I like him, but I understand him. Yeah. And I, and that's, I, I don't, I do like Roland. I, I do, I don't.
He's not a character as a person, as a character. I don't, I do not like him. I don't know if I, I find him very compelling as a person. I would not say he's like, he's definitely not a good person.
Um, I don't think you can be a good person when you're so compelled by a single, single obsessive thing, you know, and, and it is a quest, you know, that is the thing that it is. And I think it is like a quest in the very, in the very archetypal type of something that must be done. And I like what you said earlier about what you just said about him talking to his father, you know, you, how, how, what the code is and it's not necessarily, it's not necessarily doing the right thing. It is doing the thing that must be done.
And that, you know, and I, the dark tower is the hinge upon which the world works. And the world has moved on. And I feel like we are, Roland is compelled to go to the dark tower because he needs to make the world whole again. I think.
I don't know if he knows that or not. I think he thinks the dark tower is the solution to all of these. Because it's either going to either fix the world or at the very least, stop the bad things that are happening. Right.
And it's, it doesn't, everything else is in service to that. It doesn't matter. They're in like, that is, and it is, you know, it is, I think the decision in which this book is hinged as well is his decision to sacrifice Jake is his decision to let him die and instead go after the man in black Of course, how foolish of they would be to make a movie like that. It's like, you know, like, it's one of those productions like Indiana Jones 5 where they talk about making it for so long and then they never did.
Well, yeah, because this does not lend itself to a movie. This may be an epic like Game of Thrones HBO miniseries or series, I guess. But yeah, you're not gonna make this into a film. I did not see that movie.
I don't really want to. I like the casting of Idris Elba as Roland, and I like Matthew McConaughey as Martin or Flag, Man in Black. I think those are both great casting decisions, but there's nothing that could happen in an hour and a half movie that would make me go see it. That is not what The Dark Tower is.
It would require a lot of time, and I don't frankly, I don't need it to be a television show or a movie. It doesn't need to be. It's fine the way it is. Not everything has to be a...
Some things are unadaptable, and that's fine. I don't need it to be, I don't need to see it on screen. I can just read it again. What the hell are we talking about?
Roland is not, he becomes, he becomes more, I think he becomes more likable as we go on. I think we empathize more with him. Yeah, you see where he came from and the kind of person he was, and they had to become in order to... Because the thing about this book is, we never find out why he wants the tower.
Like you said earlier, we found out that he was brought up in this, and then we find out later on that, oh, that civilization fell, and now he's after the tower. He's fallen to the Man in Black. Because the Man in Black knows something about the tower. That's all we know about Roland.
So it's hard to like him too much. It's hard to dislike him too much because all we know is he has this one goal in mind, and that's what he's working on. Yeah, I think because he is so single-minded towards this quest, he becomes compelling because he's such this combination of, you know, the man with no name, and Arthur, and like a bunch of mythical archetypes combined together. He is compelling.
He's not a good person. He literally lets a child die in this in the book. It's hard to defend that decision. It's very much like, oh yeah, he grew to take care of this kid, and they traveled together, and the kid sacrificed for him, and he just let him die because he had a choice, and he chose the Man in Black.
I mean, in a purely utilitarian perspective, Jake was gonna die at the way station. He would have died to the weird sex spirit in the woods. So really, Roland already contained, already had Jake's life in his hands. He's just like, well, I'm not gonna save you this time, kid.
Sorry. I mean, that doesn't make it any much better. No, no. I mean, no, I mean, that's, but that's how Roland has to be in the world.
That's, I mean, that's the, it's this kind of place it is. That's this kind of where the world is, you know. He has to, like, yeah, I have to sacrifice Jake in the mountain. And I think that is a, and despite the fact that King talked about how he doesn't necessarily like see eye-to-eye with Lord of the Rings, I think there are very clear comparisons in the journey of Roland, like especially when they go into the mountain and they lose a person and there's monsters down there.
Like, it's very, they're still very kind of typical fantasy quest things happening. Right, the hero's journey. Right. It's, but it's also, go ahead.
I was gonna say, it's very much an American version of basically what Lord of the Rings is, which is a very European journey. Because when you think about it, Lord of the Rings takes place in a very pastoral, old, semi-feudal society. And then that's kind of where Roland's story starts out. And then it becomes like an old West.
And rather than being a group of people working together to survive or to accomplish something, Roland is basically by himself. He takes up Jake for a little while, but Jake is more of a burden than help. So it becomes a very American thing to think, oh no, I'm in this for myself, you know, for some reason that has been buried into the American psyche. That's how we are.
You have to be able to take care of yourself in all situations. You don't ever get to rely on anyone else. And I honestly prefer the Lord of the Rings way. It's like, look, you will have people who will help you.
You don't have to sacrifice everything to the one goal and be on your own forever. Well, lucky for you, man. Roland is, as we go, is forced to keep company. You know, he is, he's forced to keep company, is forced to create a catet, as he says.
