Reviews

Why oh why do I persist? These come in to work so shiny and brand new and they look so exciting and then they just stink. I keep reading them hoping beyond hope that something awesome will happen, somehow I'll be rewarded for slogging through increasingly rotten storytelling. Hasn't happened yet.

In this volume, words are taken right out of the mouth of Aunt Talia from The Waste Lands and given to some anonymous lunatic. There's another blonde woman with a braid named Susan who gets imperiled in some implausible way & it's never quite clear exactly why there had to be another blonde chic named Susan. Cuthbert is depicted as a fat little boy & Aileen makes one last moronic request just so she can

be shot in the heart with a dart.

But hey, at least no pregnant women get stabbed in the belly! Really, this was awful. I think the thing that pisses me off most is that Roland is such a dork. He talks to himself, worries about going crazy, and overall is not the badass Roland I remember from the actual Stephen King novel. Do yourself a favor, skip this and go read that.

francomega's review

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3.0

More prequel stuff, but made more relevant by King's announcement of a new Dark Tower novel soon. Nothing canon-bending here, but always fun seeing Roland in action.

asweetdevouring's review

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3.0

The writing feels like a rough draft and a lot of things that the Gunslinger thinks and says are juvenile. I had no problem believing that King came up with this when he was fifteen because it sounds like it was written by someone who is fifteen. That being said, the main plot points and the world itself are pretty cool and it definitely didn`t hurt that I imagined Idris Elba the entire time reading this.

I`ll at least read the second one, but pull back my expectations of this beloved series.

ramseyhootman's review

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5.0

I'm SO angry at myself for not reading this earlier in my life! Not that I don't love it now, because I absolutely do, but back in college this would have blown my little mind. My only other experience with Stephen King was Misery and a sampling of some of his other contemporary horror, but this is so much deeper and more lyric. I adore the mashup of solid Biblical allusion, English lit, tarot, and what has got to be a substantial amount of LSD. And the characters are really magnificent. Now I understand when people are talking about when they venerate Stephen King.

I have heard that this series goes downhill towards the end, and that usually bothers me, but you know what, this first installment was so damn good I don't even care. Worth it.