The Dark Tower: Book I: The Gunslinger (1982)

The Dark Tower: Book I: The Gunslinger (1982)

Author: Stephen King | Page Count: 212

'No one ever really pays for it in silver, he thought. The price of any evil – necessary or otherwise – comes due in flesh.'

Book I is our introduction to Roland Deschain, aka Roland of Gilead, the titular gunslinger and a man obsessed with reaching the Dark Tower. That goal carries him across Mid-World, the land of his birth.

Mid-World is a familiar amalgamation of our own recorded history and a romanticised version of the same. It's the type of fictional reality that fans of King's other works will feel right at home in.

King is best known for horror works, but Dark Tower is fantasy merged with the old-fashioned western. It's still populated with the kind of well-defined characters that the author is good at. Love him or loathe him, you can't deny his strengths.

Later books in the series take too damn long to get to where they're going — some could do with having at least 100 pages trimmed off the beginning — but The Gunslinger is more focused. There's no unnecessary waffle. There are flashbacks to earlier times at opportune moments, but they aren't whimsical. They offer a deeper insight into the present situation and help explain why Roland acts like he does. You may find him hard to connect with initially, but as his story deepens so too does his depth of character and his principles become less obtuse.

The book was written over a twelve year period (between other projects) and originally published as five short stories before being collected together. The progression in the writing is evident. If you compare the earliest part with the later parts, you'll see a huge difference in quality.

If you're considering starting the series, be aware that although originally planned to reach approx 3000 pages in length, it swelled to eight books that if collected together would be a whopping 4250 pages long. Also, that's assuming King has finished with the series. I suspect he's got some more Dark Tower in him, so that figure could increase in the future. That's not to say it's unfinished. It did get an ending, but there are stories that could be told within the existing framework, as evidenced by the interquel The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012). [1]

For the record, I won't be featuring all of the subsequent books. I've read each of them at least once already and am happy with that. The investment of time needed to repeat that process is more than I'm willing to give for the level of enjoyment that I feel will be attained. I enjoy adventuring through Mid-World, though, so might tackle the comic books someday.

[1] That figure is obtained from adding up page counts in my own copies, which are a mix of paperback and hardback editions. King revised the first book in 2003. The listing on amazon gives a 304 page count for it, which would add another 92 pages to the given tally. 0_o