The Gunslinger

Title: The Gunslinger

Author: Stephen King

Genre: Fantasy

Series: The Dark Tower Series #1

Pages: 251 Pages

Synopsis:

Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.

(from Goodreads)

My Thoughts:

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

The Gunslinger is not one of my favourite Stephen King Novels, but at the same time it’s an intriguing novel to look at. The story is about the last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain who is pursuing the “man in black” to which he wants answers about the future.

Once again Stephen King shows his strength of writing good or intriguing characters. As we have an interesting and mysterious character in Roland Deschain. At the beginning we have no idea who he is or why he is even pursuing this “man in black”. However throughout the novel we learn more and more about him, his personality, his motives and even his backstory. The other interesting character in this novel is Jake. Jake is from a world like ours but he, all of a sudden is in the world where the novel takes place and he knows absolutely nothing about the world we are in. That is quite an interesting concept right there.

The book is short and I think that is one of it’s strengths. And we do get a couple of short but interesting fight scenes in this novel.

My big issue with this novel is the worldbuilding. I have so many questions! First off, again Stephen? No Maps? C’mon! My next few questions are: What world is this? It appears to be a different world similar to the wild west but then again there is signs that it is close to our own. Such as “Hey Jude” song exists in this world, Jesus and Christianity also exist in this world, Hamburgers & Beer exist, and also remnants of a corporation known as Amoco exist. So does this world take place in our future? Is it alternate universe or a parallel universe? What is this world?

My other criticism of this novel is that it can be slow and difficult to follow. I had to reread certain parts of it just so I can understand what was happening.

This is not Stephen King’s best novel but it’s also not his worst novel. I’ve been told I should read the second book of the series before deciding to continue reading the series. So I will at least try to read the second book before deciding on whether or not I should continue reading this series. I sort of feel like this is more of a Prologue if anything for the series, so hopefully this series does get better.

Rating: