3.75?

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

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.

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.

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*

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.

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.

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.

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.

After re-reading the Gunslinger for the (third time?) I'm issuing an official statement that nobody is allowed to say this is the weakest book in the series from here on out!
First, I'm reading the newer 2003 edition that includes an intro from King called, "On Being Nineteen" which made me cry.
Then, I was quickly immersed into Mid-World with Roland, my all time favorite literary boyfriend.
I can't believe how much I've missed on prior readings! It sounds weird but this time, I really focused on why King was telling us what he was telling us, taking into consideration the whole scope of the rest of the series ahead of it.
There's a scene with the bartender, Allie, where Roland notices she was pretty, once.
Later, Allie wants to sleep with him in exchange for the information Roland needs to catch up with the Man in Black. They turn out all the lights, have an intimate conversation, go upstairs, have sex and share a smoke.
Allie reflects on how the Gunslinger is a quiet man, even in his lovemaking.
It strikes me then, how Allie felt like she could trust Roland. A quiet man who strolls into town packing weapons--yet, she trusts him enough to sleep with him.
It just made an impact on me. The character of Roland.
The illustrations in this story are some of my favorites from the series. I love our travel back to Tull, the demons and Roland's encounter with Jake Chambers. This is a solid read for me. I'll never entertain the idea that's its anything less than.

Please don't hate me. I know it seems sacrilegious to give a Stephen King anything less than 4 stars, but this one was SLOOOOWWWW for the first 75%. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I did find this was an easy book to put down and not feel an urgency to jump back into for days at a time.

I've heard many folks describe this as a nice prologue to the series and that, in a sense, the action and story doesn't become investment worthy until book 2. That, coupled with the fact that I did become very involved in the final 25% or so of this book has me itching to continue on with Roland because DEAR GOD THAT ENDING!!! I was just coasting, coasting, coasting, and then then I had to reread the final couple of pages a few times to make sure I was following along properly.

All in all, I got the sense that this is a really special series and worthy of the high praise it has received for decades, and I expect my future reviews will hold more gushing and fangirling than this one did.

PS- my prim and proper mother (we lovingly refer to her as Nonni) is the one who initially convinced me to read this series and also invest in The Stand because she read both way back in her day. Who knew Nonni was so cool and hip and in the know?!

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

And so it begins.

I have ventured along the Path of the Beam many a times with Roland. The Dark Tower Series is one of my all-time favorites and it is hard to review the Gunslinger as a stand-alone book. But, I will try.

I had attempted to read the Gunslinger 4 times….that’s right, you read that correctly. I loved Stephen King and could not understand why I couldn’t get through this book. I would get to the same point every time and get bored and put it down. The fourth time, I told myself that I was going to push through it and see it through to the end. I did. And now, each time I reread the DTS I find myself shocked at how much is answered in this first book.

I think what makes it such a difficult book for most people is how heavily littered it is with foreshadowing. As the series goes on you start to realize that the Gunslinger is like the answer sheet to your DT questionnaire.

(Crap! I keep going on about the series as a whole. I knew this would happen!!)

The Gunslinger, Roland Deschain of Gilead, tells his tales in this book. You find out so much about his history, yet so little. When I saw Stephen King speak at Harvard last September he mentioned that the Gunslinger is a poor portrayal of what the Dark Tower Series is. He said to look at it as a small window. I, having been through the series enough times to know, can attest to his honesty in that statement. The Gunslinger gives you a peek into this vast world that will consume your life. It travels across time in the blink of an eye. It blends genres and is the first step on a journey that you will never forget.

If you were to ask Jake Chambers if you should continue the series he would tell you: “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

Ok, so it wasn’t a perfect use of the quote. I know that. But, all I am trying to say is that I love this book. I didn’t the first time around. I do now. I love it more every time I go back to this series. It tells you so much about the series as a whole, you just don’t realize it at the time.

La Torre oscura, El pistolero

Primer libro de la serie fantástica de La Torre oscura, de Stephen King.
Libro corto que sirve como introducción a la saga de siete volúmenes que tardó más de treinta años en escribir.

Se trata de la persecución que hace El pistolero, (Roland) a El Hombre de negro. Entre el camino que recorre para alcanzarlo, King nos va contando la historia de Roland, su entrenamiento y su consagración como pistolero.

La novela es un tanto confusa, el universo es extraño, no está claro quien es El hombre de negro ni porqué lo persigue. Es al final cuando hallamos respuestas y entran ganas de seguir con los demás episodios.

En el prólogo que hace el propio King, cuenta como se le ocurrió escribir esta saga de fantasía cuando era muy joven . La inspiración le llegó después de leer El señor de los anillos, de Tolkien y luego de ver la película El bueno, el feo y el malo, uno de los western más famosos de Sergio Leone. Una mezcla explosiva que solo se le podía ocurrir a King.