Greetings, reader!
As anyone who interacted with me in 2023 will undoubtedly know, I took a detour from my typical 'Try to read a bit of everything, balance between genres and diverse authors' shtick and spent the entire year going further and further down the rabbit hole of Stephen King's literary works. No, I didn't read nearly all of his books, but enough to satisfy my heart's curiosity - ever since I read It in 2019, I felt a longing to become better acquainted with his fictional multiverse, especially having heard of the mythical Dark Tower series and how everything ties into it. Now that I'm finished with this project, here's my ranking of every Stephen King book I read!
P.S. Short stories are also included on the list, mainly because some of his short stories are thoroughly worth discussing and the distinction between short story / novella / novel is a bit arbitrary and sometimes hard to make with this particular author.
30. The Little Sisters of Eluria
This one is worth reading if you want the full picture on the Dark Tower mythos, but it's not a particularly great read itself. King's writing is never downright bad, but here he's much more focused on filling in the gaps of a fictional world than on elements such as pacing, dialogue and language, and it shows.
29. Here There Be Tygers
If I were to rank these by pure obscurity, Here There Be Tygers would rank much higher. At the beginning of my dive into King's works, I asked my friend Riku for recommendations as I knew him to be an enjoyer of the author. Instead of saying "Check out Salem's Lot" like a normal human being, the absolute madman steered me to the direction of this short story written by King as a teenager.
In Here There Be Tygers, we follow a kid who gets bored in class and asks to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom, he encounters a god damn tiger. The tiger just stands there. When someone else comes to the bathroom looking for the kid, the tiger eats them as the kid just stands there and watches. No, I'm not making this up.
28. Guns
Okay, as a nonfiction essay, Guns just barely qualifies for this list, but it's listed as a work by Stephen King on Goodreads and a top 30 looks nicer than a top 29, so let's do Guns. It's an essay where the author, who often uses political issues as themes in his fictional stories yet rarely makes a big deal of his own alignments, takes a stab (heh, purposefully bad word choice intended) at the gun epidemic in the United States.
For a creative artist type who usually writes about killer clowns and turtle gods, he does a surprisingly decent job discussing his well-reasoned views on this hot-button topic. His feelings on the subject are largely the same as mine (maybe the worshipping of firearms in U.S. culture and the amount of guns owned by citizens has something to do with the weekly tradition of mass shootings, and maybe that's bad), and he argues with brilliant rhetoric.
27. Survivor Type
I took the time to read this short story amidst everything else, because King listed it as one of his top five favorites from his own works in an interview with Stephen Colbert. While Surivor Type is an expertly written short story, it feels bonkers that anyone would put it in their top five King works - of course the writer himself is entitled to do so, but still. This dude singling out Survivor Type but not Pet Sematary is an act of horror/fantasy/mystery in itself.
26. The Reaper's Image
Out of the short stories (not counting novellas) that I've read from King, The Reaper's Image is my favorite. It's amazing how much of a horror atmosphere he can create in just 14 pages - there's a milieu that turns from neutral to unsettling to creepy to horrifying in this short time. Not as impressive literature as his full-scale novels, but quite an exceptional short story nonetheless.
25. Doctor Sleep
The legacy sequel to The Shining is by no means bad, but it's also nowhere near The Shining. It's fascinating to follow Dan Torrance at an adult age, with his bond with heroine Abra being a highlight. Doctor Sleep is an emotional story with a neat relationship to the book it follows, but the horror itself is a bit of a letdown, sometimes feeling like an afterthought.
24. The Wind Through the Keyhole
Written after the 7-part Dark Tower series was finished and taking place between books #4 and #5, this companion piece fills in on some of the character lore in a way that wasn't exactly necessary but doesn't feel completely pointless either. The world would largely be the same without The Wind Through the Keyhole, but as I enjoyed the world of The Dark Tower so much, it was nice to flesh out the characters, backstories and worldbuilding even further with this book. Also, the ending is admittedly moving.
23. Insomnia
One of the biggest must-read books for embarking on the story of the Dark Tower, this "stand-alone novel" ties into the events of the final Dark Tower instalment in a fashion most epic. Its groundwork-laying and eventual connection to the Dark Tower mythos may be Insomnia's greatest strength, but it's worthwhile reading as its own story as well.
