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The Dark Tower #1
The Gunslinger
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Beginning with a short story appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1978, the publication of Stephen King's epic work of fantasy -- what he considers to be a single long novel and his magnum opus -- has spanned a quarter of a century.
Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is King's most visionary feat of storytelling, a magical mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that may well be his crowning achievement.
Book I
In The Gunslinger (originally published in 1982), King introduces his most enigmatic hero, Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting, solitary figure at first, on a mysterious quest through a desolate world that eerily mirrors our own. Pursuing the man in black, an evil being who can bring the dead back to life, Roland is a good man who seems to leave nothing but death in his wake.
Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is King's most visionary feat of storytelling, a magical mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that may well be his crowning achievement.
Book I
In The Gunslinger (originally published in 1982), King introduces his most enigmatic hero, Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting, solitary figure at first, on a mysterious quest through a desolate world that eerily mirrors our own. Pursuing the man in black, an evil being who can bring the dead back to life, Roland is a good man who seems to leave nothing but death in his wake.
238 pages, Paperback
First published June 1,1982
This edition
- Format
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238 pages, Paperback
- Published
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August 1, 2003 by New English Library
- ISBN
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9780340829752
- ASIN
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0340829753
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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Jake Chambers
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Roland Deschain
Roland Deschain of Gilead is a fictional character and the protagonist of Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series. He is the son of Steven and Gabrielle Deschain and is descended from a long line of "gunslingers", peacekeepers and diplomats of Roland&ap...
About the author
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Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 98 votes)
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This is simply one of the best books of 2017.
The Gunslinger, the first book in the Dark Tower series, is simple but holds so much depth in it, and that depth comes with the writing being so poetic and delicious.
One of my favorite parts in this book was the relationship that connected Roland to Jake, and vice-versa; that friendship and the father-son-like relationship never ceased to make me feel heart-warmed and happy, since both of them completed what the other lacked.
I literally couldn't stop reading The Gunslinger once I started reading it. It is so compelling, addictive, and makes the mind visits a maze of deep thoughts and mysteries. I LOVED every part of the journey.
#BookTube-Thon 2017
The Gunslinger, the first book in the Dark Tower series, is simple but holds so much depth in it, and that depth comes with the writing being so poetic and delicious.
One of my favorite parts in this book was the relationship that connected Roland to Jake, and vice-versa; that friendship and the father-son-like relationship never ceased to make me feel heart-warmed and happy, since both of them completed what the other lacked.
I literally couldn't stop reading The Gunslinger once I started reading it. It is so compelling, addictive, and makes the mind visits a maze of deep thoughts and mysteries. I LOVED every part of the journey.
#BookTube-Thon 2017
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DNF @ 75%
Attempt #2 with this went a little better than Attempt #1. During Attempt #1 I made it maybe 6% before giving up. So I'm patting myself on the back here.
I just can't get into this. It's simultaneously weird (in a bad way) & boring & yea I'm almost done but I just really don't want to waste anymore time trying to enjoy this.
Audio Book Note: George Guidall is an excellent narrator so at least the act of listening wasn't also painful.
Attempt #2 with this went a little better than Attempt #1. During Attempt #1 I made it maybe 6% before giving up. So I'm patting myself on the back here.
I just can't get into this. It's simultaneously weird (in a bad way) & boring & yea I'm almost done but I just really don't want to waste anymore time trying to enjoy this.
Audio Book Note: George Guidall is an excellent narrator so at least the act of listening wasn't also painful.
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Dear reader: I am a Stephen King fan; I’ve read about a dozen of his works, including some of his horror books, his non-horror and even his recent detective trilogy.
But everyone says The Dark Tower books are his magnum opus. And so I picked up The Gunslinger.
People warned me that the short book was slow, confusing, badly written and that the series REALLY began with book two, The Drawing Of The Three. But I’m a completist. If I’m even a minute late for a movie, I won’t watch it; I’ll also stay til the end of the credits (I like reading the acknowledgements, seeing where something was filmed and like hearing the score over the credits). If I’m going to give the series a chance, I reasoned, I have to read this first book.
Well... WTF. So bad. So confusing. So convoluted. And the prose?
Here’s an example:
“Land,” the man in Black invited, and there was; it heaved itself out of the water in endless, galvanic convulsions. It was red, arid, cracked and glazed with sterility. Volcanoes blurted endless magma like giant pimples on some ugly adolescent’s baseball head.
I’ll accept the land heaving itself out of the water. But the volcanoes blurting like pimples on an adolescent’s head is such a terrible, terrible image, especially since the POV is from a man who lived in some courtly time, like the Renaissance. I doubt he’d think this. No, this sounds like a very young Stephen King trying a little too hard to write fantasy and mixing up his metaphors. (Also: this isn’t just an adolescent’s head but an adolescent’s BASEBALL head? Yikes.)
I had to read this paragraph several times, wondering what it meant:
The gunslinger’s legs carried him in a sudden leap, breaking the paralysis that held him; he took a true giant’s step above the dangling boy and landed in a skidding, plunging rush toward the light that offered the Tower frozen on his mind’s eye in a black still life...
“True giant’s step”? “... toward the light that offered the Tower frozen on his mind’s eye in a ...”????
I still have no idea what that sentence means.
Besides the dreadful prose, the story is really confusing. King doesn’t spend much time building his world for us to believe it. And he flashes back to periods before we really have got to know the present-day characters.
It’s an uncomfortable mix of fantasy and western. Not surprisingly, one of the best sections concerns a gang of mutants. Finally! Zombies! Something the master of horror knows about! (Alas, I t’s a really brief scene.) And there’s a decent fight sequence involving gunslinger Roland, his brutal former teacher and a raven.
I’ve checked out The Drawing Of The Three from the library, so I suppose I will give it a go. But I promise you, Goodreads, if that book sucks, I’m not going near the others in the series.
I’ll happily abandon my trip to The Dark Tower.
But everyone says The Dark Tower books are his magnum opus. And so I picked up The Gunslinger.
People warned me that the short book was slow, confusing, badly written and that the series REALLY began with book two, The Drawing Of The Three. But I’m a completist. If I’m even a minute late for a movie, I won’t watch it; I’ll also stay til the end of the credits (I like reading the acknowledgements, seeing where something was filmed and like hearing the score over the credits). If I’m going to give the series a chance, I reasoned, I have to read this first book.
Well... WTF. So bad. So confusing. So convoluted. And the prose?
Here’s an example:
“Land,” the man in Black invited, and there was; it heaved itself out of the water in endless, galvanic convulsions. It was red, arid, cracked and glazed with sterility. Volcanoes blurted endless magma like giant pimples on some ugly adolescent’s baseball head.
I’ll accept the land heaving itself out of the water. But the volcanoes blurting like pimples on an adolescent’s head is such a terrible, terrible image, especially since the POV is from a man who lived in some courtly time, like the Renaissance. I doubt he’d think this. No, this sounds like a very young Stephen King trying a little too hard to write fantasy and mixing up his metaphors. (Also: this isn’t just an adolescent’s head but an adolescent’s BASEBALL head? Yikes.)
I had to read this paragraph several times, wondering what it meant:
The gunslinger’s legs carried him in a sudden leap, breaking the paralysis that held him; he took a true giant’s step above the dangling boy and landed in a skidding, plunging rush toward the light that offered the Tower frozen on his mind’s eye in a black still life...
“True giant’s step”? “... toward the light that offered the Tower frozen on his mind’s eye in a ...”????
I still have no idea what that sentence means.
Besides the dreadful prose, the story is really confusing. King doesn’t spend much time building his world for us to believe it. And he flashes back to periods before we really have got to know the present-day characters.
It’s an uncomfortable mix of fantasy and western. Not surprisingly, one of the best sections concerns a gang of mutants. Finally! Zombies! Something the master of horror knows about! (Alas, I t’s a really brief scene.) And there’s a decent fight sequence involving gunslinger Roland, his brutal former teacher and a raven.
I’ve checked out The Drawing Of The Three from the library, so I suppose I will give it a go. But I promise you, Goodreads, if that book sucks, I’m not going near the others in the series.
I’ll happily abandon my trip to The Dark Tower.
