Helpful Score: 7
A Great start to a amazing saga, great for King fans.
Helpful Score: 6
An entirely different style than King's other novels. He wrote this series over decades and I consider it to be one of his greatest works.
Helpful Score: 4
In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger. Nothing will ever be the same. Roland's quest for the Dark Tower takes readers on a wildly epic ride - through parallel worlds and across time. A classic tale of colossal scope - crossing over terrain from the Strand, The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia, The Talisman, Black House, Hearts in Atlantis, Salem's Lot, and other family King haunts - the adventure takes hold with the turn of each page.
This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations - the gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier Western legend.
The gunslinger's quest involves the pursuit of the man in black, a liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, and a friendship with the boy from New York called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The gunslinger is stunning proof of Stephen King's storytelling sorcery.
"A compelling whirlpool of a story that draws one irretrievably to its center." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations - the gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier Western legend.
The gunslinger's quest involves the pursuit of the man in black, a liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, and a friendship with the boy from New York called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The gunslinger is stunning proof of Stephen King's storytelling sorcery.
"A compelling whirlpool of a story that draws one irretrievably to its center." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Helpful Score: 3
The gunslinger is and excellent book, but I thought it was so much better before King revised it. When he first introduced that smarmy way of talking in The Wastelands' scene, I thought it was cute, but to make everyone in the whole series talk that way, even going back to make previous characters talk that way, is just annoying. Therefore, I don't care to keep this book; but it's still a good story.
Helpful Score: 3
An excellent read up to the 3/4 mark. Great feel, wonderful blend of genres (Western, post-apocalyptic SF, horror). The last quarter gets lost to some degree. Falls apart in being all about the "set up" of the series as a whole rather than about resolving the story just told. Takes what has heretofore been intriguing glimpses of a greater whole and turns the tactic to more manipulative end by creating a mish-mash of "words that mean nothing" as if the effect will be perceived prophetic rather than simply jumbled and unfocused. The implication that this section holds some deeper meaning that might be divined by greater study? Falls apart under the duress of greater study. But that being said, the first 3/4 of the book is good enough to make reading it worthwhile, if not wholly satisfying.