At times, the 800-page count seems a bit excessive - usually the lenghtier King books are well-reasoned in their grandeur (I would not cut one word from the 1200-page The Stand), but Insomnia sometimes feels like it would've been better if the story was a bit more compact. Still, it's a book with engaging moving parts in its plot, neat supernatural concepts, and a sweet love story at the center!
22. The Long Walk
The Long Walk, one of the few books King released under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, is one of the least thematically powerful books I've read from him, and the characters are less fleshed-out than is the standard. However, it works wonders in its own category - the gimmicky premise makes for a setting that starts out gruesome and quickly becomes downright brutal. It's one of the hardest King books to put down, as the story keeps you engaged and thrilled, wanting to know how it all shakes out.
21. Christine
Christine isn't a literary masterpiece, but it's a damn fine horror book. King has a select few novels that I view as 'pure horror' - quite often his books under the horror genre stretch into a bunch of other categories for creative and artistic reasons, with the horror itself being only one element of many. But Christine is one of the 'big three' in terms of pure, authentic horror literature. It may be the least good of the three, but still.
When reading different people's rankings of King books when I embarked upon this quest, I remember one blogger ranking Christine low because "it was ridiculously arrogant of King to think he was such a good horror writer that he could make a haunted car scary", while another ranked it highly because "King is such a good horror writer that he can even make a haunted car scary!". I was curious to see which opinion I'd fall under, and one night when I was about 200 pages into the book, I was just about to fall asleep when I heard an engine revving in our inner yard, and had the inescapable thought: "Stephen King is a f**king good horror writer".
20. Lisey's Story
As cynical and grim as King's books often tend to be, the idealistic glimmer of romance often rears its head in his stories. This has a lot to do with King's real-life love story with longtime partner Tabitha King - many iconic authors never had the happiest love lives and this reflects onto their work, but with King, his by-all-accounts happy marriage has inspired many of his books to have genuinely healthy and moving romance storylines amidst all the horror and suspense. And his definitive love story has got to be Lisey's Story.
Many of King's later books drew inspiration from his life-changing near-death experience in 1999, and Lisey's Story is one of the more obvious ones - in this fictional tale, a popular horror author has tragically passed away, and his widow deals with the aftermath of her devastating loss. Parts of the book are very dark and gripping, but themes of a genuinely successful marriage and true love shine through in a heartfelt manner.
19. Carrie
King's debut novel is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall a very strong first effort and could be ranked even higher if not for a few minuses (such as the young writer still finding his language and style, and the actual horror not being all that scary, which is something he would grow to be the all-time great at).
The positives, however, are enough to put Carrie at an impressive 19th place: the story is told in a creative, out-of-the-box narrative frame, and the titular protagonist is a strong character. For an author that is often a bit lacking in writing female characters as interesting as their male counterparts, King managed to open his bibliography with a brilliantly written and complex female lead.
18. The Green Mile
Originally published as a 6-part serial novel and later adapted into one of the most celebrated films adapted from King's books, The Green Mile is a tear-jerking journey. Rarely have his gifts for creative supernatural concepts felt like such a mere backdrop: the book objectively falls under the fantasy genre and these elements serve the story well, yet one almost forgets that they're reading supernatural fiction when consuming this book, as the raw and real human emotions are front and center at any given moment.
Furthermore, the serial format is a fun deviation from the typical narrative structure from King novels or novels in general, as each of the six parts ends in its own mini-climax / cliffhanger.
17. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
I still find myself flabbergasted when trying to wrap my head around the fact that Stephen King wrote a novella, a certainly remarkable one yet not even among his quite best work, yet it served as the foundation for the greatest film of all time. How? I just don't get it.
I guess that Frank Darabont found the very core of what makes this little-over-100-pages story good, and expanded upon it with his cinematic chops. Whatever the case, there's no escaping that in this case, the big screen adaptation is better than the book it's based on. But the book is by no means bad - it's an excellent novella, with a story so good that the greatest film of all time could be done from it.
16. The Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5)
Yes, even the least good instalment of the seven main Dark Tower books makes it this high - I loved the series, it is bested only by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy in the category of greatest book series I've read, and if I were to count the series as one work instead of seven, it would be in first place.
