The Dark Tower series - Stephen King

The Dark Tower is a series of seven books written by American author Stephen King between 1970 and 2004. The Dark Tower series incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy fiction, science fantasy, horror and western elements. They describe a gunslinger's quest toward a Dark Tower whose nature the books call both physical and metaphorical. Stephen King has described the series as his magnum opus; besides the seven novels that compose the Dark Tower series proper, many of his other books relate to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the Dark Tower series progresses. The series was chiefly inspired by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, whose full text was included in the final volume's appendix. In the preface to the revised 2003 edition of The Gunslinger, King also identifies The Lord of the Rings, the Arthurian Legend, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as inspirations. He identifies Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" character as one of the major inspirations for Roland. King's style of location names in the series, such as Mid-World, and his development of a unique language abstract to our own, are also influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien's work.