Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

The Gunslinger (1982, 2003)
Dark Tower Book One

A New York Times Bestseller

Plume trade revised edition
cover art by Steve Stone
231 pages (left)

Signet books revised paperback
300 pages (right)

This novel has a very effective mythic tone, with a memorably strange and ambiguous feel to the setting and characters.

The setting melds Western and fantasy motifs to create a place both bizarre and familiar.  King keeps the reader guessing whether this world is our future, an alternate universe, the afterlife, or a dreamworld.  Yet in the midst of this strangeness, King manages to work in thoughts we can all relate to ("The sun climbed to its zenith, seemed to hang there more briefly than it ever had during the desert crossing, and then passed on, returning them their shadows."; "Do grown men always have to play games?  Does everything have to be an excuse for another kind of game? Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?")

Roland the Gunslinger is a compelling protagonist.  I love how the narrator accepts Roland's self-image as a simple, black-and-white kind of guy, when he is clearly not.  He is a very contemplative man, prone to feelings of guilt and self-doubt, which the Man in Black uses as his main weapons against Roland.

I was absorbed in Roland's quest even though, or perhaps because, its meaning and purpose are deliberately obscure.  We don't know why Roland is so determined to reach the Dark Tower.  All we can say with confidence is that on some level, his journey represents every person's search for understanding (including, for instance, the reader's efforts to understand this book).

All of the flashbacks and foreshadowing are intriguing, but matters are so far from being tied together that the whole book feels like a prologue to a much longer book (which, I gather, it is).  The only part of the story that plays out in this volume is Roland's agonizing decision to continue the pursuit of the Man in Black even if it costs his companion Jake his life.  The Man in Black compares Jake to the biblical Isaac, but what compels Roland as strongly as Abraham's faith?  I'm looking forward to reading further in the series to see if Roland's goal was worth it.