Anyways, the fifth instalment is subpar by the high standards of the series: the story, while amazing at best, definitely drags on at places. It starts off strong and ends in a spectacular climax, but the time our heroes spend slowly preparing for battle in Calla Bryn Sturgis is a bit overkill in the middle. It's one of the longest Dark Tower books, and unlike the other over-800-page instalments Wizard and Glass and The Dark Tower, this one could've done with more strict editing.
Still, it's The Dark Tower, and those mind-blowing final pages of the fifth book alone are enough to put it ahead of many lesser novels.
15. 'Salem's Lot
King's sophomore effort is a big leap from his first book, as impressive as Carrie already was. 'Salem's Lot is one of the three King books that I put into the magical 'pure horror' category, and within this group, it ranks higher than Christine but not quite as highly as a certain spooky masterpiece we'll get to later.
'Salem's Lot is a masterclass in the kind of horror that even my mother likes - no needless violence and gore, just creepy atmosphere-building and vibes. The fictional town of Jerusalem's Lot has a life of its own, with a narratively genius highlight being the few chapters in-between the typical character-POV chapters that are technically written from the point-of-view of the town itself.
14. Hearts In Atlantis
Hearts In Atlantis is many things: a hybrid between short story collection and cohesive novel as all of the mini-stories connect to each other in subtle ways, an important building block to understanding the Dark Tower lore, and a bittersweet love letter / therapy session for the 1960's. The book succeeds in all of these, making for a story that will make you reflect on themes from coming-of-age role models to the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement.
13. The Body
The source material for the evergreen Stand By Me is, despite its length being only around 150 pages, probably the best individual example for King being a great writer in general even outside the horror genre. The Body is a gripping coming-of-age story, standing out of the crowd with its combination of rawness and heart. Most coming-of-age stories (especially the ones that succeed in moving you) are filled with lovable characters and feel-good moments, but with The Body, you follow four kids from shitty circumstances who are total idiots with brutally foul mouths.
Yet, there's something in the story that strikes in the very heart of humanity, which makes the end result even more moving than most coming-of-age stories due to how real it is. Also, those final few paragraphs are possibly the biggest emotional gut punch in King's career, as I remember just crying my eyes out while reading it.
12. The Shining
Although I don't rank it quite as highly as many fans would, The Shining is a classic for a reason. There's a selection of novels by King that I found even more moving, memorable or literature gold than this one, but that doesn't take away from the awe-inspiring nature of the book often considered the greatest-ever in horror literature.
It's a tale of an alcoholic father whose mental state slowly deteriorates in isolation, told through creative supernatural metaphors - or a story about a haunted hotel with intense lore, as the family living there tries to fight its monsters and the dad's alcoholism is just a character trait - or something in between. I love the ambiguity of it all, and it's a gripping story no matter how you interpret it.
11. The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1)
"The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed"
That right there is the greatest opening sentence I've encountered in literature, period. King always knows how to open his stories (honorable mentions to the opening sentences of It, Salem's Lot and the final Dark Tower in particular), but this one stands out even from that crowd. In twelve words, we establish a protagonist, an antagonist, a setting, a power dynamic, a mystery, an atmosphere and an action. It's all right there. And that sentence opens an unforgettable, larger-than-life book series.
The first Dark Tower book is strange in many ways - the vibe (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly meets post-apocalypse steampunk meets fantasy literature) is different from anything King (or anyone) has done, and the story is admittedly ambitious and even mind-blowing while still feeling a bit small-scale when compared to everything the Dark Tower would expand to be. It's just the tip of the iceberg, but this particular iceberg is so enthralling that the tip alone is quite the journey.
10. On Writing
The only nonfiction work on this list (in addition to the Guns essay and the deep-end lines-of-reality-blurring metafiction elements in the last two Dark Tower books) is the book that King wrote, well, on writing. I'm glad as heck that he wrote it, as he has such unique wisdom to share. I read it at a point in my King phase were I was so addicted to his style of writing, that reading about the life of the man behind the stories and his writing style was truly illuminating.
For me as a writer, On Writing was inspiring on a concrete level (it gives many factual, from-a-writer-to-other-writers tips on topics from sentence structures and word choices to dialogue and story outlines, and I've gotten to use many of these tips in practice after reading the book), but also on a more emotional level (some of the true stories hit hard, like how he was about to give up on Carrie but his wife encouraged him to keep going, or how bad his substance abuse issues got before he got better, or how life-changing his near-death incident in 1999 ended up being). All in all, this is a very educational and eye-opening book that I recommend to all writers, fans of King or not.
