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Summary: Great start to a even better series
Review: I thought this book was great. From the moment I started it I could not put it down. It is my least favorite out of the series, but it is still an excellent book. I recommend this book to anyone who likes western fiction or fantasy. Roland is like a lone cowboy, but the world around him is full of fantasy. It only gets better when we are introduced to new characters in the next books.
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Summary: In the beginning...
Review: The Gunslinger begins the saga of Roland, an old west style gunfighter lost somewhere in a strange parallel world. It is a classic story of good vs. evil and only begins a race to the mythical Dark Tower. This book is a short fast read that sets up the plot for the Dark Tower series. The characters are imaginative and interesting, although King leaves allot of holes in the puzzles their pasts (to be pieced together in later installments). As a stand-alone book, it's average King but it's obviously essential if you want to try on this epic multi-book quest. A decent read that will leave you scrambling for answers in Part 2.
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Summary: Don't believe the bad press
Review: And let me tell you, this book gets a lot of it. Frankly, it's really over the heads of some readers of King's popular fiction, mostly because this was written off and on between projects all the way up until its release. That gives the book a bit of a disjointed feel, to tell the truth, not within the individual episodes (there are six), but between them. All the same, the story and the writing here is wonderful, and should be appreciated by any fan of King or writing in general.Some of the negative reviews may draw their roots from confusion regarding the book itself--King doesn't do a good job explaining himself. Frankly, I'm thankful that he didn't. In a world where all the new fantasy reads like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, magic and the fantastic seem to have been discarded in favor of a kind of warped science. Don't get me wrong, I liked Jordan until the novels stagnated, but I didn't realize how much I missed NOT KNOWING how everything worked until I read this book. This story is full of the fantastic above all else. Walter, in particular, is a memorable character who I hope receives a treatment in the second "flashback" book of the series. The intertwining of popular culture (I can't here Instand Karma without thinking about the chasm scene) with King's own fantastic elements in Mid-World (a play on Middle Earth?) are at their best in this book, rivaled nowhere expect possibly The Wastelands. Even the philosophical jaunt into metaphysics taken in the sixth episode smacks of the fantastic, and it's wonderfully executed. All things considered, this would be a wonderful read even in itself, and it stands apart in the Dark Tower series as exceptional.
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Summary: You just have to keep reading!
Review: I got the first three books in this series in a gift pack and I have to be honest. I read this book and thought "I have two more of these books to read. Maybe later....." but I did read the next two books and they are terrific. Which is why this review is so difficult. This book introduces the main character of the series, Roland, a gunslinger whose world has "moved on". As I understand it, gunslingers are supposed to be like the knights of old (or at least the old we were taught about in my day and age). They are chivalrous and protect the weak. The problem with this book was that I couldn't really sympathize or feel anything for the character. However, you kind of need this book to get along with the next two (or three or four....).So let me put it to you this way - the next three books are terrific and will be reviewed shortly. This book is iffy, but you really need it to understand what Roland is and why he does what he does - so whether or not you like this book, you'll need it to really enjoy the next set in the series. After reading the second book, I realized the worth of this one. I guess this is a backhanded recommendation - get this book so you can really be entertained by the rest of the series!
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Summary: One of the Wierdest book I've read.
Review: If you like action adventure and just plain wierd shi*, then I would sugest the GUNSLINGER. We get to fallow the jorney of a man who is a bit more like a cowboy with an attitude. I have to say that this book is a bit better than the average book so pick it up.
