The Gunslinger

The first entry in the Dark Tower series  (what King himself has referred to as his magnum opus), The Gunslinger was written back when King was just a lowly college student and it shows. The story of a man racing across the desert to confront “The Man in Black” and learn the way to the Dark Tower is interesting, but there are several problems with King’s writing that, thankfully, he has improved on over the course of his career. Pacing problems abound in this novel, making a two-hundred page book feel much longer than it should be. King spends long passages describing the unchanging landscape of a desert and little is revealed of the man as the story progresses. The sparse dialogue that is in this story is stilted and unrealistic. These two large problems aside, though, The Gunslinger is a good book. The world-building here sets the stage for the massive universe of Mid-World in which this series takes place. The concept of a story that consists mostly of a man chasing after an unnamed villain is intriguing in itself and as long as you can get past the sophomoric execution, this book leads into a series of novels that are an absolute joy to read and are filled with great characters and set pieces that would put some action movie directors to shame. Stick it out with this book and you will be rewarded with the rest of the series.