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Well, I'm trying this thing where I don't DNF books. Let's face it, I'll probably mess up that resolution though. On a similar note, who here is still hitting the gym? Ha! Thought so. Don't judge me then. Anyway, I know this was a short read but it took me forever to finish it. I think that the idea is fine but it's the writing that is putting me off. I feel the same way about Neil Gaiman, in that I really like the premise and want to read their works but I'm just not feeling their style.
Apparently, Idris Elba is supposed to play the lead character (that is, if it doesn't go into production Hell like the other attempts to make this). He's another terrific actor who can play anything. *crosses fingers that he's the next James Bond*
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The best opening line in literature? For me that’s simple. Repeat after me — “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
When it was first written by a very young Stephen King five decades ago (1970-1982), it was a niche story, a strange vision of harsh postapocalyptic spaghetti Western in the world that has “moved on”, the world that once upon a time was just like ours, but now sandalwood guns and echos of remnants of technology coexist in this world through which a steely-eyed enigmatic gunslinger Roland Deschain (inspired by young Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in this case) is following his quest to reach the mythical Dark Tower.
Back then there was no sign that this will eventually lead to Dark Tower multiverse, with references to it going beyond the seven-book series, now found in majority of King’s stories. And King freely admits that even four books in, before his encounter with a van than almost ended his life, he had no idea where this quest will lead Roland and his ka-tet, let alone having any idea back when he himself was nineteen.
This was the first time I’ve read the “revised and updated” version, re-released after the final book in the series, with some subtle clues to the ending of the series, connections to King’s greater Dark Tower universe and overabundance of number “19” — and the first time I’ve read this story since my teens. (The differences between the original edition and this one are nicely summarized here - but spoiler alerts if you haven’t finished the series yet: https://web.archive.org/web/200710292...).
What I’ve always loved about this book is the unescapable feeling of how off this world is, how strangely wrong and hauntingly surreal it feels. And how atmospheric it is — soaked in grim fatalistic moodiness, barren and bleak, bafflingly confusing and intensely perplexing, with cruelty and brutality being the law of the land, with that “magnificent dislocation” that King refers to, with the strong feeling that being a bit buzzed may help to really appreciate it. It’s not easy to get through, really — but it’s worth it. And after you read the entire series, return here and reread The Gunslinger — and it’s much more impactful this way.
And so much more is to come — the three are yet to be drawn from our world, the ka-tet is yet to form, the friends are yet to be found and lost, the Beams are yet to lead us to the Tower at the nexus of the worlds. The tone and the language will shift to that more reminiscent of King we know and love — all as soon as we meet Eddie in the next book, and everything will become just different enough for The Gunslinger to really feel like a febrile surreal uneasy prologue, a first chapter of the neverending story on the ever-revolving wheel of ka.
4.5 stars. I can’t wait to revisit The Drawing of the Three - where the story really begins, and my personal favorite The Waste Lands.
When it was first written by a very young Stephen King five decades ago (1970-1982), it was a niche story, a strange vision of harsh postapocalyptic spaghetti Western in the world that has “moved on”, the world that once upon a time was just like ours, but now sandalwood guns and echos of remnants of technology coexist in this world through which a steely-eyed enigmatic gunslinger Roland Deschain (inspired by young Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in this case) is following his quest to reach the mythical Dark Tower.
n
Back then there was no sign that this will eventually lead to Dark Tower multiverse, with references to it going beyond the seven-book series, now found in majority of King’s stories. And King freely admits that even four books in, before his encounter with a van than almost ended his life, he had no idea where this quest will lead Roland and his ka-tet, let alone having any idea back when he himself was nineteen.
This was the first time I’ve read the “revised and updated” version, re-released after the final book in the series, with some subtle clues to the ending of the series, connections to King’s greater Dark Tower universe and overabundance of number “19” — and the first time I’ve read this story since my teens. (The differences between the original edition and this one are nicely summarized here - but spoiler alerts if you haven’t finished the series yet: https://web.archive.org/web/200710292...).
