The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

I put off reading The Dark Tower books for a very, very long time. I first heard about them when I was about 12 years old, and had just started reading Stephen King novels. At first I thought it was just one book called The Dark Tower, and expected it to be your token Stephen King book -- horror themed, contemporary setting, etc. When I learned it was something called "fantasy fiction", I found it strange that someone like Stephen King would write something like that. And not just one book, but three? (That's all the further King had gotten back there in 1992.)

So I didn't read that first book. I didn't have any interest in reading it, because at that time I wasn't mature enough to appreciate what it was. This was 1992. I was 12 years old and hadn't even read Tokien yet. I hadn't read The Stand, yet. I tried to read IT and couldn't get through chapter 1. Those books were too big for me then.

I'm quite happy I didn't make any attempt then to read them, since I'm sure my experience would have been diluted when I actually had the maturity and the patience to read them proper. It happened to me with Cujo. I read Cujo when I was waaay too young to understand or appreciate it, and to this day it remained one of my least favorite of King's novels. (Why the hell can the dog think? Why is there a monster in the closet? So...the dog is just rabid, or what?)

While I'm sure I could have full appreciated these books five, even ten years ago, I waited until now. Nothing wrong with that. So here I'm going to provide my thoughts on the first book in The Dark Tower series: The Gunslinger.

I started reading this book Wednesday night, and continued through until I finished it on Saturday. It's not an overly long book -- probably the shortest in the series, I would think. I only own the first four books currently: two through four are all thicker than The Gunslinger by far. In any case, I expected the first book to be more or less a simple introduction to the world Stephen King set out to create. And that's exactly as it served.

This first book doesn't cover much. I can summarize the entire thing with one sentence: The main character walks across a desert, through a mountiain, and to the coast of the sea in his quest after the man in black. (Technically he catches the man in black at the mountain, who then tells him to go to the coast of the sea. But whatever.) Such a simple span of events. I will admit, now that I'm half-way through the second book, the first book seems comparitively dull. But it had it's moments. The portion of the book in Tull was very interesting. As was the trek through the mountain tunnel. Most importantly, after reading that first book I liked Roland. He's a bit obsessive about his quest, and a bit too hung up on his ka, but I still liked him.

Overall, the book left me wanting more. Good thing, since there are six more books to go. And I really can't end this post without mentioning my feelings about Jake's fate. I didn't like that at all, and since I know where the story is going already, I'm sure that's exactly what King wanted.

When I finished the first book on Saturday night, I immediately cracked open the second one and continued on my way. That alone should tell you something positive about the story.