In 1987, Stephen King was at the height of both his powers, and his popularity. In the 13 years and 23 books since Carrie was released, his name had become publishing gold. It, The Shining, The Stand, Salem's Lot: these were books that were going to go down in publishing history. And then, in 1987, King published four novels within a 10-month period, three of them standalone books with something to offer for nearly every potential reader. The Eyes of the Dragon was a young adult fantasy novel; Misery was a literary psychological thriller; The Tommyknockers was a science fiction horror epic. And then there was The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three..

The sequel to The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three seems to have been meant for what King referred to as the "Constant Reader" – those who follow his every published word. It wasn't as if The Gunslinger set the world on fire ( sales figures suggest that it was, on release, one of his lesser-selling books); there would likely have been more fervour for a sequel to something like Firestarter or Salem's Lot. But King didn't, at that point in his career, write sequels – it's taken 36 years for the first to be looming over the hill in the form of Doctor Sleep, the forthcoming follow-up to The Shining – so the Dark Tower series was an anomaly. Where every other novel had the lowest barrier for entry possible, the Dark Tower books relied on the reader having read the others.

The Drawing of the Three picks up the action where The Gunslinger left off – or as near as dammit, after a section ("Argument") that essentially takes the role of those Previously On... bits at the start of TV shows. Roland of Gilead had been chasing the Man In Black across the desert, then they had a little tarot-card reading, Roland fell asleep for 10 years and the Man In Black escaped. Book one was hugely tense and bizarrely structured, a three-act tribute to both Sergio Leone and Tolkien filled with tonal statements of intent: dead towns, displaced children (from "other worlds than these") and a truly evil villain. Book two begins with another such statement, when Roland is attacked by a giant lobster and loses two of the fingers on his right hand. He then wanders in a fever to a beach filled with doors, each of which leads to New York City at various points in its history.

The book, from that point, becomes a "putting together the band" style narrative, with Roland going to three different times in our world and meeting significant characters. The first, Eddie, is a drug smuggler and addict, whose life is saved by Roland; the second is Odetta Holmes, a disabled black civil rights protester with multiple personality disorder; and the third is a red herring, a bad guy rather than team-mate. This is Jack Mort, the man who not only gave Odetta her split personality, but was also the reason that she lost her legs. Jack Mort, it's clear, is another of King's Very Bad Men, one whose actions have wide and far-reaching effects for the Dark Tower series, even as his particular story is neatly dealt with over the course of this single novel.

But this is a book primarily about repercussions. My own relationship with the Dark Tower novels, as I've previously said, happened 30 years after The Gunslinger was first published, and after I'd read everything else King had written. I read the first four Dark Tower novels as if they were one utterly mammoth tome over a period of only a few days. They spilled into each other, so where the first was a strangely-structured wander through vague and hazily ambient storytelling, this is more direct, a very different sort of book. There's even a tonal shift, I feel now, that doesn't jar, but definitely seems to bridge the first to the later books in the series.

Some people will see that as damning. Bridge novels – a term used to describe those books in a series that simply bind the other books together without being readable on their own – are often chastised, but they have a place. And this is a bridge novel, in the truest sense of the word. If you don't know Roland, the loss of his fingers surely means nothing to you; if you don't read the later books, the effects that Mort has on the rest of the series will make him seem as if he's somewhat pointless; and if you don't know who Jake is, the mention of him will mean nothing to you. It picks up threads while setting up new ones, and is pretty impenetrable if you don't know what you're letting yourself in for.

That's the way with the Dark Tower books. They're not casual; they're for King's Constant Readers. They're all about the threads, and how they're tied up. Rereading them is fascinating, because they're so incredibly intricate. Lines and themes reappear, fading in and out; and taken on their own, maybe they don't mean much. As part of the whole, though, they're quite the thing. It's why the series has the following that it does; to read it makes you feel a part of something. That's how I felt when I first read it, because the books felt as if they had been written for me and me alone; and that's how I feel now, when I understand it within the context of the rest of King's oeuvre.

But, for heaven's sake, don't try reading it on its own.

Connections

Last time, for The Eyes of the Dragon, I mentioned that Dennis and Thomas's story, chasing after Randall Flagg, was left hanging open, to be revisited. In The Drawing of the Three, that revisiting occurs, as Roland tells a tale of witnessing said chase. Amazed at Flagg's power, he was shocked when he saw one of them being turned into a dog. Maybe that's not the end to the story that some readers wanted, but it's definitely a cap on Dennis, Thomas and The Eyes of the Dragon – and brings that book firmly into the Dark Tower mythology.

Of course, there are many more connections to the rest of the Dark Tower books in this, but that's pretty much a given.

Next time: Don't even attempt to run away from what might well be King's finest novel: it's MISERY.