The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

The Gunslinger

Paperback, 288 pages

English language

Published June 13, 2017 by Scribner.

ISBN:
978-1-5011-6836-9
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1023775649

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (231 reviews)

OVER THREE DECADES AGO, Stephen King introduced readers to the extraordinarily compelling and mysterious Roland Deschain. Roland is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, a landscape strewn with the wreckage of civility, he tracks the man in black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with a boy from New York named Jake. Both fiercely realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger is the first book in what is perhaps the greatest odyssey Stephen King has ever written. --back cover

73 editions

Review of 'The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I definitely enjoyed this book, but it is also definitely the start of a saga. Throughout the whole novel there's so, so many hints of a larger world, and bursts of rapid-fire world building. The world King is creating is strange and intriguing enough that I want to continue with this series just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are also a fair few Stephen King-isms in here, to be sure, though I'm told not as many as the later entries. Really, it's a matter of how much you can tolerate the particular style. I'm writing this a long time after I read it so I apologize for the vagueness.

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

I don't get why people like this

2 stars

People say this is a good book and series but I can't agree to that. It's just chaotic and doesn't make any sense, the writing seems overly dramatic and "flowery", meaning he describes things so weird, with weird details and weird metaphors. I couldn't even read it to the end and stopped at like 80 or 90%. I have no interest in reading the other novels in the series, it's just not my type of writing I guess. I never liked any Stephen King books until this one and I read a bunch now. It's not getting any better, maybe I should just give up on trying to like his writing.

Review of 'The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

I definitely enjoyed this book, but it is also definitely the start of a saga. Throughout the whole novel there's so, so many hints of a larger world, and bursts of rapid-fire world building. The world King is creating is strange and intriguing enough that I want to continue with this series just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are also a fair few Stephen King-isms in here, to be sure, though I'm told not as many as the later entries. Really, it's a matter of how much you can tolerate the particular style. I'm writing this a long time after I read it so I apologize for the vagueness.

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Hmm, three stars? Four stars? Three stars? Four stars? What to do... what to do?

Well, it wasn't anything like I expected, put it that way. But then again, my only REAL exposure to The Dark Tower was that Idris Elba movie. Whom I see every time I picture The Gunslinger.

But the book's nothing like the movie. At least, the FIRST book is nothing like the movie. I think the whole of the first book probably fits into, maybe, the first 30 seconds of the movie.

It's very "stream-of-consciousness". Especially in the beginning. There are times when I skimmed, or when my eyes just glazed over. Which is a bad thing, because this is the kind of book where you really have to pay attention. Towards the end, it starts to come together, and I felt myself being drawn in, and actually starting to care about the characters.

In …

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I've heard so many rave reviews about this over the years, I was prepared to dislike it. The reality is, it's one of my favorite King novels so far. It's the perfect use of his very descriptive style. It's a quick and enthralling read. A wonderful setup for what I imagine will be a sprawling take. I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next in the series.

Review of 'Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

well... as much as i usually enjoy the way king can tell a story... i am totally disappointed by the gunslinger: the world just did not come alive. it's like several well-formed characters just occupied part of some formless void. so unlike king =( most probably i'll just skip the series to save time for something more interesting.

reviewed The gunslinger by Stephen King (The dark tower -- 1)

Review of 'The gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A pleasant read no doubt, but I expected more. Although it rated as an avarage read to me, the story an the philosophy of this mistic world intrigued me a lot. I might change me mind when I'll re-read the book, but for now I'm quite excited to see how this story will continue

Review of 'The Dark Tower I' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

In the intro King says that the series is really one long book broken up and it definitely feels like I read the very beginning of a story. It wasn't exactly a page turner. Sometimes it felt like he wrote the book after the first time he did mushrooms and was still like totally enthralled with his amazingly deep (ahem) change of consciousness. But I'm curious where it is going and it was good enough to keep it up for a couple more books.

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

What a neat tale from a man who knows the human psychology so well. I'm usually not much of a King fan. Not because of his writing but because I have enough stress in my life I don't need the added burden of the fictional variety. However, when I saw there was a movie out and it had this fantasy-gunslinger twist. I decided I'd like to read the real story first. Little did I know I was about to embark upon the deep water of a series.

Reading the reviews many people just get confused. You don't know everything, things aren't spelled out for you, there are puzzles and unknowns that not even the characters know. A magic without form, insanity beyond reason, a world spoiled and some devilish weirdness abounds all set in something kind of normal to our past west or future dystopia west maybe. Regardless after a …

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book, and the series it starts, have been a part of the public consciousness for a while now. I've never read any of them before, though, so with this being my first time through, I'm aware of how highly it's regarded by some whose opinions matter to me. All of which has led to a certain degree of expectation...and I'm not sure if this book met it.

To be clear: There's a strong sense from this book that there's SO MUCH MORE to come, and you don't (or I didn't) come away feeling ambivalent about the journey. I'm excited, I'm in. I'm just...nervous, maybe? No, more likely cautious.

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

July 5, 2016
With the exception of [b:The Hobbit|5907|The Hobbit|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1372847500s/5907.jpg|1540236] and [b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411114164s/33.jpg|3462456], and possibly the Narnia books and [b:The Bridge to Terabithia|2839|Bridge to Terabithia|Katherine Paterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327880087s/2839.jpg|2237401], I've re-read this book more than any other. I'm re-reading this time, of course, in anticipation of the movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey.

Although the book hints at things to come, one of the things I like so much about The Gunslinger is that it is a standalone story. It hints at a before and an after, giving a taste of each without going into the insane amount of detail that bogs down later books. The plot is simple – the man in black flees, and the gunslinger follows – and straightforward, but the narrative is complex nonetheless, with flashbacks and diversions that help flesh …

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I really wanted to like this book. More. But I didn't. Initially I enjoyed the writing. But as the story went on, I failed to empathize with the gunslinger. He remained a distant, not very sympathetic character throughout the book. And he's basically the only character in this book. The man in black is nothing but a shapeless figure at the horizon, the others are just decoration, except maybe for the boy, but that illusion is taken from the reader all too soon.

And it's not that I don't enjoy gritty settings, but this one overdid it for me. This is one of those distant-future, after-the-apocalypse scenarios, where man-kind has lost nearly all technology. Some of the "magic" remains however. But even in the gunslinger's own time things seem on a steady downward slope. The setting feels nearly as depressing as Cormac's The Road or the Covenant chronicles.

My biggest …

reviewed The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower, #1)

Review of 'The gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I didn't seem to enjoy this book at all. I kept waiting for some semblance of a storyline till the end, but i'm still waiting. Overall the saving grace of the book was its short length. And i think this book is more like a foreword into the world of the dark tower, all introduction, less substance. Infact the preface by King, even urges the readers to stick around for other parts in the series, because it gets better apparently! So i shall give the next few ones a try, but meanwhile i need to get rid of the aftertaste with some genre of light humour.

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