Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great Start to the Dark Tower series
Displaying elements of modern culture intermingled with a story which is part Fantasy, part Science Fiction, part Horror, and overall Western is a weird feat only achievable by Stephen King. He manages to put together the most unlikely of stories with a good mix of horror, humor, action, and a high gross-out factor in parts.This is the story of Roland, the last of the gunslingers as he pursues the mysterious Man in Black across the desert and over the mountains, striving to reach his ultimate goal, the Dark Tower. Why? I have no idea. What he plans to do with at tower when he arrives is a topic to be discussed in future volumes. In the meantime, enjoy the action as Roland encounters a talking bird, drops acid, is designated the Antichrist, discloses the secrets of his past, and encounters a succubus (but not necessarily in that order). This unabridged audio version was read by the author. I had previously mentioned that Stephen King is a better writer than reader in my review of "Blood and Smoke", but my opinion of him moved up a notch here. His reading here was still not the best I've heard (Frank Muller is a master here), but better than some professional readers. This story ends on an open note which piqued my interest in following Roland to the second in the Dark Tower series, "The Drawing of the Three".
Rating: - The best creation of King's imagination takes time ....
At under 300 pages, "The Gunslinger" -- the first book from Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series -- may seem oddly short, especially when compared to the latest volume from the epic, weighing in at around 700 pages. And still, Constant Reader, there are thousands more to go!According to the afterword from this volume, it took King twelve years to complete the writings. He wrote the opening line "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed" while an undergrad, the middle portions when "'Salem's Lot" was going bad, and was inspired with another concurrent writing: "The Stand." For King to have kept the Gunslinger, the Man in Black, Jake, the other characters -- and really the entire world of the Dark Tower -- alive for so long in his mind is a testament to not only the power that this held over the author, but holds over us -- his Constant Readers. Moreover, since the first publishing of "The Gunslinger," around twenty years have passed, a number of newer volumes in this series have come and gone -- yet with this first, partially inspired by Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland," and partially inspired by reams of green paper (read the afterword to the book), you know that it was a very special creation indeed. I am not a fan of King's horror fiction. But when he gets down to writing about "other worlds than these," such as "The Stand," "Insomnia," "The Green Mile," and "The Talisman" (co-authored with Peter Straub) -- there is no one better. His is an imagination to be jealous of. There is always a feeling that alternate universes exist, next to our own (or maybe, ours exists within a molecule in some other reality). King imbues his other worlds with just enough of our own so that we feel a tantalizing connection between our perceptions of reality, and those that he uses to entertain us with. "The Gunslinger," at under 300 pages, is just right to introduce us to the world of The Dark Tower, and keep us on course, with a desire to continue (and to wait, ever so patiently for the next volumes in the series) the journey that the Gunslinger started many years ago.
Rating:  - The Dark Tower The Gunslinger
Stephen King is one of my favoite authors. In his career he wrote many famius novels and this is one of them and so is the whole Dark Tower series. It is set in the world of ominous landscapes and evil menaces. A tale of good vs. evil, in the book is Stephen King's most powerful creation The Gunslinger. A figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero though the ages from ancient myth to a western legend. His pursuit of the man in black, aklso the sexually ravenous Alice, his friendship with a kid from earth called Jake. This book is a great tale of action, sex, and murder. If you want to read a book with those things in them, read The Dark Tower the Gunslinger.
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