Little thought have always occurred to me when seeing what Stephen King has written and my first thought is always “This is one fucking long book!” and the second follows as “I shall read something of his one day!”, The nice thing to actually happen with being on holiday (Though I still have some reservations) comes in the form of finally reading a little book known as “The Gunslinger” a book that is both short and written by Stephen King. So I pretty much got a good deal when I began the task (A nicely manageable task of 250 pages) of reading it through and out to come to an end and exclaim “Wow!” in that airy way you see happen on anything about films or TV. Does that mean I enjoyed it or did I find myself slightly dissatisfied with reading one of his less well known novels? A nice a hefty applause Stephen King from how I loved every word, every sentences, every paragraph, every chapter and most importantly I loved the book without much issue with some of the foreboding elements to come.

A note must be made that the copy I’m reviewing is the revised edition and not the original edition.

What’s the story I expect to find here? The moment you read the forewords and introduction by Stephen King you’ll know what this book might resemble in setting or to be precise the character it follows throughout. Roland is a gunslinger (A type of gun totting knight within the books world from what I can tell) and he’s hunting down The Dark Tower (A sort of nexus in time and space). Now to avoid giving away the plot of the first in this series of seven books. The presents a progressive picture of the main character from him telling his tale to a hermit, then finding a kid from New York (Don’t ask how till you read the book), then the gunslinger and kid (From New York) are walking the desert till they reach lushes mountains and….and well I won’t reveal anymore than that from how good it gets. The plot is straightforward yet gives a nice sense of mystery and scope to the world the characters roam in the first book of a double trilogy plus one.

The book has this nice way of easing in more details about the main character along the way. So that it lets us know with foreboding elements that become clear towards the end and brings up the question of “Do we want to see him succeed in his quest if this is how he’s going to do it?” The answer is still far away from being answered with this being the first book.

The imagery Stephen King creates with each passing chapter gives the world a huge fantastical vastness with unending deserts to a vast underground train network in a mountain region. Everything that comes and goes adds layers of what’s happening to the world of the gunslinger with everything getting worse.

Characters vary from Clint “The Gunslinger” Eastwood type to someone wearing a black cloak like its Halloween every day and night for the entire book. I like the characters with a nice sense of ambiguous style of the “Gunslinger” and the whole coolness factor of the “Man in black” who’s the books sort of villain….who cares if he’s the villain he wears a black cloak!

The whole time to read, I got this nice feeling of fullness even against the knowledge I would probably end up buying the series to find out what happens next. But then as I read my way through, it never struck me at the end like it was screaming “This is it and yet there’s more to read!” but the setup of the book worked well enough to be its own story without feeling incomplete (Imagine I said that like a Sith Lord in Star Wars). The Gunslinger a spaghetti western in fantasy book form *Thumps up*. Go buy, read and then buy some more to read.

Thought of the Day: July 29th:

My mind empty on how to write that five page comic script….five pages and I keep feeling like I’m heading for an dead end even against how I want to write it….but besides that the rewrite on Savage Taste is going nicely for me.