Calodar's Full Review: Stephen King and Michael Whelan - Gunslinger
I have to say, without a shadow of an idea of a doubt that this is the best book I have ever read.It got me thinking. I feel truly sorry for those lacking the imagination or intelligence to grasp and relish the enormity of this book, and the ideas it brings to mind. It is a thinking man's book; it begins with questions, and ends with questions.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. Who is the man in black? Is he evil? Why is the gunslinger chasing him? Who is the gunslinger? This book does not answer these questions, but it does. (Read the book; you'll understand) The scale, the "size" of this book boggles the mind. It tells the reader nothing and everything at the same time. (Again, read the book to understand this.) This book is unexplainable, but I'll try anyway.
The book is very surreal, set in the a world that, for all intents and purposes, should be our own, but is strangely, somehow.... wrong. I can't explain the wrongness, its just WRONG. It starts off in a vast, seemingly endless desert. It has been traversed, but not in recent memory. Nobody knows whats on the other side. You get the sense that the man in black and the gunslinger are the first to venture into this desert in thousands of years.
There are three main characters you meet in this twisted world of King's:
Roland, the gunslinger.
He is the hero. But he isn't. You don't know if he's the hero; you aren't told. He is in some ways the classic loner hero, but in some ways not. The only other literary character I can really compare him to is Boba Fett. (All of you are scratching your heads, except for the true diehard Star Wars fans, who know exactly what I'm talking about.)He is the tough, grizzled man, who develops strange affections for strange people. He is the last gunslinger. We know nothing about him, except for tantalizing little flashbacks into his past. He is after the man in black for reasons unknown, even at the end of the book.
Jake, the boy
Roland finds him alone in the desert. He is from our world, and doesn't know how he got to Roland's. He joins Roland on his quest for the man in black, and ends up sacrificing himself to aid Roland's quest.
The man in black.
He is the target of the quest, an all knowing sorcerer. Nothing is known about him, except his name, Walter, and that he was a figure of some importance in Roland's rather clouded past. He tells Roiland that what he is really after is The Dark Tower, the nexus and center of, not the universe, but all the universes.
After reading this book, I questioned the very fabric of reality.
The world is moving on, but it isn't moving on in the right manner. Something about the Tower is causing it all. The book ends, without the reader knowing much, but with a lust to learn more. I can't wait to read the sequels. The world must move on.
In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger...More at HotBookSale
The first installment of King s now-classic Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger is filled with ominous landscapes and macabre menace. The Gunslinger is ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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