9. Misery
Funnily enough, this work of fiction could've also been called On Writing. Several years before he got into the car-related incident that nearly cost him his life and inspired big chunks of On Writing, Lisey's Story and the two final Dark Tower books, King wrote this book about a popular author who gets into a car accident and is saved by a fan. Who is homicidal and unstable. And keeps him prisoner. And, upon learning that he's writing a new book where her favorite character will be killed off, forces him to write a new ending.
Layers of interpretation aside, Misery is just amazing literature. There were some parts where I was nearly moved to tears, not because the nature of the story was particularly emotional, but simply because King's sentences and word choices were so f**king good that the language truly touched my writer's heart. The excerpts from the fictional book-within-a-book are a delightful addition as well.
Still, perhaps the most profound thing about Misery is how it works as a metaphor for King's cocaine addiction at the time - the writer has confessed that he only realized the parable years later, claiming that Annie Wilkes forcing Paul Sheldon to write her ideas in her unreasonable pace was a manifestation of what the drug was doing to him, only he was so deep into the cycle of addiction that he didn't realize what he was really writing about.
8. Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)
The penultimate Dark Tower book is a wild ride. Riding off the high of the massive cliffhanger at the fifth book's end, the plot starts to proceed at an unprecedented level. After going all "Let's just add a fuck-ton of worldbuilding and expanding mysteries, I'm sure it'll all find a natural ending at some point" for several books, King wrote the two final books with a clear direction and endgame in mind, and it shows - Song of Susannah feels like it's headed in a very certain direction, although what exactly this is remains a mystery to the reader.
Also, the bold fourth-wall-shattering self-insert metafiction element of the last books may be divisive, but I for one loved it. In a world full of writers who limit themselves with rules of what storytelling can be, Stephen King gleefully breaks these rules with loads of imagination, and I love it.
7. The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower #7)
For better or for worse, the culmination of the Dark Tower mythos, of my personal King-rabbit-hole project and of all his books in a larger sense was the right ending. Was it a good ending? That's debatable. The way it all shakes out is certainly bold, shocking, and controversial. But it's the right ending.
The best part of the final Dark Tower book, and the biggest reason for it being this high in my ranking, isn't how it ends, but everything that comes before it in the larger endgame. The book is filled with some of the most tense, epic and tear-jerking moments in all of King's biblography, as the sense of being near the climax leads to some high-stakes insanity. The connections to books like Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis and It are less fun, Marvel-style easter eggs and more mind-bending reality-shattering links between worlds. The last chapter before the epilogues is a pitch-perfect masterpiece - so much so that I almost hope the book would've ended there. I understand why it couldn't, but honestly, that might have been my dream scenario.
What goes down in the epilogue follows King's vision and sheds new light on things, giving the Dark Tower mythos the ending that many fans still have trouble formulating an opinion on. Mind you, it's not bad - I'm not sure if it's good either, but I agree with the author himself that it's the right ending. Certainly a creative one, too - God damn, the guy has some balls.
6. Pet Sematary
The book that King wrote and then kept hidden in a shelf for years, concerned that he might've 'gone too far' in terms of just how scary a book can be, is the best of the three 'pure horror' books I enjoyed from his works. While a select few books made it above Pet Sematary on this list due to their overall literary value, this one is the best novel for King as a horror writer, and undoubtedly one of the greatest scary stories ever told.
The creepy atmosphere is built with perfection, and the horrifying escalation of the story will stick with you. I do not recommend this book to the faint of heart, but I do recommend it to all fans of horror - and in particular to the "horror books can't be as scary as horror movies" crowd, just to shut them up.
5. Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower #4)
The fourth Dark Tower book is primarily told in flashbacks, finally shedding light on the backstory of protagonist Roland Deschain, whose lore had been shrouded in delightful yet frustrating mystery for the first three books.
What ensues is largely a love story, honestly one of the best of its kind, as this 800-page marathon immerses the reader in an atmospheric and slow-paced story with realistic, well-written characters, a milieu with its own fierce and romantic personality, and just a fuck-ton of emotion. Wizard and Glass will make you care about the story and its characters on a whole new level, with its passionate and slow-burning plot.
