The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger; Book 1

I have been reading Stephen King novels since I was a kid. I've read them since I can remember and I've loved almost every single one. However, I never got around to reading his Dark Tower series. I read one, once, and after reading it again, I believe it was the second one because I remembered key parts, but unless you start from the beginning, you are completely lost. I never gave much thought to why I didn't read the Dark Tower. It was always on my mental list of books to eventually get to and I figured I'd have to find book one and libraries sometimes didn't have it. If you start with book one, you need to go to book two and so on and so forth. Besides, I didn't know if I'd like it enough to buy it, so I just never started. Then came the Kindle. And now I can buy the books, in order, for pretty decent prices!

In the preface, Stephen King mentions the phenomena that most of his readers are either solely Dark Tower fanatics or readers that have never touched the Dark Tower series, but have read everything else. I am now proud to say I am in both camps.  Dark Tower is different. Very different. What I've always loved about King's style is that he takes the real world, regular people, a neighborhood next to a cemetary, an ordinary Maine town, a poor guy taking care of a hotel, and he brings in the supernatural. What happens to the characters could have happened to you. The Gunslinger is much different. This might be our world, but it's not. There are "old people" that don't exist anymore, but used a lot of things we do in the present moment, but are also somehow more advanced. We share some songs. This is like our world, but ultimately completely unlike our world. If I could explore with Roland though, I'd abandon this world.

The Gunslinger is about, well, a gunslinger. He has two guns that he carries on his hips and he's the fastest draw in the world. He's chasing after the Man in Black. He's been chasing him for a while, can't quite remember how long, and he knows he's catching up. He comes across a man in a shack and tells him a tale of going through a town the Man in Black had just gone through and how he had to kill everyone because the Man had turned the entire town against him by impregnating the preacher woman and telling her Roland was the devil. The next morning, when he leaves the shack, his mule dies and he sets off again on foot.

On the verge of death, he meets a boy, Jake. Jake saves his life, gives him food and water and Roland, the gunslinger, decides to take the boy with him. He feels he'll need him. He's right. Jake is not from Roland's world. Jake is from our world, New York City, and he died when someone pushed him in the way of a car. He died in the street and woke up in Roland's world. While journeying with the boy, Roland starts to look at him as a sort of son, a good friend, and begins to love him, but he also knows the boys death is coming and hurts for it. They keep following the Man in Black, Jake discovers a demon who tries to destroy him, they go through a mountain by way of a mineshaft, almost get attacked by muties, find a giant underground station, and eventually...at the end, they find a long bridge, suspended over a huge crevice, and on the other side, is the Man in Black. To cross, Roland must either keep pursuing the Man or save Jake, but he cannot do both. He picks what he has had in mind, his journey, his ka. (I forgot to mention ka! It's very important, it's like karma, it's fate, it's what you blame when something doesn't go your way or when you have to step on someone.) His ka is to get to the Dark Tower and the Man in Black is a puzzle piece that needs to be caught. As Jake falls, he tells Roland something that sticks in his mind, as well as ours, forever, "Go then, there are other worlds then these." He doesn't even scream on the way down.

Roland catches the Man in Black and they have a palaver. The Man in Black reads Roland's tarot cards and gives reference to the next book, The Drawing of the Three. The cards are The Sailor, The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, Death, and the Dark Tower. After palaver, the man shows him the Universe and how small Roland is. He tries to get Roland to give up his quest, how it is useless, but Roland, ever set in his ways refuses. The man makes him fall asleep and when Roland wakes up, many years have past and the man in the black is just a skeleton. Roland takes his jawbone and sits on the side of the Western Sea and contemplates life.

It is also revealed in the story how Roland came to be a gunslinger. He had friends in his town of Gilead and was training to be a gunslinger. His teacher is Cort, someone who definitely cares for the boys, but yet definitely does not spare the rod. Roland comes across his mother after his fathers magician had just slept with her and becomes so angry he challenges Cort to become a gunslinger. Every gunslinger must go through this and if he does not pass, he is banished. This is exactly what Marten wanted and expects Roland to fail. However, Roland chooses his weapon to be his hawk, David. He wins and injures Cort badly and becomes a gunslinger. We learn of his two best friends, Alain and Cuthbert, but not much is revealed about them. There is also a hanging of a cook, Hax, for catering to an enemy and Roland and Cuthbert go to watch him be hung.

The Gunslinger is a great beginning. One that once I finished I needed to have the second book right away to continue along his journey with him. We are simultaneously rooting for Roland, but also, his quest seems unreachable and dangerous and we have to ask ourselves if we would ever do the same.