My review of The Gunslinger (Dark Tower Book 1) [Mild Spoilers]
I first learned about the existence of this series roughly ten years ago, when I was going through my horror phase and trying to read any horror book I could get my hands on. Now, as a teenager of the 2010s, most of the horror books that showed up on my radar were either teen romances with a touch of dread to differentiate themselves from all the other romslop on the market, or books with badly written plots and worse cover art (no, I'm not talking about the Fear Street series; those are good).
That was until I came across Stephen King. The picture of the man on the back of the book wasn't very appealing, and I doubted that this old, muppet-looking fella could write anything that would bring my balls to my throat. But man, oh man, was I in for a treat. Pet Sematary and IT really blew my mind, and the adult prose of the books made me feel like an adult as well. I wanted to read more of him, which I did over the next few years.
But the one series that I just could never get into was the Dark Tower series. First, it was very long. And second, it was very long. Back then, I wasn't interested in reading long, multi-book works. I wanted quick and easy hits. Needless to say, the Dark Tower didn't happen for me.
Fast forward to 2026, and I'm burnt out by every genre. I don't feel like reading anymore. So to get out of the reading slump, I decided to pick the one series that is notoriously hard to get into.The Dark Tower series. I'm also going through a phase of unjobed, so I have a lot of time on my hands. What better time to start a multi-book series?
So I picked up book 1 and read it.
Man was it a mindfuck.
Now, in fairness to King, he himself has stated that the first book was written when he was a very inexperienced writer, and that from book 2 onward, the series gets better. Which I can attest to, as I've also read book 2 (review of that whenever I feel like it).
So mild spoilers ahead.
The story starts with Roland, the legendary gunslinger, chasing the mysterious man in black. We are not told why.
Most of the story takes place in Roland's world (an alternate world to ours), which is suffering from whatever happened in Mad Max. Everywhere you look, you'll find sand, so there's not much to talk about.
Then Roland meets a dude who has a cool ass crow that likes to swear. The crow tells Roland that beans give you gas. Then Roland narrates the story of what happened to him in the last town he stayed at.
In that town, every woman wants to sleep with Roland for some reason. He eventually sleeps with the barmaid of the only bar in town, and she tells him that the man in black came into town before him and revived a junkie who had died the previous day.
Then the spell the man in black had cast over the town gets activated and everyone becomes violent. In his self-defense, Roland has to kill the entire town because he is originally from Karachi.
After telling his story, Roland leaves the dude and eventually reaches a station where he finds a small, sad kid named Jake, whom he initially thinks is the Man in Black whom someone shrunk a couple of feet. Jake is originally from our world but was killed when some guy shoved him into a busy road because he enjoys killing kids. That's how he entered Roland's world.
Then Roland finds some bones that can talk.
Then Roland adopts Jake and tells him the story of how the man in black banged his mom once and how he dealt with the trauma of that by launching a hawk in his teacher's face.
Then Roland has sex with an invisible demon because everyone wants to sleep with Roland.
Finally, Roland catches up to the man in black but sacrifices Jake to reach him by throwing the kid into a pit.
The man in black shows Roland a VR documentary about the universe and tells Roland that he's a retarded. Then Roland goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, ten years have passed and the man in black is dead with his skeleton rotting nearby.
Now my opinions on the book.
The entire book feels like a prologue that could have been compressed into a single chapter at the beginning of Book 2, which should have been Book 1. The pacing is so confusing and difficult. Don't make the same mistake I did by expecting a Stephen King book. This is not a Stephen King book. I mean, it is, but not the Stephen King we know and love.
Random bullshit happens for no reason, and he gives no explanation for them. Also, I don't understand why everyone wants to have sex with Roland. I get that he's based on Clint Eastwood, but how many people would actually want to sleep with Clint Eastwood? Maybe I'm not gay enough. And I can't even list all the other things. It feels like that meme video of a guy being completely unpredictable for three minutes (except this takes however many days it takes you to finish this book).
Sometimes he will throw in some lore that tries to explain the world, but it's completely ignored on the next page and then forgotten about in the rest of the book. You know when people complain about exposition dumping in books? This book suffers from the opposite of that.
Also, the vocabulary and prose can be a bit difficult at times. I came across the word "palaver" for the first time in my life in this book. But I guess I can't really hold that against King. Also, Roland is supposed to be a weird amalgamation of a "yeehaw" cowboy and a "I serve thee with my life and honor, me lord" knight, so I guess his language would have some medieval-style words and phrases. But even then, the writing style is the most King like thing you will experience in this book.
This first book is just very slow and I sometimes had to really push through because parts of it could become very boring. If you do decide to start the series, don't be turned off by this book. It gets significantly better with the second one. And I guess, the rest of the series is kind of a reward for finishing this one.
