Welcome back to Inconstant Reader, the feature column that explores Stephen King’s books in the order they were published — sort of! Warning: this palaver contains spoilers, ya ken?
“Roland of Gilead came to the gates of a village in the Desatoya Mountains. He was travelling along by then…”
Those questing for the Dark Tower in real time endured some long waits between volumes, with the series averaging about five years between drinks by this point. Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in the saga, frustrated some readers even further. Rather than pushing the quest forward, it was largely a story within a story, plunging us back into Roland’s earliest adventures. Thankfully, King hadn’t abandoned Roland to ka just yet.
Between Wizard and Glass and the long-awaited Wolves of the Calla (2003), King offered readers a smaller but haunting detour: The Little Sisters of Eluria. First published in 1998 as part of the Legends fantasy anthology, this novella continues the exploration of a younger Roland, revealing a tale of rare vulnerability. Around the same time, King also released The Black House—a sequel to The Talisman, co-penned with Peter Straub—which was steeped in deep Dark Tower connections, reinforcing that even outside the main saga, all things still served the Beam.
The Little Sisters of Eluria is set before the events of The Gunslinger but after Wizard and Glass. Roland, younger and wandering Mid-World in search of the Tower, stumbles into the desolate town of Eluria. There, he’s attacked by slow mutants and left near death, only to awaken in the care of the Little Sisters—seemingly benevolent healers who are revealed to be vampiric creatures. As Roland lies helpless, he uncovers their dark rituals and is aided by Jenna, one of the sisters who shows him kindness and ultimately helps him escape—though at a terrible cost.
“…the dark windows of the Tower glowed with a deadly red light – the red of poisoned roses.”
On my first journey around the wheel, I made the mistake of reading The Little Sisters of Eluria first. Chronologically, this fits in Roland’s story—some places even list it as The Dark Tower #0.5—but for those of us who have made it to the Tower and back at least once, the early glimpses of the darker influences over Mid-World make more sense in the context of the later stories.
Yet there’s a bigger reason to slot this in with its publication order, between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla: Roland himself. When we first meet him in The Gunslinger, he steps into the desert with near-mythic status—an ancient cowboy in a world slipping away from him. For much of this novella, Roland is bedridden, unable to defend himself, and completely at the mercy of others.
We aren’t used to seeing vulnerability and humanity beneath his gunslinger legend. After all, in his first published novel he unceremoniously allows a young boy to fall to his death in his obsessive pursuit of the Tower. So, to open him up in such a way here is a deepening of the character, not an introduction to one.
In Wizard and Glass, we saw how people close to Roland often paid the ultimate price—and the same is true of Jenna, who helps Roland by sneaking him a powerful herb and counteracting the other sisters’ weakening potions. Yet Jenna’s fate is the same as all of Roland’s companions: no sooner has she declared her love than she disintegrates into tiny bugs. It’s a second slap to the heart, coming so soon after we learn of Susan Delgado’s fate.
“He was alone in the low hill country west of Eluria. Quite alone.”
Stylistically and thematically, the idea of decay and corrupted powers flows through this tale. It’s a world full of Gothic horror elements that bleed into the Dark Tower mythos, including the bug-like creatures called doctors.
In this way, it almost serves as a bridge between Mid-World’s blend of fantasy and western settings and King’s darker, often supernatural horror mythos. Other connections abound: the story is set in the Desatoya Mountains referenced in Desperation, hinting at a shared geography across King’s universes. The aforementioned Black House features very similar hospital tents to those found here.
More than anything, The Little Sisters of Eluria highlights the cost of Roland’s journey even before his main quest begins. When we first met Roland in The Gunslinger, little did we know how much he had already lost by the time he first let Jake fall—or how much he was still to lose.
Featured image is by artist Michael Whelan for Donald M. Grant Books.
When Inconstant Reader returns, it’s with forward momentum as the ka-tet encounters The Wolves of the Calla – and someone else familiar to Constant Readers.