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Summary: THIS is King's Legacy
Review: "The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed." With these first words King begins one of the greatest epics to come out of fantasy fiction in a very long time. Many wonder what Stephen King will be remembered for once he shuffles off this mortal coil. Will it be Salem's Lot, or The Shining, or The Green Mile, or The Stand? Those will be remembered the way one remembers Sir Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, or John Milton's Samson Agonistes, or Virgil's Ecologues. All are important works in their own right but all are vastly overshadowed by greater, more penetrating, works. For Spenser it was The Faerie Queen, for Milton it was Paradise Lost, for Virgil, The Aeneid, and for Stephen King it will be The Dark Tower Series. Stephen King creates a world of infinite depth and complexity in this series. The world he creates is one of decadence and misery. Baudelaire would have been proud, Eliot would have wept, indeed, the third book in this series is named after Eliot's famous poem, The Waste Land. The atmosphere alone would have made this a great book, but it is the character of Roland which makes this an epic. In Roland, King creates a modern day Epic Hero, a charater in search of a great prize, The Tower. This first book gives us only a superficial glance at the world of Roland, and I suspect it is King's intention to not give us an indepth look at Roland and his world in this first book. After one reads "The Gunslinger" one feels like a man in a thick fog looking for a path to follow. As one progesses through the series the path becomes clearer and one begins to see objects, that like magic, simply appear before them. Here we see Roland pursuing the Man in Black, an old enemy. He pursues him at the expense of all, including a dear companion. Yet, like a force of nature, Roland continues, unrelenting, uncompromising, unstoppable. His will leads him through monstrosity after monstrosity, horror after horror, tragedy after tragedy. This is the cycle we see in the first book and this is the cycle we see throughout the epic. It is Rolands will which makes him a hero, not his training as a gunslinger. And throughout all of the stories we sense that there is something underlying the very fabric of the story. A indescribable force that one cannot see, only feel, like a breeze from the wind. Is it the Man in Black's teacher, an even more ancient enemy to Roland? Is it a character that has not even been revealed in the first book (or even in later books)? Is it the Tower itself? It is Rolands attempt to discover that force that makes the Dark Tower Epic the masterpiece it is. And I say here and now that this series will be Stephen King's Legacy for future generations, just as The Aeneid was Virgils, just as Paradise Lost was Miltons. He may be remembered for other works but none will ever surpass this one. This is King's most advanced writing out of all of his fiction. I dare anyone to read this epic and prove my words wrong.
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Summary: best book I have ever read...
Review: The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger is the best book I have ever read, period. The quality of the writing, the mood, the setting, and the way King introduces a number of principle characters far exceeds DTII, III, IV or any other of King's books. A masterpiece - the first King has produced, and, with the way he is going (think The Plant), the only.
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Summary: A perfect suspended beginning of a long series
Review: This is the first volume of the Dark Tower series. The main hero, the gunslinger, is nearly dead on a beach, attacked by some monster crabs or lobsters, dying of some kind of fever in a world that is under our own world. This gunslinger has to cross a door somewhere to be able to find, in our world, the drugs that will save him, but also to have the idea of building the team he will need to go to that Dark Tower that should represent the resurrection of his world, the epiphany of our world. So it is the beginning of the trip across some vast country toward this tower, with some crossings into our world to get the antibiotic he needs and to discover the people he will need on his trip. This underworld is not explained, except that it lies under our world. We don't know why the hero is in the situation he is in at the beginning of the novel. We don't really know why he has that strange mission to go to the Dark Tower, to save his world. We do not know who he is and what he was in that apparently ruined world. This first volume just builds up the character and is an excellent appetizer that will make us feel famished for the next volumes. We must note we find the same pattern in The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub, a pattern that was to be found too in The Eyes of the Dragon : a ruined world lies under our own world and our own world's survival depends on the saving of this underlying world. We can also compare this book with IT and some other books, where the underworld is the haunt and home of some monster that lives upon our world by vampiristically drawing its food or vital energy from our world. This duality of Stephen King's imaginary world is fundamental in his fiction. The point is that in the present book, this underlying world is not really feeding on our world, though what happens in it is both caused by what happens in ours and determines what will happen in ours. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, paris Universities II and IX.
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Summary: A great novel with lots of twists.
Review: The Gunslinger is a carnivorous style of writing mixed in with a well-developed character driven story. I really loved this book. It's action was fast and well thought out. Meaning it wasn't just a "shoot and kill" type of story. King's characters seem to move with million of calculations in each step.Although some of the characters are a little out of place, they go along with the contrast the entire has with itself. Also, the back stories will keep you guled to the rest of the Darktower series. There are a lot of great twists and turns. I highly recommened this novel.
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Summary: Beautifuly sad
Review: I loved this book. I originaly started with the fourth volume of this series (it was a gift from my dad, and he hadn't noticed that it was a series until I told him...) and I instantly fell in love with Roland's dying world. Since I couldn't understand much of the story, I decided to start it from the begining. I wanted to know more about Roland of Gilead and his group of companions... I found the first novel a bit dry at the begining (very understandable), but it got easier to read once I got started. I litteraly devoured it (I usualy don't read fast) and finished it within a week, which is a record for me. I just love the way King describes this cruel, dying and magical world in such a crude and beautiful way. I didn't learn much about the gunsligner's quest, but I SO wanted to read the other two books, and definitely re-read the fourth. I recommend this book, and this series, to anyone who isn't scared of falling in love with loneliness, fear, death, and their beauty.
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