First Stephen King novel I have read and apparently I have just set myself down a path of years to read a multitude of King.
I thought I had read this in high school. If I did, I apparently forgot large sections of the plot. The first King novel I've read in a very long time.
There was so much wrong with this book but I did get drawn into it so 2 stars it is.
This was a disappointment. I like Stephen King's stories, I like fantasy novels, and I like westerns, so I expected the enjoy their combination in the Gunslinger.
This book contains the worst of each element: King's bad habit of gross-out horror, fantasy's leaden pace, and bland western formula. King also weakened it further by including real-world elements (a pet peeve of mine).
I admit there are some nifty ideas in it for which I'm glad I made the slog. The conversation between the Gunslinger and the Man in Black was revelatory in the way of the best fantastic fiction, but there was just too much empty desert to cross to get to it.
Bücher handeln ja oft nur von Männern, ich habe damit an sich kein Problem, man vergisst einfach für eine Weile, dass Frauen existieren. Aber die hier vorkommenden Frauen sind vom Autor mit genau einer Eigenschaft ausgestattet worden, "besitzt eine Vagina". Oder nein, eigentlich sind es zwei Eigenschaften: eine ist außerdem dünn, eine ist dick, eine ist sehr jung und eine ein Gespenst. Außerdem eins der schlechtesten Enden in Kings an schlechten Enden nicht armen Werk. Ich lese eventuell trotzdem weiter, es sind sieben Bände und es kann eigentlich nur bergauf gehen.
Well written, but not for me.
I really want to read the next one! Isn't that the best possible response?
I was often reminded of Blood Meridian and The Road (both by Cormac McCarthy). The writing is similarly spare. The lonely hero is on a lonely road. Death is everywhere.
Something Stephen King does especially well here is play with time; days and massive geographic expanses run together, as multiple characters point out, so that you can't know how much time has passed or what exactly is invested in this journey.
Mysteries I look forward to exploring further in the next installment: what happened to the city of Roland's childhood? What happened when the world "moved on"? Why is Roland seeking the Dark Tower?
A little too much of a mash up for me, but maybe SK was doing mashups before they were cool. It was smoothly plotted and never got too weird that I had to put it down. Looking a the plot of the next book, though, I'll never make it past the lobster, so I'll stop here.
