The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower - Stephen King

The dark tower. The gunslinger. The first part of the dark tower series is 'The gunslinger'. The story is set in a fantasy world about 'Roland of Gilead' the last of the gunslingers. The hero is on a quest to find the mysterious dark tower whilst also hunting 'The man in black', who you don't get introduced to until near the end. On his quest 'The gunslinger' meets other strange and wonderful characters which make the book more readable, one of them being 'Jake' a kid from New York, who finds himself in this strange world. Although i thought the book was fantastic it seemed at times the story wasn't progressing, but towards the end it picked up again and i couldn't ...  Read the complete review

Many authors have embarked on what they see as their ultimate works, usually in the form of a lengthy tale, a saga of epic and memorable proportions. One of the most renowned authors in the literary world, who usually writes in the field of horror, is Stephen King, and for many years he plotted his ultimate works, which we now know as The Dark Tower. Publication of these works was completed in 2004, as the seventh episode was published, but for us, it started in 1982 with the limited edition copy of the first book in the series: The Gunslinger. Upon release of the mass market paperback of The Gunslinger in 1988, King's works started an immediate cult ...  Read the complete review

Although quite an avid reader of Stephen King stories over the years I have to admit, like others, I was a late arrival to the Dark Tower epic. I'm not really sure why I kind of avoided this story either. I think it may have been a combination of things including thinking that King had started to lose his touch, I thought I would never find the time to commit my time to reading and continue reading such an epic and quite simply at the time it just didn't appeal to me. About 6 months ago or thereabouts however, Waterstones were having one of their regular 3 for 2 offers and as I was lacking in inspiration or motivation to read anything else I decided to buy ...  Read the complete review

In a world that is a shadow of our own, Roland has managed to survive rebellions, wars, near total destruction of the world itself... he is the last gunslinger, the last of a rare breed of men who were raised to keep the world from changing, to keep order... a symbol of all that was good. In this dark twin to our own world, priests dressed in black do not always stand for good, nor do they bring the peace the surviving population are praying for. In this dark world of endless deserts and tumbleweed towns, water is scarce, paper is more valuable than gold, and conscience is a thing that idiots possess. If you want to survive here, you need lots of luck on ...  Read the complete review

Before I start the review proper, I'm going to let you in on the (not so) secret fact, that I am a huge fan of the works of Stephen King, and have read almost everything he has ever written (including some non-fiction). After reading that statement, you might be surprised that until this month I had never managed to read any of the books in the Dark Tower series. But it's true, I'm not really sure why I hadn't, I suppose part of it is that I like my books to be as self-contained as possible, and another part was that the series isn't actually complete as yet. However, the main reason was that I was very reluctant to pay the asking price of £6.99 for this, the first, ...  Read the complete review