From King’s 2003 foreword to the revised and expanded version:
“When I looked back at the first volume, which you now hold in your hands, three obvious truths presented themselves. The first was that The Gunslinger had been written by a very young man, and had all the problems of a very young man’s book. The second was that it contained a great many errors and false starts, particularly in light of the volumes that followed. The third was that The Gunslinger did not even sound like the later books—it was, frankly, rather difficult to read. All too often I heard myself apologizing for it, and telling people that if they persevered, they would find the story really found its voice in The Drawing of the Three.”
So he revised it, and apparently removed quite a few of the adverbs that he detests.
n
n “The world has moved on,' we say... we've always said. But it's moving on faster now. Something has happened to time. It’s softening.”n
What I’ve always loved about this book is the unescapable feeling of how off this world is, how strangely wrong and hauntingly surreal it feels. And how atmospheric it is — soaked in grim fatalistic moodiness, barren and bleak, bafflingly confusing and intensely perplexing, with cruelty and brutality being the law of the land, with that “magnificent dislocation” that King refers to, with the strong feeling that being a bit buzzed may help to really appreciate it. It’s not easy to get through, really — but it’s worth it. And after you read the entire series, return here and reread The Gunslinger — and it’s much more impactful this way.
n “Do you believe in an afterlife?” the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.
Brown nodded. “I think this is it.” n
And so much more is to come — the three are yet to be drawn from our world, the ka-tet is yet to form, the friends are yet to be found and lost, the Beams are yet to lead us to the Tower at the nexus of the worlds. The tone and the language will shift to that more reminiscent of King we know and love — all as soon as we meet Eddie in the next book, and everything will become just different enough for The Gunslinger to really feel like a febrile surreal uneasy prologue, a first chapter of the neverending story on the ever-revolving wheel of ka.
n “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”n
4.5 stars. I can’t wait to revisit The Drawing of the Three - where the story really begins, and my personal favorite The Waste Lands.
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Full Video Review Here: https://youtu.be/QfdL3CyR6s0
When talking about Sai King's magnum opus, many mistakenly list The Gunslinger as a throw away book that doesn't go anywhere. I remember the first time I read this book at 19 (yes, 19...it's not a coincidence) and being completely enthralled by the mash up of fantasy with a western frontier. Reading it again at 41, I had a much different experience on top of these wonders.
In a re-read, so much foreshadowing is seen that leads up through the end of the series. Things I thought were just a throw away line upon first reading I see now that the ideas King would eventually explore were truly there from the very beginning and that makes this book even more amazing.
The Gunslinger is very much a prologue to the greater Dark Tower story. It introduces our main character and villain and sets in play many questions and mysteries you'll have answered over your journey to the tower.
This series has a little bit of everything; horror, fantasy, western, sci-fi, romance, drama, etc. So if you've been wanting to try King but have never really moved outside of your fantasy comfort zone, this would be a great place to begin your Ka-tet and long road to the Dark Tower.
When talking about Sai King's magnum opus, many mistakenly list The Gunslinger as a throw away book that doesn't go anywhere. I remember the first time I read this book at 19 (yes, 19...it's not a coincidence) and being completely enthralled by the mash up of fantasy with a western frontier. Reading it again at 41, I had a much different experience on top of these wonders.
In a re-read, so much foreshadowing is seen that leads up through the end of the series. Things I thought were just a throw away line upon first reading I see now that the ideas King would eventually explore were truly there from the very beginning and that makes this book even more amazing.
The Gunslinger is very much a prologue to the greater Dark Tower story. It introduces our main character and villain and sets in play many questions and mysteries you'll have answered over your journey to the tower.
This series has a little bit of everything; horror, fantasy, western, sci-fi, romance, drama, etc. So if you've been wanting to try King but have never really moved outside of your fantasy comfort zone, this would be a great place to begin your Ka-tet and long road to the Dark Tower.
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Great world building and atmosphere. Definitely different from anything I've read before. It felt very scattered, like King didn't really have any idea what the next paragraph would hold. I'm sure that probably made it a blast to write, but it could've been better if it wasn't quite so disjointed.
The dialogue between characters is Star Wars Episode II level bad, unfortunately. I really enjoyed the world building though, which makes me think that the series may be worth continuing.
The dialogue between characters is Star Wars Episode II level bad, unfortunately. I really enjoyed the world building though, which makes me think that the series may be worth continuing.
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