It is, he is rejoined by multiple people and has to, has to deal with them and their, their problems and their limitations because it is, that is how he has to get to the Dark Tower. And that is hinted at in the final scene, you know, with the tarot reading. And he talks about the people that would join him and the life and the death that are not his. And when this was written, like you said, Stephen King didn't know what any of that meant.
He's like, yep, there's gonna be someone and they're gonna be a prisoner. There's gonna be somebody else that's gonna be in a wheelchair. That's about all I know. Yeah.
And I want to talk about this is, it's an interesting thing that happened. It doesn't happen a lot in fiction, is that this is the revised edition. This is, this is longer and easier to read. It makes the, King's head, it was hard to read, so he cleaned up the prose to a certain extent, I think.
Made it a little bit simpler to read, but also took out a lot of details that don't line up with the later novels anymore. Does that bother you at all? Not really. I mean, I know we're all suffering from prequel syndrome when we hear something like that.
But with books, I feel like it's slightly different. I do, the idea that he took a lot of concrete numbers out of like, oh, this happened this many years ago, sort of thing. That bothers me to a certain extent because then he's changing how the story worked. But this, the idea that he went and cleaned up the prose, that is more akin to, oh, they're re-releasing Star Trek on Blu-ray and they redid a lot of the effects.
It's like, oh, because you're better at this now, you just made it flow a little smoother kind of thing. That I don't worry about. But if he took some information out because he's like, oh, you know, I contradict this later. I feel like that, I don't know, that, it doesn't make me not want to read it, but it makes me question a lot more what's going on.
It's, it's a, it's a thing that I think is more relevant today than it is back then. And like, yeah, you were the, I've seen the comparison online to George Lucas tinkering with the original Star Wars movies and adding things and changing things and having slight edits and having characters say slightly different words at different times. And I, I don't know, I disagree. I think one, it's Stephen King's book.
He owns it. He can do whatever he wants to it. And also it's, it's, those versions of the book are still out there. They're not, you can easily, today it's quite easy to find if you really want to go read the older, harder to read, less coherent version of a book.
I mean, but originally, the, like this, the gunslinger, this book was released in multiple parts in like in pulp magazines and fiction writing and like then compiled into a book and then much later was turned into a series, you know? And I think King had that in mind, but he didn't have any, like, he didn't know, he says it himself. I didn't know what was going to happen after this. I didn't really, it was all like just vague enough, vague memories.
And then he's like, I wanted to continue this series. So he revised it and wrote it, added, added more detail to it, added more story and changed a lot of it. Made things a little bit more vague to line up with the later novels. And it's like patch notes sort of, you know, it's, it's someone referenced that.
I was reading about how they, they're, you know, with digital books with eBooks now, you can very quickly change a book, revise it either to correct problems or to change it even. And it's a weird thing. I don't think, I think in, because publishing is such like this archaic process where you're like, you're literally, you know, we've been printing books for 500 years now. It's a little strange to have it change and it doesn't happen very often because of the problem, because publishing is so a slow process.
But King has done it multiple times because the sand, he's revised the sand, he's added it to it and he's revised this. I'm sure there's other things he's, he's touched probably. I don't know if there's, it might not be, but those, at least those two, he's definitely substantially changed this book and the sand. I don't think the sand is better for it, but.
Because it makes it like a million pages longer. There's more information in you. This is the director I'm in any fictional world, and it's the thing I love about it, and it's the thing I want, I try and emulate if I ever write fiction or write fiction with magic, or if I'm even, you know, running a tabletop game that uses magic. There is cost to magic.
Uh, sometimes a small cost, just like you feel sick, or you feel, you know, you, you, you pass unconscious, you know, there's a physical ailment, or in the end, he is exposed to these visions and a terror reading from the Man in Black, and he loses 10 years. He sleeps for 10 years. He loses time. And there's cost.
Whenever, and that's a, I think a theme that runs through all the Dark Tower series is, you know, cost, is that if you want something, you have to pay. Roland wants to get something, he's going to have to pay for it. To meet, to talk to the Man in Black, he has to pay the Jake's life. And then, even after that, he has to pay 10 years of his life are gone, after just because of him talking to the Man in Black.
Now he knows more than he knew before. That knowledge comes with a price. The knowledge comes with a price. He, to, to become a gunslinger in the first place, he has to pay with the life of his hawk, his friend, he says.
He has befriended this hawk, and he's friends with David the hawk. And to become a gunslinger, he has to pay that sacrifice. And you know, I think it is a clear foreshadowing of him doing the same with Jake. And he does it without hesitation.
He's, I, I will pay, I will pay this hawk's life, And I will pay Jake's life. They are, in the end, inessential to me completing this quest. And that cost, you know, the magic has a cost. Decisions have a cost.
Everything has a cost. It's the thing that runs through everything, and I love it. It's great. Um, I, I love magic.
It works perfectly for this. And, and also, the magic in this book and in the series are always intertwined with technology. You know, because yeah, if you live in a society like they do, you know, one can't, it doesn't seem that different from the other. Mm-hmm, who's, whose quote is that, Matt?
