The Gunslinger, which is the first in the popular Dark Tower series, was actually my first Stephen King book. It was recommended to me by a friend, and I bought it and began reading without knowing anything about the writing methods of Stephen King. King writes his stories as he thinks of them, never planning out a story and not knowing how it will end until he writes it. As a result of this writing style, Stephen King's books are generally very slow-paced and long. The Gunslinger, however, is a set of five short stories fixed together into a single book and plot. Even so, the book only amounts to about 250 pages, so the slow pacing is contained well and the story still moves along at an enjoyable pace.
The Gunslinger follows a man named Roland Deschain, who is the last of the order of gunslingers. Roland is set out on a quest to track down and find the man in black, who is rumored to be able to help Roland enter the vaguely described and mysterious Dark Tower. Throughout his journey, Roland travels through a desolate desert, encountering a man brought back from the dead, climbs the deadly cold mountains, and battles the deadly "slow mutants" in a series of underground tunnels.
I enjoyed reading this book. The world and setting of the story were really interesting to me, and Roland's backstory sections were some of my favorite parts of the book. The few action scenes that occurred were described perfectly, causing me to really see it play out inside of my head. My only real complaint is the pacing. The first 100 pages or so consisted mostly of Roland walking through a desert, with one long section devoted to an interesting flashback. Even in a 250-page book, a majority of the pages were devoted to descriptions of the surroundings and minor events that occurred. As a result, it took me a lot longer to read this book than it should have because at times the story just felt like it wasn't moving along at all.
All in all, this is a great book for anyone who has enjoyed a Stephen King book before. If you haven't read a book by him before, I would say that The Gunslinger is a great place to start. It is the first in a six-book series (one of King's most popular) and is a good introduction to the writing style and pacing of King's other books.
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