Author: Stephen King
Series: The Dark Tower 1
Genres: Horror, Fiction, Sci-fi
Publisher: NAL
Release: 2003 June 24th
Source: eBook
Pages: 231
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BLURB:
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.
This new edition of The Gunslinger has been revised and expanded throughout by King, with new story material, in addition to a new introduction and foreword. It also includes four full-color illustrations in the hardcover and trade paperback formats.
EXPECTATIONS: I don't really like Stephen King all that much, if I'm honest. Not that I've read a lot of him, but nothing I did left as deep an impression on me as many people seem to get. But I got this book a very long while ago, and now that series came out, I felt like it's about the time I finally get over it. I expected something colossal, and while, in a sense, I got it, it turned out to be as dull as the traveling through the hot and sandy desert was in this book.
THE WORLD: The place is confusing. Many things make me belief that this world, where the Gunslingers used to roam in greater numbers, might have been ours once. Or maybe it was simply very similar to ours. Either way, this world is breaking apart, desert swallowing it bit by bit, civilization slowly melting away.
CHARACTERS: Gunslinger is who we follow. The last of his kind he follow the man in black towards the Dark Tower. He either stands between him and that said tower, or is the key to it. One way or another, Gunslinger must find him, must reach him, and preferably - kill him. Yet all the while in his travels he seems wary of the man he's catching up to. He'd rather kill someone who took him in, than sleep with one eye open, dreading a trap that man could have left. He witnessed it before, after all. As for what or how he is... The best way I can put it, he's like a stuck up witcher from The Great Kiev rewriting of Sapkowski's Witcher saga. A man who battles the demons with his trusty guns, a man who kills people with not much caring, a man too obsessed with a goal, to notice the destruction and trap. Can you tell I did not like this man?
ROMANCE: There was a woman. And the woman has been forgotten, for she fell into a trap left by the man in black.
GOOD: The idea is interesting. A nexus of time, place, and, for the lack of better word, size, in one place, in one Tower. Every possibility, every distance in one chamber. Whatever's there behind the stars, galaxies, universe, behind the places we might never reach, might never see - behind a single door, working at your mind already, drawing you in like moth into a flame, for you know you'll burn, but you still must see.
BAD: It is just so, so very slow. Like traveling across sand dunes. Not only do your feet sink in the hot sand, but looking back you can't recall which one you've already climbed over, and whether the one you stand on wasn't it.
OVERALL: Somehow, even with so very slow paced first book, and such an regurgitated concept of traveling across the desert towards your goal, through train tracks that were built there likely by gods, for who else could have done this, I am not willing to give up just yet. So, for the time being, this was bad. But we'll see what's next.
What do you think about THE GUNSLINGER?
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