The Drawing of the Three
core novel 1987 The Dark Tower
Record
| First published | 1987 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.24 (300,472 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 401 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780452262140 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Stephen King's second Dark Tower novel opens with Roland Deschain badly injured on a beach after an encounter with a monstrous lobster-like creature. As he recovers, he finds three mysterious doors along the shoreline, each opening onto a different moment in twentieth-century New York City and each holding a person Roland needs for his quest toward the Dark Tower. Through the first door he draws Eddie Dean, a young man caught up in a dangerous drug-smuggling scheme; through the second he draws Odetta Holmes, a civil rights activist whose mind harbors a second, violent personality; and the third door connects him to a disturbed man whose actions prove unexpectedly pivotal to the others' fates.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Dark Tower
- Series: The Dark Tower core; position 2 of 8 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Stephen King
Awards (verified)
- Locus Award (Fantasy Novel (reader poll)), 1988: finalist; 16th place in the 1988 Locus poll.
Notes
- From the series record (The Dark Tower): A dark fantasy/Western/horror/science-fiction blend, admitted as fantasy per critical/marketing consensus, the same transparency pattern applied to Dragonriders of Pern, The Book of the New Sun, and The Locked Tomb. The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) is an interstitial 'Dark Tower IV.5' set between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla -- registered Core (not Expanded) since King himself numbers it as part of the 8-book main sequence, unlike ACOTAR's interstitial novella.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Dark Tower: position 2 of 8: previous The Gunslinger (1982) · next The Waste Lands (1991)
Sources
- Wikipedia - The Dark Tower (series)
- StephenKing.com - The Dark Tower
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drawing_of_the_Three
- sfadb - Stephen King Awards
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