I always forget, I don't know if you know. Oh, Arthur C. Clarke. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
There you go, Arthur C. Clarke. And it was one of the, you know, the ABCs of, of science fiction. What about Ray Bradbury?
I'm aware of his work. Even though if you call him a sci-fi author, he might punch you in the face. Uh, I think Ray Bradbury would take it in stride. He's a, he's a pretty agreeable guy.
Um, but it's, it is always intertwined with technology in the Dark Tower series because it is, they, this, this civilization, this world is so old that they've developed advanced technology and then forgotten it. And then that technology still exists in certain places, and it's still, I think Roland knows about some of it. I think Roland understands some of the technology because he is the elite, you know, he was a noble, but the rabble, they don't know anything. You know, it's, it's like one of those things where, oh, this far in the future, only the, uh, you know, this kind of knowledge is kept secret by those in power.
Yeah, they, they're, they, he, he talks about, and that's the other thing, the, uh, the fact that he is a noble, the fact that he is, uh, an educated, he's an educated knight, basically, even though he is not a smart man. And the fact that he, he knows, you know, they have their own language, which another clear parallel to kind of the elves and their, and the elven speak and things like that. Oh, yeah, the high speech is supposed to be English. I don't, I don't think we know really what high speech is technically supposed to be, but it, it's supposed to be related to a language we have seen, or that exists today, because, uh, you know, he says that one of the, when they get to the train station, uh, towards the end, that one of the signs is legible in a weird font of high speech or whatever it is.
Right. It is a connection to this whole world, to the technology too. And I think that is another clear, like, hey, it is, he is, he is the last gunslinger. He is this last line of this weird connection to the past, to this weird nobility.
Um, you know, and the guns are this extension of that, you know, the, his father's guns that they're big and heady, and this, the clearest connection to this old world, to this technology. And he carries them all the time. He is a gun, you know, Roland is that, is the, you know, because he's so skilled at gunfighting, he is, he is the gunslinger, and he is inextricably connected to those weapons. And those weapons are just a clear symbol for the past and for, for technology and magic.
They are, because they are magic, sort of, you know, they, you can't, you can't disconnect that. You can't disconnect the technology and the magic elements. They're the same in a lot of ways. Um, there's not a lot of King references in this book.
To his other novels, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, that is a favorite thing of his. I mean, it's not, in most of his non-Dark Tower books, they are Easter eggs.
They don't matter. You know, like he'll reference other towns in Maine where the things happened, or, you know, obliquely reference, like, yeah, they'll talk about the fact that, you know, about Carrie. Like they'll, they'll reference the fact that, you know, a prom exploded basically in a, in a little, in a girl, a girl ended up, uh, you know, killing a bunch of people with a, at a prom. But it's always like, hey, it happened.
You know, you know, these worlds happened in the same kind of place, but you don't need to know it about it to understand the, the ideas of what's happening in this current book you're reading most of the time. In the Dark Tower series, as we go on, it becomes heavier and heavier and heavier. And I'm really interested to see how you react to it through these things that, how, how it impacts you because you haven't read most of his other books that will be, will, will, you know, The Stand factors heavily, Salem's Lot, uh, The Shining. There's, you know, numerous other books that are referenced that are less important, but are still kind of talked about in this.
But this book is basically on its own. It really doesn't talk about any other Stephen King stuff, aside from The Man in Black. You know, The Man in Black is in... Which is, sorry, that's just kind of interesting when you think about it.
Oh, this book takes place across multiple universes. You think at least one of those would be the universe where his other books take place. And that's, that's what we'll explore. The Man in Black is kind of the thread, is the thread, is the true thread, you might say, between all these things because, um, Flagg, Martin, Walter, they all...
He Merlin, Merlin, he travels through a lot of Stephen King books and is kind of always at the edges of a lot of them. He's just kind of the ultimate evil in a lot of ways, even though he's not really. He's a, he's a, he's powerful, but I don't want to, I would not call him ultimate evil because of, I don't know, that's an interesting, that's an, it's an interesting through line between a lot of Stephen King books, is like the question of evil and if it, it has a place in a, in a creature, in a thing, in a man, in a person. Could it, can it, or is, is anyone, and that's the, I think Man in Black is the ultimate question, is like, is he just an, is he evil or is he a person?
Well, or is he like the tool of a, a greater being? Yeah, which we'll see. Um, but there's, there's, there's not a lot of greater, you know, this book is, is the, is the shortest, is the tightest in a lot of ways because it doesn't engage in a lot of worldbuilding as the other books will as we go on, as they get longer and longer and longer, and we see more and more and more of this world and of all the characters in it and get more of their, I mean, obviously as you add more characters, you're going to get a longer book because you're going to probably explore them. Um, but, you know, when we talked, we talked about Harry Potter, we ended up liking the longest books the most in general.
Well, yeah, because, uh, I think especially between the two of us, we enjoy things where we get to know a little bit more of the backstory of the why of things. I mean, if you enjoy comic books at all, I feel like that's the kind of person you are for the most part. So we'll see. I, and it's just interesting as we go to see, because I don't know, I'm