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A review by blacksphinx
The Gunslinger by Stephen King

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

4.5

When I was a child/young teen, my mom would semi-frequently tell me in-depth summaries of her favorites works I was too young to experience myself (glossing over the violent or sexual content they contained). One of them was the Dark Tower. All these years later I still remember the sense of wonder as she introduced me to a multiverse for the first time, of an evil train, of a gunslinger chasing a man in black across the desert. But she eventually hit a book in the series she disliked so much she never kept going (my understanding is that the whole thing is a flashback, and she found it boring and lacking tension because she already knew the fates of all characters involved). It's lived in the back of my mind since then, my understanding crumbling into a few fragments. I gave King's books a couple of stabs as a proper teen, but I had zero tolerance for any sexual content at that time and never finished one. I'd only read a collection of novellas from him, and On Writing.

And then I started listing to the Talking Scared podcast by Neil McRobert, a King superfan. I remember cheering when he announced King would be on the podcast, and being surprised by how charming King was. I'm an adult now with a stronger stomach and a couple of years of vociferous fiction reading under my belt now. I was already turning to face the Dark Tower when Neil announced he was going to be doing a special set of episodes where him and a fellow superfan/horror-author were going to go through the series (and some related books) with a horror author who has never read them before, and encouraged us listeners to follow along. It's time to start.

So, how does this book written by a 19 year old in 1970 hold up? Well... the female characters in this story sure don't, my god. Women in this world exist for men to have sex with them, including incorporeal demon women. (I think a main character will be a Black woman and I shudder to think what awful stereotypes she'll fall into.) This is a very brutal place I almost want to call grimdark, where young boys are beaten and abused into being unstoppable killing machines. And yet I kept turning the pages. The disjointed narrative compelled me, as we are dropped into this story in medias res with at least three lengthy flashback sequences to give us some understanding of Roland and the long-destroyed place he came from. I also loved how the book refused to hold my hand and I have to listen and read between the lines to figure out what things like a howken was. I love a series that respects my intelligence.

And then we got to the end, the conversation. The Tower. It was enough to whisk away my reservations, to make me fully buy in. I've heard that the ending is derisive, and just from that one conversation I can understand why. There is no answer to the questions posed that can truly satisfy. But I'm in board now, I'm going to follow Roland to the end of the line.
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