Krishna
Many people have sworn off the Dark Towers series written by Stephen King. For the most part, it is due to the first book in the series The Gunslinger.
Written when Stephen King was just 19, in part inspired by the Lord of the Rings trilogy by his own admission, this book is one of the most boring books written by the author. Stephen King is a phenomenal writer and many of his books have been reviewed here before. Most of his work is top class but then he has sometimes slipped, and the story does not appeal. Tommyknockers is a prime example that comes to mind and even though most people may find this close to Stephen-King-blasphemy, I did not enjoy The Stand either. But mostly he writes very well, even when there is not much of a story to tell. (Read the review of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon for a great example).
This book is worse than even some of his worst examples from before. At the end of it, I almost decided, like many people I know, not to bother with the series. But if you, like me, try the second book in the series, you will find that it gets a lot better right away, from the start of the second book itself. (More of this in a later entry).
.This book is about the Gunslinger called Roland, a young man in a futuristic world which has turned Wild West where a man lives and dies by his gun and hunts evil. He goes chasing “the man in black”, guided only by the ashes of the campfires left for him. Instinct guides him. He meets strange people along the way.
This book feels like a voyage written as a story. The man in black comes into a bar and wakes up a dead man.
Weird narration and a very boring story start.
Roland stays in the inn because of The Lady, who fancies him. Then he watches a priestess in a church. Pointless so far. Seems disjointed without even a common thread between events. Unusual for Stephen King, really.
He goes and meets a boy Jake, who seems to be alive in modern New York, which nobody knows, and seems to have died in the old New York. Then he overcomes a demon and goes on with Jake. Confusing flashbacks ensue.
He takes Jake along, saves him from a demon lurking in a kind of pentagon in a clearing. Faces the demon alone. Then meets the man in black briefly. The story wanders too much.
The story is excruciatingly boring. The nineteen year old King is not impressive in this book for sure. His coming of age where he confronts his mentor Cort or Cuthbert is also boring. They seem to go on an interminable, rotting railway line over a great big chasm and for no reason the boy is lost.
Apparently he had to be sacrificed. OK, whatever. Then the story gets even more bizarre. The man in black casually waits for him, they light a fire together and the evil guy reads the future of gunslinger on tarot cards. Wait, I thought that the gunslinger wanted to kill the man in black on sight? Maybe after a little food and some harmless entertainment with tarot cards? Stephen King goes way off the line here.
Then there is a little blather about universe being large, the scientific discoveries of man landing them into trouble and destroying the world, and a juvenile speculation about this universe being a part of the atom on a blade of grass of some other universe.
All in polite conversation between the man in black and Roland. Also the man in black reads the gunslinger’s future with Tarot cards. This is not the weirdest it gets, it gets worse from here on.
Then Roland discovers that the man in black is his childhood friend Marten who he believed had run away and then discovers that there are layers of evil lords above the man in black. Height of ridiculousness? After voluntarily appearing before the gunslinger (remember the tarot and the stories?) the man in black says “You caught me. I did not think you would, but you did.”
Was this really written by King? (Even a nineteen year old King?). Even it is lame for crap like ‘you sacrificed the boy and that power pulled me helplessly to you’, though mercifully the author does not say it.
Then the man in black, after all this bonhomie, conveniently dies, all by himself. Oh well, gunslinger slept nonstop for ten years and aged, but well, it is a small price to pay to kill the man in black, right? On to the next adventure, gunslinger! If all your adventures are this easy, you are very lucky!
There are flashes of interest, like when the whole village comes after gunslinger as he tries to leave. But alas, they are few and rare.
Overall, a very boring, puzzling book, and a bad start to a series that is famous.
1/10
- – Krishna