“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”
The Gunslinger by Stephen King has one of the greatest opening lines ever written. However, for years, it wasn’t quite enough to get me much past page 15. That all changed when I recently decided to give it another try, and I am so glad I did.
The Gunslinger is the first installment of the seven-volume Dark Tower series. It follows Roland Deschain of Gilead through Mid-World on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Mid World appears to be a sort of fantastical western version of our world that at some point in the past was much more technologically advanced. There are several parallels between our world and Mid-World that make it almost natural to get lost in the story.
Roland Deschain is one of my favorite literary characters of all time. At first, he seems to be your classic Clint Eastwood, gunfighter kind of character (which, don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that), but as the story goes on, he becomes more and more complex. Without giving too much away, you learn that Roland has some major flaws that make him one of those bad-good guys, or is it good-bad guys, and you just can’t help but root for and be captivated by him. He becomes a truly unique and complex character that is still relatable.
The first book in the series was released in 1982 and is the shortest out of the seven, some would even say the driest. I believe that is partly because it was written so long before the rest of the series that there was no way of knowing how grand the story would become. Stephen King actually had to go back and revise The Gunslinger in 2003 to close some loopholes that had developed over the course of the rest of the story. I have to applaud King for doing so because I think it made the story that much stronger.
The Gunslinger follows Roland across Mid-World in his pursuit of the man in black and the Dark Tower. Along the way, he meets Jake Chambers, a young boy from our world’s New York City, who accompanies him on his journey. We then learn that Roland is an expert marksman in a flashback to his own childhood. This all comes together to come to a close with Roland’s final encounter with the man in black.
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I don’t want to give anything away, so I will leave you with the strong encouragement to dive into the introduction of Roland and his world on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Once you finish this one, you won’t be able to resist the wonderful epic tale that is to follow.
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