4. The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower #3)
I love how every Dark Tower book has its own personality - instead of being mere instalments where the story continues while the style remains the same, all seven have their distinctive identities, from the cryptic mysteries and western motifs of The Gunslinger and the cocaine-fueled adrenaline-driven pressure of The Drawing of the Three all the way to the personal and intimate feel of Wizard and Glass and the thoroughly climactic nature of The Dark Tower.
For the third book, The Waste Lands, the identity is "As The Lord of the Rings was one of King's big influences for the Dark Tower books, let's go full Tolkien for one book and just explore the hell out of this fascinating and imaginative fictional world".
After the first book purposefully withheld tons of information and context from the reader and the second was too busy with its pressing plot to do any worldbuilding, this is where we get to breathe and explore the intriguing nature of All-World. The plot is all over the place in the best possible way, with every possible development keeping the reader hooked and begging for more. There are complex heroes and fleshed-out villains, tense escapes and moving reunions, and elements of genres from horror and high fantasy to sci-fi and adventure. The book starts with a giant bear (no, really) and ends with a cliffhanger that will make your heart race.
3. It
I would've liked to put It at first place - really, #1 could've been any of my top three. It will always have a special place in my heart - it's the first King book I read, and it's definitely one of the most memorable and epic reading experiences of my life. My inspiration for my whole King-rabbit-hole-phase came from how good this book is. The reasons for it being 'only' third come down to nitpicking - the order of my top three was so difficult to decide, that the inevitable minus points for elements like the controversial sex scene ended up making the difference. It isn't perfect - but it's still a masterpiece.
As a coming-of-age tale, it introduces us to realistic, complex and humane characters whose stories you relate to and who you become staggeringly invested in. The horror is pure class - while Pet Sematary is the overall scariest King book, It comes close and has undoubtedly the scariest individual moment I've encountered in any form of horror fiction.
As the cherry on top, the book's narrative structure is deliciously experimental in a way that nerds like me are bound to worship. The storylines jumping from flashback to present mid-sentence, the interlude chapters enriching the lore, the one chapter written from the perspective of the 'It' being - it's enough to blow one's mind.
2. The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2)
The best Dark Tower book has just the most specific vibe. I can't quite put it to words - "pure adrenaline", "insanely fast-paced", "constant high-stakes pressure to the point that it shouldn't work yet somehow does" all come to mind yet they all feel like underselling.
You have to experience it for yourself in order to believe it - preferably while over-caffeinated, and in the span of as few days as possible. The Drawing of the Three is as 'page-turner' as it gets, immersing the reader in a mindset where shit is just constantly going down and about to go down and you're in a fuck-awful seeing-red rush to get to the next place before it's all too late. Probably the most thrilling book I've read in my life.
1. The Stand
Many King books felt like they'd deserve the #1 spot, yet on some level, none felt deserving of the mantle - the whole of King's biblography is even greater than the sum of its parts. But in the end, after lots of analysis, The Stand felt like the most deserving - mind you, The Dark Tower would be an easy #1 if the series was counted as one book. But none of the individual Dark Tower books, as great as they are, are quite as all-around literary gold as The Stand.
In this larger-than-life story, there's a lot to be impressed by - the insight into American culture, the creatively told post-apocalypse story, the supernatural elements and the various ways in which they tie into larger King lore, the engaging characters and the deep insight into human nature. But perhaps the most individual factor is the sheer scale of the story; The Stand isn't 1200 pages long because the story is particularly long-winded in an 'it just keeps on going' way or because it's so detailed in its descriptions. Rather, it's 1200 pages long simply because the scale of the story is so vast.
About a hundred pages into the book, the story still feels like it's getting around to starting as the major players have been introduced, about 300 pages into the book we meet the main antagonist for the first time, and about 500 pages into the book you feel like all the many, many moving parts are finally coming together in a smooth fashion. Another effect of the book's length is that when a certain major character is killed off late into the book, it feels like you've lost a friend, having spent hundreds of pages learning about his past, fears, secrets and dreams. As a reading experience, The Stand starts out curiosity-sparking and ends up cataclysmic.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my ranking of the 10 latest Super Bowl halftime shows, including whatever Usher is going to come up with this Sunday for Super Bowl LVIII.
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