The Talisman follows a boy named Jack Sawyer who sets out on a quest to find an artifact capable of curing his mother's cancer. It's also the rare King book that veers more into fantasy than horror. It's a collaboration between King and fellow horror luminary Peter Straub. Suffice it to say, you don't want to read those Wendigo scenes while locked away in a remote cabin in the woods. It's also quite possibly the scariest book he's ever written. It's among King's best and most emotionally harrowing novels. Still, we feel this book belongs on any good Stephen King reading list solely because of its quality. Assuming you do read Pet Sematary, there's a fascinating cameo to be found in 1994's Insomnia, a book with a much clearer link to the Dark Tower series. ![]() Pet Sematary's connection to the Dark Tower mythos is pretty tenuous - sort of a "Six Degrees of Roland Deschain" situation. King released a revised version of the novel in 2003, one rewritten to more closely align the story with later sequels. As Roland pursues the mysterious Man in Black across an endless desert, he encounters strange creatures, unholy demons and a boy inexplicably ripped from 20th century America. This is the book that introduces Roland Deschain, last of the fabled line of gunslingers and a man obsessed with finding the fabled Dark Tower and saving his dying world. The Gunslinger is where the Dark Tower saga truly begins. One character in particular, Father Callahan, has a big part to play later in the series. Salem's Lot eventually pays off in a significant way where the Dark Tower books are concerned. It's a story that steadily builds a sense of dread as an intrepid few try to save their idyllic small town from being overrun by vampires. It certainly set the tone for much of King's work to come, focusing equally on supernatural horror and the ordinary, mundane evil that lurks behind closed doors. Salem's Lot is King's second published novel, and after all these years it remains one of his best and most terrifying works. King certainly didn't have any inkling of the full scope of this story when he began it, or how much events in his own life would influence its execution, and it's best appreciated with that perspective in mind. The Dark Tower is a story that grew in the telling. We're proponents of reading these books in more or less the same order they're published. ![]() While the core Dark Tower books are numbered sequentially, it can be much harder to know when and where to branch out to the rest of King's work. Much like with the Star Wars movies, Stephen King fans frequently debate the best order in which to read his Dark Tower-related books. Stephen King's Dark Tower Series: Book Reading Order
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