Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Gunslinger

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The Gunslinger by Stephen King

32 reviews

vermispore's review against another edition

adventurous sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A really good book if you like Stephan King and can tolerate high fantasy that doesn't explain much right away. Well written and a fun read, but its the kind of book you love or hate.

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diegor's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Sarà molto probabile che dovrò tornare sui miei passi per cambiare il voto che sto dando in questo momento al primo capitolo de La Torre Nera. Da non lettore di King il libro si è subito presentato come molto impegnativo da leggere e comprendere, di sicuro non è una di quelle letture che prende per mano e cerca di spiegare quanto più possibile in modo chiaro e cristallino.

Passato questo scoglio iniziale e cambiato approccio alla lettura, lasciarsi trasportare dalla prosa di King diventa immediatamente un’esperienza unica nel suo genere, magari non per tutti, ma certamente indimenticabile per quelli che potrebbero apprezzarla.

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nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Not the strongest of the series and I don’t blame people for stopping here and not reading the full thing. That said, I’m glad I had people who told me to give it to Book 3. The Gunslinger may be dry and drag, but the Dark Tower series is fantastic. And I will say this for King - the world building is subtle but fabulous.

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lindseylosers's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Not for me.
The ending did start to pick up though and I enjoyed that. This is the first Stephen King book I’ve read and I’m not sure if this is common across all his writing but the female characters are rough. Instead of the classic madonna-whore complex, seems like King has a demon-whore complex where women are either demons or whores or both, there’s no room for traits outside of that limited spectrum. I’m not the type that has to have every female character break gender molds or be saints but the demon-whore depiction of women in The Gunslinger becomes distracting when all I can think about while reading is what Stephen King’s relationship was like with his mom.

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wager5290's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It's the start of The Dark Tower. It stage in tremendously but is definitely a different beat from the rest of the series. Don't cast off the tower on this book alone. If you hate the main character in this book, give the next book (Drawing of the Three) a shot at least.

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malebrina's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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parenthesis_enjoyer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I definitely enjoyed this book, but it is also definitely the start of a saga. Throughout the whole novel there's so, so many hints of a larger world, and bursts of rapid-fire world building. The world King is creating is strange and intriguing enough that I want to continue with this series just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are also a fair few Stephen King-isms in here, to be sure, though I'm told not as many as the later entries. Really, it's a matter of how much you can tolerate the particular style. I'm writing this a long time after I read it so I apologize for the vagueness.

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theverycraftyvegan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

My spouse is going to hate when I tell him I didn’t love this book. He thinks The Dark Tower is the greatest series of books ever written, but book one didn’t do anything for me.

Was it well written? Debatable. Stephen King is a great author and I’ve loved many of his other books, but The Gunslinger isn’t one of them. You jump around a lot between the present and the past, and it was all very confusing for me. It felt like the book had absolutely no flow. Maybe the series gets better as you go but I don’t know if I’m interested enough to read 7 more—and most of them very long—books to find out.

Dystopian and apocalyptic, everyone and everything is dying. A very hard existence in an unsavoury world filled with violence and death.

I also didn’t like a single character.

And literally every character you meet dies, except for Roland, so don’t grow attached to anyone.

Jake, the boy, was a confusing addition. Where did he come from? Our time? How did he get there? Why is he there?

And Roland’s love for and eventual betrayal of Jake was just the worst.

Alice was needy and clingy and portrayed to be ugly due to a facial scar and her age. (40s???)

Sylvia was just a horrible excuse of a human.

The people of Tull all sucked.

But the battle of Tull was hands down my favourite part to read.

The Man in Black… I don’t even know what my thoughts are on him. He was very cryptic and I felt like because he only starts to speak at the end of the book I didn’t get to know him.

I’ve read it. I can say I’ve read it. It wasn’t for me. Might be an unpopular opinion, but there it is.

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knightzach's review against another edition

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The plot was somewhat interesting, but I could not ignore that extreme abundance of anti-Christian imagery and themes. The book seems to appeal to the lowest base instincts of fallen man--plenty of senseless gore, sex, and "religious weirdos" tropes. The grit and crudeness could be excused if it was done so in a higher narrative purpose, but it didn't deliver. After finishing half of the book, it simply wasn't worth it to finish.

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zakcebulski's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

52! This is it! My fifty-second book of the year! That is super thrilling to me. It is also my first step into the world of Stephen King's far reaching saga the Dark Tower. And I found it.... fine.
Let me explain.

Now, I have a bit of a storied history with King's works. I find myself gravitating more toward his "less" popular books, and finding less enjoyment out of the titans for which he is known so fucking well.
That is to say, I prefer 'Salem's Lot to Pet Sematary and I prefer the Green Mile to something like It - I am fully aware that these are not totally equivalent comparisons, but, damn, I just like his comparatively less popular books.
But, as a largely new fan of King, I felt like it was time for me to embark on this story which has its hands in so many different King stories.

The story of this book follows the titular gunslinger- Roland Deschain as he tracks with feverish dedication the man in black toward the Dark Tower. I have to say that from the start, the book is set up amazingly with such a concise sentence that tells us everything that we need to know as a foundation. "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed". I truly think that this has to be one of the best opening lines which I have ever read- it immediately hooks the reader in, and informs us that the main character has his goal.
I thought that this was exemplary, to be completely honest.
The rest of the book follows the gunslinger (as he is referred to, and as I will refer to him here) as he continues pursuing the man in black. Throughout the story we learn tidbits about the gunslinger's back story and how he came to be the last remaining gunslinger.
I thought that this was interesting to a point, though I admittedly did find this book to drag on here and there. I found instances in the past to not be as interesting to me as reading through the current goal of the gunslinger.

One big thing which I have to commend King for is how the backstory of the gunslinger is illustrated in flashbacks, however, the personality of the gunslinger is written in a way that I love. He is shown to be cold and calculating, and possessing a "by any means necessary" mindset, which I think makes him so fucking interesting. When he meets a boy in his travels-Jake- who is already dead, and who is the "key" to the man in black, and thus to the Tower, we learn that the gunslinger will kill the boy as a means to justify the end- which is exactly what happens. We also learn in a flashback how he willingly sacrificed a bird who he befriended as a means to pass a trial. I thought that this illustration of his personality was fantastic and it truly makes me more interested in reading how his character develops in the future.

I have always liked the man in black as a villain- who we all know as different names. I love the feeling of evil omnipotence that he exudes puts him at a level above the gunslinger. I love that this shows the disparity between the gunslinger and the man in black wherein we question if the gunslinger is on a fool's errand in trying to complete his goal.

I did find most of the characters not totally memorable, in my view. I didn't really care about the characters from the gunslinger's past, and I didn't even much care for the boy, Jake. He truly just seemed like a character who was introduced to die and show what a stone cold bastard Roland is.
I am hopeful that the rest of the books in this series are more fleshed out, as I am sure that they will be, because, as of now, I don't have much of an investment in learning more about any of the characters which were mentioned.

I am fully aware that this book is commonly listed as one of the weakest entries into the Dark Tower series. I don't think that that gives a pass to any of the issues which I felt I encountered while reading. But, I will return to the Dark Tower series. I feel like if I had no knowledge about the rest of this series, and the promise that it was going to get better and more interesting, then I would have viewed this as a fine albeit forgettable book in King's canon. I am mainly interested to read how this series plays in to so many other books by King- I am a person who fucking loves some goddamn fan service or cross book references.

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