The Dark Tower

The Gunslinger

by ,

Paperback, 249 pages

English language

Published March 14, 1989 by Sphere Books Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-7474-0100-1
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
85069314

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(2 reviews)

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed...

As the world moved on he followed, for a nameless time. Naked between the unforgiving sun and the sterile sand, blind in the bowels of the mountains where no light penetrates, shadowed by dangers both magic and physical, the gunslinger moved steadily on his destined path.

For beyond the hazards of the way - the crazed seer, the speaking demon, the slow mutants, the undead boy, and yet stranger sorceries - he would hear, on the night that was ten years long, of the Dark Tower. Nexus of Time and Space, the tower where he would one day come, winding his horn for some unimaginable final battle...

(Source: back cover)

82 editions

reviewed The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1) by Stephen King

Not the most exciting of beginnings

This book feels like a prologue to The Drawing of the Three and the epic to follow. I'll be honest: I'm not certain readers would be missing much if they skipped The Gunslinger entirely and relied solely on "The Argument" at the beginning of The Drawing of the Three to catch them up 🤷‍♂️

reviewed The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower I)

Review of 'The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger' on 'Goodreads'

I definitely enjoyed this book, but it is also definitely the start of a saga. Throughout the whole novel there's so, so many hints of a larger world, and bursts of rapid-fire world building. The world King is creating is strange and intriguing enough that I want to continue with this series just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are also a fair few Stephen King-isms in here, to be sure, though I'm told not as many as the later entries. Really, it's a matter of how much you can tolerate the particular style. I'm writing this a long time after I read it so I apologize for the vagueness.